Two Christmas Stockings

I finally finished my first of two big Christmas stocking projects for this year. This was a special order for two Christmas stockings for a friend. She had stockings for herself, her husband, and her two kids that had been machine-knitted several years ago, but the person who made them for her is no longer doing that. This year she gained a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law and wanted stockings made for them to coordinate with their existing stockings. She brought me the stockings earlier this fall and I've been working on them off and on since then. I completed them early this week and she picked them up today. I have to say that I'm very proud of how well they turned out, and she loved them too. I commented that I should have printed up a fancy "certificate of authenticity" verifying that these stockings are indeed designer originals as they weren't made from any particular pattern and are completely one-of-a-kind. In order to match the stockings she already had, these were knitted with dk weight yarn and size 2 needles at 7.5 stitches per inch. Needless to say they each took a few days to complete.

I am developing a photo catalog of all the fine gauge stockings I've made and the graphs for each one. Eventually I'll be able to have customers pick out various elements from the catalog to design their own. Meanwhile I'm about a third of the way through the second stocking of my second big stocking project of the year. By the time I finish this one (hopefully tomorrow) I think I'll be about stockinged out for a while.

Knitting Class

Last month after I spent some time helping a friend with her knitting on a couple of afternoons (she had knitted previously but needed some help with a new project) she finally was able to convince me that I should offer some knitting classes. I printed a flyer describing two classes that I would offer; Knitting 101 would be a basic beginner class and Open Knit would be a class for people who had some experience with knitting but needed extra help with a specific pattern or project.

I emailed friends and plastered flyers around town, and ended up with -- ONE student! So she and I went through three weeks of Knitting 101 and simply had a blast. I had stated that the beginning class would cover casting on, knitting, purling, and binding off, but at the end of the third session my student was also increasing (knit in front and back), decreasing (knit 2 together), and yarning over. She said that she really enjoyed the class (as did I) and we are already making plans for another series of classes in January. I'm hoping that I'll be able to have more than one student per class for the next round.

We're also planning a "class field trip" to Enticements for the end of January (and maybe a few other stores in the area). She didn't realize that there was a yarn store in Decatur, even though her parents live there, but I read about Enticements in another friend's blog here. I'm hoping that my other friend who got me started teaching will also be able to go on the trip.

Two More Etsy Sales

Hooray! Two more Etsy items sold today - a couple of Christmas stockings to a lady in California.

I was able to relist the fisherman stocking immediately because I had another one already made up.

The sock monkey stocking was the only one of its kind that I had on hand, so I won't be making any more of those this year.
Tomorrow I'll photograph and list my full-size afghans and some of my baby/children's hats. I'll have to photograph the fruit hats as well, and I'm sure there are a lot more things that I can't think of right now.

If I could just have a couple more sales days like this it would really help the budgetary crisis immensely. Now if I could just get caught up with my special order stuff we'd be good to go. For some reason I always have many more knitting projects than I have time to do them all. To quote the image from one of my favorite tote bags, "So much yarn, so little time..."

Katie and Doug's wedding

Well, the wedding has come and gone, and with it my one and only chance to be mother of the bride. All in all it went pretty well, except that the gorgeous ring bearer pillow that I labored over so intensely never made it down the aisle. By the time of the actual ceremony Kindon was so hyper from having been given prodigious quantities of chocolate by his Uncle Hank that he flatly refused to have anything to do with walking down the aisle.

Other than that, the ceremony was lovely, the decorations were awesome, and there has never been a more beautiful bride. My sister drove all the way from Florida to attend the wedding, and her planning expertise was invaluable at the rehearsal and during the actual ceremony. It was also awesome to get to spend some time with family during the weekend.

I'd like to say that things should calm down now, but with Christmas coming in about three and a half weeks it doesn't seem likely that it will work out that way.

Ring Bearer Pillow

So the wedding is tomorrow and I got the ring bearer pillow finished up this morning. It came out very well if I do say so myself.
In keeping with my propensity for never following a pattern exactly, I mitered the corners of the edging lace instead of knitting it in one straight strip, and I grafted the ends together instead of casting on, binding off, and seaming.

My mom sewed the pillow and put a strap on the bottom because she thought it would be easier for Kindon to carry that way.



We'll see how he does with it.

First Etsy Sale!

Today I made my first sale on the Etsy website. The buyer looked at the men's slippers I had listed and requested some further information. Then she ordered a pair. Naturally the pair she wanted wasn't the particular pair that I have in stock, so I'll be knitting up a pair of slippers tomorrow while I'm (hopefully) selling (lots of) stuff at the craft fair in Gillespie.

Here is the photo I had posted:

The request I received was for just plain brown, so of course I'll have to buy another skein of brown yarn to have two strands for the slippers. But I guess I can always use the extra as stems for lots of apple hats.

Here's hoping that I'll have many more sales soon.

My New Etsy Site

A while back a friend of mine sent me a link to Etsy.com and suggested that this might be an appropriate sales outlet for many of the handknitted items I have for sale. It has been a hectic summer and early fall, but finally tonight I got my act together and got my shop set up.

Go check it out at www.theknitlady.etsy.com.

My Latest Prayer Shawl

Yesterday I delivered my latest prayer shawl to a 90 year old lady from our church who was having surgery today to clear out her carotid arteries (she did fine and is expected to be released in a day or so). My pastor picked me up, and my grandson was with me so he went along, too. At the end of the visit, Pastor Jeff wanted to offer a prayer, so I said, "Kindon, come over here and let's pray." He came over, took our hands, and stood quietly with his head bowed through the entire prayer. Not bad for a three year old who normally runs at warp speed!

Later on we went to choir rehearsal, and Kindon went along. I had brought along an old "Wee Sing" book for him so he would have his own "music". He walked in like he owned the place, sat right down, opened up his music, and sang along with the adult choir. Maybe soon we'll have to teach him to read music.

Here is the prayer shawl that we delivered. It was made from a full skein of JoAnn Sensations Rainbow Boucle.


So one down, and three more in the pipeline. For some reason I never get quite caught up.

Snowball Hat

A couple of weeks ago I had a booth at a craft fair in Benld. The lady in the booth next to me was very excited when I arrived to open my booth on Saturday morning (we had set up on Friday night and zipped the tent up so we didn't have to get there so early on Saturday). She said that she had been looking all over for me since she had bought one of my fruit hats the year before. By the end of the day, she had bought another fruit hat for her new baby, and placed a special order for two hats "white with something like snowballs". I didn't have anything like that in stock, or even in a pattern ready to go. So, a new pattern is born!

This is the result. I think it came out pretty cute. But I HATE making bobbles! Maybe I'll just write down the pattern and sell it instead of making any more hats.

How Sweet the Sound!

Yesterday, my grandson called me. Well, actually his mommy called and then he wanted to talk on the phone. So she handed over the phone, and instead of talking, he proceeded to sing "Jesus Loves Me" in his sweet little three-year-old voice.

What a special and unexpected lift to my day!