A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS

I wish for each of you a VERY BLESSED CHRISTMAS!  Merry is wonderful but BLESSED means a lasting gift of grace, something to help you through this coming year.
We look back on this past year with its blessings and its problems and come to the conclusion that we are greatly blessed.

Jim celebrated his 80th birthday on the 16th of this month; I will follow with my 77th in March.  We have become very aware that our time here together is limited.  That does impact the way we treat each other; we have become much quicker to talk over whatever disagreements or irritations come up because we both have a deep love for one another and want to help the other live a good, fulfilling life for the rest of our days.

We are aware that this is not possible without the grace of God in our lives.  We are not in ourselves good and kind, but the transforming love of God in our lives and our gratitude and love back to him bring us to a state where his grace can operate in our relationship.  That's a wonderful state to be in at this time of life!  Or at any time of life.

That's our Christmas wish for each of you: that the gift of Christ's salvation may transform your life by grace.  So we wish you a BLESSED CHRISTMAS and then next week, a new year in which that grace can transform your life into one you can rightly call BLESSED.

WELL, ACTUALLY

Actually, I didn't need to set that goal of 8" a day:

The scarf is finished!  That only means that I've been doing lots of knitting.  Got an extra 7" done yesterday evening while watching the PBS NewsHour.  This morning I was up at 4 a.m. and basically spent my whole morning knitting.  

The scarf finished at 45".  I'm in the process of unravelling the first and last three stitches of each row.  When you wrap this scarf around your neck or shoulders the loops all fluff out and it's super warm and comfy.  I call it "The Simplest Scarf" and this is why:

SUPER SIMPLE SCARF

Yarn: Patons Peak, 3.2 oz, or 90 grams

Cast on 18 stitches (I used a set of U.S. #10 straight needles)

Knit in garter stitch until the whole ball is used up. 

Knit the first 3 stitches of the last row.

Bind off stitches 4 through 15.

Slip the first 3 stitches and the last three stitches off the needle.

Unravel (or unknit, or however you want to call this) those first three and last three stitches, right down to the first row.  Weave in the cast on and the bind off tails.

ENJOY! 

As you saw, this is a very quick knit.  You could actually make one for a Christmas present at this late date, provided you can find the right yarn.  And actually, any nice slubby yarn works.  The first time I made this scarf I used yarn from Walmart that I had bought some years earlier just because it was nice to look at.  For those of you in Three Hills, IDA carries this yarn.  Just one ball does it!

KIND OF BORING

This latest knitting project is kind of boring.  I knew it would be since I had made the same scarf earlier this year.  But the end result is worth the effort.  I've set myself a goal of 8" per day.  So far so good:

That's yesterday and this morning.  Now for something more interesting, I think maybe I'll just cast on the second "Route 66" sock.  Both need to be finished the last week of January.

Also in the planning: I'd like to make a hat to match the scarf and have an idea how to go about that.  We'll see how that turns out later.

THE FASTEST SOCK IN THE WEST

Well, the fastest sock that I ever knit: cast on Thursday morning around 6 a.m., bound off on Sunday evening around 6:30 p.m.  Gone from home for 5 1/2 hours on Thursday, 3 hours on Friday and 1 1/2 on Saturday.  Still too sick to go to church on Sunday, and still too under par to do much but the minimum of housework and cooking, so lots of time for knitting, reading and crossword puzzling.  Result:

This looks a little lumpy.  It needs to be "blocked"--dampened and patted flat.

There was a problem near the end:

See that knot in the yarn?  That's a real no-no, especially in a self-striping yarn!  It creates a break in the repeated patterns.  I'm going to write to Patons about that.  This shouldn't be there!

Fortunately with my vast experience in knitting I was able to work around it.  I cut the yarn at the knot, found a length of dark green in the remnant of yarn that was left in the ball and used that to continue the pattern.  Then found remnants of white/black and of dark blue to finish the sock.

Now I'm going to take a break from socks--always dangerous to do in between two of a pair, but I WILL get back to this pair.  In the meantime, I plan to knit a scarf.  I made one this fall and gave it away before I took a picture.  Went back and bought some more of the same yarn to make another one.  There'll be a picture of that scarf when completed.

THE SOCK NUT

That's me, a sock-knitting nut.  I finished Zack's socks early Thursday morning and immediately cast on a new pair.  Here's the finished pair:

I like them!  They went in the mail on Thursday afternoon.  His birthday is on the 20th, so they probably won't get there on time but he will love them when he gets them.

As soon as they were complete I cast on a new pair.  I had restrained myself from doing that for at least a week, because this was a new "colour-way" in Paton's Kroy Sock yarn: it's called "Route 66."  I've never been on Route 66 by my sister (I make a pair of socks for her each year) has fond memories of travelling route 66 with other college kids for her summer breaks.  She went from Michigan to California to spend the summer with our older sister those years.  When I saw that name, "Route 66," I simply had to make her a pair in that colour-way.

It always tickles me that something so insignificant as this:

can turn into a nice warm sock!

I was especially curious as to how these stretches of yarn would knit up:

How would those lengths of blueish white and smaller lengths of black knit up.  What are they supposed to represent, that is, if this colour-way actually represents Route 66?

Well, this is how they turned out.  Each section is different from the other one.  A big part of that is because of increases and decreases, first for the toe, and then for the heel gusset. I'm o.k. with this:

I've had a lot of time to knit the last few days and just now finished the heel.  

For a bit I thought the white/black might represent the highway, with the white being the pavement, the older type: blocks of cement with an expansion crack (the black) between them.  Now I'm just not sure, but the black and white reminds me of what she and I would do to pass the time while travelling by car when we were quite young:

We would kneel on the back seat looking out the back window and chant (to an A and F#) "Line, line go away" until it went away and then "Line, line come back."  I guess Mom and Dad put up with that mind-numbing chant as a good alternative to back seat squabbles. 

LATEST SOCKS

Last Friday I woke up feeling like myself again.  What a surprise!  There were still a few "hurdles" to accomplish, but today is my first day completely free of headaches and feverish feelings.  What a blessing!

I was able to go back to my latest sock knitting project:

This is a pair for our grandson, Zack who has a birthday on December 20.  I made a pair of socks for Zack some years ago and he loved them.  So here's a new pair, made with Patons Kroy Sock yarn, a colour called "Singing the Blues."  I like how they are turning out.  

When I use self striping yarn I try to get the two socks to match, by pulling out the yarn end from both balls (socks take two 50 gram balls) until I have a colour match.  Thought I had it here, but it's a little off.  The finished sock ends with three repeats of the medium blue.  This second sock with need four repeats of that blue stripe instead of three.  Hope that doesn't matter!  I don't think Zack will mind.

Also today my quilt club back home in Alberta held its annual Christmas party.  We have some fun with gifts each year.  We don't draw names, but we each bring a hand made gift representing about $15 to $20 worth of materials--or whatever.  I had a bit of fun with that this year: I bought a gift certificate to IDA where we buy our yarns and fabrics, wrapped it in a little note that was a gift certificate for a pair of made-to-measure, hand-knit socks that I will make for the person who dared to choose as their gift a tiny envelope.  I wonder who will get the socks!  And I wonder what present my friend Carroll picked for me!  Lots of fun!

BEEN SICK

I've been missing in action here--been quite ill with a variety of infections and headaches. It was diagnosed last Friday as Sinusitis and I've been taking antibiotics since then, but am still troubled with headaches and feverish times.  If I'm not recovered by Monday, when the antibiotic series is complete, I'd better go back and get some more help.  Hope to be back in action pretty soon.