I have been doing some super-secret knitting during the day which I can’t tell you all about or show you just yet, but I am making some good progress. This has been assisted greatly by audiobooks (I am almost done with Bonfire) and Season 2 of The Crown on Netflix, which I finished yesterday.
I am anticipating this super-secret knitting to be completed today, which will allow me to BREATHE a deep sigh of relief!
I am also anticipating the 2018 Read Harder Challenge, which I am going to participate in next year. I have also been contemplating my Goodreads book challenge this year – do I play it safe or really push myself this year? Perhaps with the Net Neutrality debacle, reading might be more important next year as streaming Netflix might be limited. I am leaning towards pushing myself.
AND, as you can see, I am really ready for some Christmas Break Reading. The Library is being SUPER good to me right now and has somehow moved me up on my “hold list” almost to the GAH point! I checked out the above books on Tuesday night, and last night Killers of the Flower Moon was downloaded to my iPad. With these additions, it almost feels like I can make that 85-books-read mark!
The rush of the season makes for little knitting time, so no real progress on anything. However, I have managed to get some rounds in on Treysta. I am just so in love with the colors in this sweater. It makes me happy even if I can only knit a haphazard round here or there! The body grows slowly, but it grows!
I am still on the Peace Train and I worked on it last night at Knit Night. It is the perfect peaceful knitting project, and it has grown a bit from this photo taken during the daylight hours on Tuesday!
I am ever so grateful for audiobooks as they are the perfect companion for the rush of Christmas.
I also finished Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance. I enjoyed it and it was a quick read. It reminded me of Jungle Book, in that here is a story of Weylyn Grey who was raised by wolves. It is a charming little tale. There is magic and wonder and fantasy and it is a beautifully told story.
I would first of all like to thank Sprite for including me again this year! It is so much fun reading all the posts! It is a highlight of the season for me!
Today I want to spend a little time going back in time and reminiscing about the best books I read with my kids when they were much younger.
It could simply not be Christmas without these books. We read them over and over and over and over.
We talked about community, and sang the songs.
We drank cups of hot chocolate, and ate Christmas candies.
We did voices of animals.
We talked about the stories.
We thought about what perfect really is.
And, Christmas wishes.
and, best of all were the stories we made up ourselves when there were absolutely no words at all.
What did you like to read to your children? Or have someone read to you? And, please make sure you stop by Sprite Writes and see what all the other Virtual Advent participants have to share!
So, I spun a bit more to see if I could improve the “thready-ness” of the yarn.
I stitched with more tightly plied yarn. I stitched with less tightly plied yarn. I stitched with singles. And, even though my results were not wonderful, I am sharing what I learned here.
Dressmaker Linen is not suitable for yarn stitching. It is abrasive to the fibers and I had problems with breakage in the yarns. I also needed a needle that could pierce the fabric, but the needles I have on hand might not have had a big enough eye, which also caused more abrasion to the yarn.
Plied wool yarn is very difficult to stitch with in linen fabric. I had issues with the plies wanted to be untwisted. I had issues with one of the plies breaking. I had issues with stitches laying how I wanted them to lay.
Singles wool yarn is too fragile to withstand the stitching process in dressmaker linen with a needle.
I did like some of the results I got with Pygora singles I tried, but it did not want to be stitched in satin stitch at all.
I admit that I am surprised by my results, but I am unbelievably happy that I am finding out these problems through swatching and not as I am beginning my new project. And, I am really happy that I have a bag filled with Pearle Cotton staring at me while I spend the next few days pondering how this changes my idea, if at all. But then, I texted with my friend Beth, and she gave me lots of advice but this made my head spin: “I would go to the internet and see if people use wool for the same stitches as cotton. By the end I would have tried 400 million fabrics and 200 million wools…”
Okay, so seriously? I don’t have that much testing drive in me! But, I did go to the internet and found some fun things on Pinterest, like this and this! Which led me to Judy’s Journal…I could be heading down the couching rabbit hole but, for today I am not going to think about this anymore. I have a bit of wrapping to finish up for things that need to be shipped out before Christmas and a quick trip to Costco.
The knitting marches on, albeit slowly. However, today I am going to share a bit of a preview about my 2018 Stitching Project, which will begin on December 21 and I am taking a bit of license from Vivaldi and borrowing his Four Seasons. There will be four much larger stitching projects; Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. And, while they will still be free-hand stitching – no drawing out of my design, the season of stitches will all be the same motif, but will change color as the season does.
I have also been wondering how handspun yarn would work to use for stitching, so I have been playing with some fiber to create some “crayons” to stitch with. I will test this out before hand to see how I like it. I am not the best at spinning super fine yarns, so I am not sure that this will work as I am envisioning it. But, I am going to do some experimenting swatching and see what it looks like over the weekend and I will share my results back here on Monday.
