Holiday Knitting Suicide

What a stressful weekend for knitting. Both productive and destructive at the same time. Spent early Saturday finishing up a pair of koozies for a White Elephant party. Due to the cold snap here in Seattle, I decided they needed matching hats and scarves. First attempt at a pompom. Maybe I'll follow directions if I ever need to make a larger, more attractive one, or at least one that won't go directly into Adele's mouth.



Completed 90% of Project #4 and entered into the world of felting. Not quite sure how I feel about it. I tossed my project into the washer with hotter-than-hell water and let it agitate for the whole cycle. When I discovered that the only change was that my project was wet and soapy, I had to add an old pair of jeans to help with the agitation. Probably should have left it in for another go-around, buy hey, time is money and I'm going broke. It's blocking right now and I think it's going to be terribly cute when I'm done.

Started Project #5 while #4 was felting. Should be quick (good lord, I hope so). I'm using Paton's SWS yarn, which is 70% wool, 30% soy. I think I rather like it, but it's not spun very tightly and it's easy to split sts. Decided that it was a better idea to work on this one on my lunch break than Project #3 because I might actually make some progress on it.

Speaking of #3...

I had to be talked off a knitting ledge last night. After hours and hours spent carefully knitting Project #3 at work, I reached the end of my rope. Literally. With 4 inches left to go, I ran out of yarn.

I hemmed and I hawed about what to do. I weighed the pros and cons. I had an old fashioned debate in my mind. I plotted time requirements vs ease of completion on a mental graph. Plan A won by a very narrow margin.

Plan A: Because this is a two part project, I unraveled the cast on edge of part 1 to steal a few yards to add to the top of part 2. This, of course, meant that I needed to do the same to part 2 so they look the same. I got maybe an extra inch of new work, but it still left me high and dry.

So Plan A failed. I would not recommend following plan A in most cases. It's time consuming, doesn't provide nearly the yardage needed, and is a pain in the ass. If you think you might run out of yarn, PLEASE use a provisional cast on!! You'll thank me later. On to Plan B.

Painful, heartbreaking Plan B.

I frogged it. The whole dang thing. What a waste of lunch time hours that I could have spent playing Kingdom of Loathing. On the bright side, if you can call it that, I'm re-knitting them using a single strand of yarn instead of two, so I should have some yarn left over. Enough to make a hat? Probably not. Not even enough to try. Maybe a headband. Chances are I won't have enough time before Christmas, but I'll keep it in mind just in case.

I ended up drowning my sorrows in this confection:


Salted Nut Roll Bars

16 oz dry roasted peanuts
12 oz peanut butter chips
3 Tbsp butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
4 cups miniature marshmallows

Grease 13x9inch pan. Spread half of the peanuts in pan. Melt chips, butter and milk together. Cool slightly and fold in marshmallows. Pour in pan over nuts. Sprinkle remaining nuts on top; press into mixture.