January Blahs

I almost made it through January without being hit by the BLAHS, but they got me yesterday and are hanging on for dear life today. Basically, I'm bored - I'm knitting another hat, crocheting another afghan, the same stuff that I've been doing for four months now. I'll keep on doing it because there are people out there who need hats & afghans to keep warm this winter and these will be passed along through several charities, but I'm bored. I started reading The Siren Queen by Fiona Buckley and could not get into it, so I set it aside last night and started Brimstone by Preston & Lincoln, another Agent Pendergast mystery / adventure which will hopefully hold my interest better.

I paged through a pile of old Knitters magazines last night while watching Law & Order, but didn't see any sweaters that caught my fancy. So many of them look blocky or just aren't appealing. I still have a couple stacks to look through and if I really run out, there are two or three boxes of old McCall's Needlework, Ladies Home Journal Needlework, American Home Needlework, Handmade, & Good Housekeeping Needlework magazines in the crawl space. I've been collecting knitting magazines since around 1950 when Mom bought me my first McCall's Needlework which I still have. I guess I could be considered a first rate pack rat.

With neither a spellbinding book or knitting project at hand today, I spent most of the afternoon adding the HTML coding to genealogy data files that were transcribed for my site, so I did accomplish something today. The link to my genealogy site is under my profile - it now has over 2200 data files from New England, NY, & MI. The ones I coded and put up today included four chapters of the history of Norwich, CT; the 1790 Census & 1798 Direct Tax listing from Coltrain, MA; & the Mt. Airy Cemetery from Hunterdon Co., NJ. If you have ancestors in New England, drop by and see if there's anything there to help your research.

No Photos For A Few Days

My SIL is moving his site to a new server and that won't be complete until mid-week, so no photos for a few days unless they're already residing in your computer's memory.

The on-line instructions I mentioned in yesterday's post were a big help and the toes of the Fuzzy Feet are now closed with kitchener stitch. It only took a few minutes for each foot thanks to the pictures that showed just what to do in each step. Now all I need to do is to (gulp) felt them.

I finished two hats for the charity project yesterday and started a third that's about half done.

Saturday Morning

It's Saturday morning, so where did Thursday & Friday go???? Thursday was the K4 (that's the Krazy Kool Knitters & Krocheters for those who are just finding this blog - a group at our Senior Center organized by Virginia to knit for charity) meeting. After our frenzied knitting of fashion scarves between Thursday & Tuesday of last week so as to have a selection ready for sale at the Tuesday night open house, only five people came and only two scarves were sold by Thursday afternoon. The scarves are still hanging on a rattan screen in the dining room, so hopefully more will sell so the group will have some $$$ in the kitty for the next yarn sale. Other than that disappointment, the meeting was fun. As usual, we sat, worked on our projects & chatted. I turned in the four caps I had finished, worked on the latest rag-tag afghan which is almost finished, and picked up yarn for more caps.

Yesterday morning was filled with running errands. We hit the library on the way to the store and I picked up four books on knitting and one on quilting. The Art of Classic Quilt Making by Harriet Hargrave & Sharyn Craig is right up my "alley" - quilts with an antique look. The knit books are as follows: Beyond Stitch & Bitch, by Afi-Odelia Scruggs; The Mitten Book, by Inger & Ingrid Gottfridsson, Folk Vests, by Cheryl Oberle & Country Inspiration, by Sasha Kagan. There's one vest in the latter that I love - Leafy Waistcoat on page 56.



The cabled edging is particularly nice, but it's made separately and then sewn on - and I know my record for sewing things together (hint: it's LOUSY).. I wonder if there would be a way of making I-cord look like a cable and knitting it on? The Folk Vest book is one that I tend to drool over - some of the vests are so neat and I love vests. The Mitten Book is so-so - probably nothing there that I'd make. I also picked up a pile of novels to read while knitting. Last night I finished Citizen Washington (a very good read) & started A Hole in Texas by Herman Wolk.

The Fuzzy Feet are complete except for the kitchener stitch needed to close the toes. I'll attempt that later today with the aid of Knitty.com's Techniques with Theresa.



Last night, I cast on another hat in a cranberry / plum bulky yarn - the ribbing is done and I'm hoping that I have enough yarn to finish the hat as it seems to be using more than I expected.



I had photos ready to go with the above, but it seems that the site where I store my photos is once again unavailable. Will add them later when things get straightened out. (Sorry!)

Another Wintery Day

The little Weather Bug icon down in the right hand corner of the screen is reading negative 1 degree - it's cold out there!! It took about ten minutes this morning to scrape enough frost off the Colt's windshield to be able to see out and my fingers are still recovering. It looks like we may get a degree or two above freezing during the day starting on Sunday, but that's chilly comfort when what we really need is a few days in the 50s to get rid of the piles of snow that are starting to turn grey & dingy.

I finished up the fourth hat last night and will turn these in this afternoon at our K4 meeting.



On the needles right now is the first of a pair of Fuzzy Feet from Knitty.Com. The skein of Brunswick Rose Ombre 100% wool worsted was one of several skeins of wool in a large bag of baby yarn that I bought at a garage sale last summer for $1.50. It's going to be an inexpensive way to experiment with felting. My "helper" this time around is Tiger, our almost 12 year old cuddle-bum who is usually in my lap when I'm on the computer.. He was dumped, along with several siblings, near the farm where my parents lived at the time. The other kittens were killed by cars, but Dad found Tiger and brought him home.



The third member of our feline family isn't all that much interested in my knitting while it's taking place, but she does love to curl up on an afghan or a quilt. Callie came to us through the Michigan Animal Rescue League , a no-kill shelter in Pontiac, MI.

Addiction

Ok, I confess - I'm addicted.. Addicted to surfing through knitting blogs - it's sort of like being invited into the living rooms of a large number of potential friends and either meeting them for the first time or catching up with what has been going on in their lives. I realized this last night when I couldn't sleep and found myself at 3 a.m. repeatedly hitting the RANDOM key on the Knitting Bloggers site..

I took another three scarves made from Dazzleaire down to the Sr. Center this afternoon for a total of thirteen since last Thursday. I'm hoping that a number of them sold at the Open House this evening and our K4 group will have some money to take advantage of the next yarn sale. No new pictures as they looked just like the last ones. This evening, I finished off a blue & grey cap that I'd started last week before the scarf blitz, knit one with a strand of worsted and a strand of sport (beige & apricot) and cast on in blue again for the ribbing of another hat. Looking at the long list that's accumulating in the side bar, I'm beginning to think that maybe I had better just put a count on the hats, scarves & afghans for charity instead of listing them separately. Maybe I'll replace the list with links to the blogs I visit.

A Few More Scarves

The scarves for the Sr. Center from "fancy" yarns are complete. Here are the last ones.



I made up some tags to tell the content of the yarns that I could identify and to suggest that the scarves be hand washed and dried flat. These are 3x5 notecards cut in half and decorated with a kitty stamp I purchased years ago. My inkpad is in dire need of new ink (or I need a new pad, take your choice), but I was able to get impressions of sorts.



I fastened them to the scarves with some leftover bulky yarn tied in a bow - And when I turned my back for a moment, Moki took advantage of the new soft cushion on the desk to take a nap...



Now the question is whether to run these down to the Sr. Center and see if I can grab some more yarn to make one or two more scarves before tomorrow or to just switch back to either the rag-tag afghan or the hat I'm working on. I worked a few rounds on the hat just now and after the size 17 needles for the scarves, the size 10 for the hat seem so small.

Frozen Fingers

We woke up to almost a foot of snow on the ground this morning. The temperature was one below zero with a nineteen below wind chill. The street had been plowed but there was twenty-five feet of snow between it & the back bumper of my Colt - I wasn't going anywhere. Then Mom called and despite telling me that she'd wait until I could get over to take her newspaper in, she'd gone out to get it and now the garage door wouldn't shut. So I took off walking - it's only a couple blocks, but it seemed a lot longer in those temperatures. At least I got my morning cup of coffee ..{g} About noon, our next door neighbor, who has a large lawn tractor with a snow blade, came over and plowed us out. I got frozen enough clearing off the cars so we could move them out of the way, so I'm thankful we didn't have to try to shovel all that by hand.

Not too much knitting so far today, though I did finish the second grey boucle scarf and start another brown boucle one. Should be able to finish that one this evening or tomorrow morning and then see if I have yarn for any other scarves. The Sr. Center open house is Tuesday night so I'll need to get the finished ones down there either tomorrow or Tuesday. It's been fun knitting with textured (fancy) yarn, but I'm just as glad that I don't have to be the one to take care of the scarves in the future as they're going to need to be hand washed and dried flat and I just don't have the room for the latter.

Snow, Snow, Go Away

We've been under a winter storm warning here in south eastern Michigan today with over 10" coming down since this time last night. It's been a good day to sit & knit & read.. I have seven scarves completed now and another on the needles. These are the first six (along with my favorite knitting buddy):



The seventh is out of raspberry crush variegated Dazzleaire. (Rant Warning) Back in the 70s, Caron Yarns made both Dazzle & Dazzleaire. Most people are still familiar with Dazzleaire - a slightly fluffy yarn that looks great when knit or crocheted, but it doesn't wear or wash worth a "plugged nickel". Dazzle on the other hand was a wonderful yarn - worsted weight, a little glint to it, and it wore like iron. Sweaters made from it outlasted two active children, it never pilled and it washed & dried like a dream. So what does Caron discontinue? Not the yarn that looks like a rag after a washing or two, but the kind that lasts and lasts. Planned obsoleteness? Disregard for those using the yarn? Good question, but I've found the same lack of wearing ability in many other yarns and often wondered why anyone would buy such yarn more than once. Suffice it to say, that if the Dazzleaire for the scarves had not been donated and if it was being made into anything other than a fashion scarf that probably won't need much laundrying, I wouldn't waste my time with it. (End rant.)

Fancy Yarns

I'm knitting with FANCY YARNS!!... Someone dropped off two large garbage sacks of fancy stuff - mohairs, slubs, boucles - at the Sr. Center for the knitting group.. They aren't anything that would hold up to every day use in caps and the like, but we're going to make them up into fashion scarves to sell for money to get more durable yarn like Red Heart & Bernat.. I brought home a selection and already have two scarves made - a long thin one in a blue and grey bumpy yarn and a rust - gold - brown mohair combination that's an even longer thin one.. I'm using a pair of size 17 needles & garter stitch on 6 stitches for the blue/grey one and 9 for the new one.. There's a open house next Tuesday and we're aiming at having a bunch of them done for that.. Too bad we didn't have this yarn before Xmas as the scarves would have made nice presents and probably sold like "hotcakes".. There were only two of us at the K4 meeting today, but we had fun and got quite a bit done. I didn't have my 17's along so I worked on the Rag-Tag - it's probably about half done now, maybe a little more. These are the caps that I finished this last week and turned in today.



I'll post pictures of the scarves later.

Ring Around The Rosy

Yesterday & today I took a couple *big* steps and joined two Web-Rings - Michigan Knits & Acrylics Anonymous. Staying true to my earlier rant about the difficulty in finding the ring link on some sites, I put them right over there at the top of the side-bar so that it's easy to click through to the next site if I get boring.

Both rings fit because I live in Michigan (the little white cross on the Michigan map graphic I made gives my approximate location) and I knit almost exclusively with acrylic and other non-natural (but washable) fibers. I do have several skeins of wool that I purchased by mistake this last summer at a garage sale so I'm thinking of turning them into something that can be felted like a Sophie bag. Otherwise, I don't want to fuss with fibers that can't take a trip through the washer without coming out six sizes smaller.

Many, many years ago, when my eldest daughter was a toddler, I knit a white and blue Scandinavian style sweater for her in sport weight wool with snowflakes, reindeer and all the other wonderful patterns of that style. Unfortunately, after the second time she wore it, it accidentally became mixed in with the other clothes and came out of the dryer about the correct size for a Cabbage Patch doll - 20 years before CP dolls were marketed. That experience soured me on wool and a few years later I spent a couple weeks crocheting a lacy camisole out of Knit-Cro-Sheen. Even hand laundering didn't help keep it looking new although it didn't shrink too much, but that ruled out cotton. I still use the worsted weight cotton yarn for dish cloths, but I don't care if those come out of the dryer looking like rags - they still work better than any commercial version. On the other hand, my sayelle Aran Isle sweater - cast on the evening I went into labor with my younger daughter almost 33 years ago - still looks great.



This evening, I worked on the Rag-Tag afghan for a couple hours while watching NCIS and L&O - SVU. I have most of a cap done in pink & white bulky yarn finished, will complete that and probably cast on another cap to work on while I'm reading. Or maybe I'll just sit here for a while, surfing knitting blogs until this Jerry Garcia concert tape from October 1987 finishes - that man could play guitar like no one else!.

Monday, Monday

Woke up this morning to 5 degrees outside and a negative 9 wind chill - the frost on the car windows reappeared almost as fast as it could be scrapped (my DH was out in that cold doing the scrapping for me, he's sweet!).. I spend an hour or so every morning with my mother who lives about 2 minutes away by car - it's a 6 minute walk but between the arthritis in my knee and the ill-kept sidewalks between here and there walking isn't the option that it was two years ago - in this weather it means brushing off snow or scraping frost up to six times a day in that I also go over in the afternoon to get her mail and again after dinner for about ninety minutes. Dad passed away less than a year after they moved here, so it's wonderful that she's close so I can spend so much time with her. Tonight is going to be another cold one, going down to 2 or maybe lower - brrrr.. I'm going to be wearing my fingerless gloves when I'm watching TV tonight as the family room is on the lower level and it gets a bit nippy down there.

Finished the second glove this evening along with the tan cap. Will probably work on the Rag-tag afghan as I've been ignoring it for the past couple days. I have a few PIPs (Projects in Progress) that I should get back to. I'm almost done with the yoke of the cranberry cabled sweater, but I'm afraid that the Cranberry Love-Knit I have left may not be enough to finish it. I'm not sure why the company no longer makes it - or why Kmart discontinued their yarn department so I couldn't get the last skein I wanted - but I'm trying to decide if I can substitute a similar shade in regular knitting worsted weight for the cuffs, bottom band & button band. I'm wearing the same sweater made of heather grey Love-Knit, but I don't remember after all this time if I was able to get it out of 5 skeins or if I needed six. I also have a vest that I started making for Mom - cream with a blue, green, purple variegated yarn worked into the fair-isle pattern. I'm up to the armholes on that one, working circular and it's been sitting in the basket for about a year now waiting for me to pick out what design I want on the yoke. Maybe just working on Rag-tags would be a lot easier



This is the grey cable sweater. The pattern originally was from a Pingouin book of patterns for children. I made that version for my daughter about 20 years ago and then decided to use the slightly heavier Love-Knit yarn and larger needles to make an adult version without the basket-weave and other patterns of the original version.

A New Project

I started a new project yesterday while we were visiting with friends (note:-- it is possible to knit and play dominos at the same time) - a pair of fingerless gloves for me. The past three and a half months have been spent working on projects to give away through the Sr. Center knitting group. Yesterday I decided to make something for me for a change and after reading through a number of blogs decided to try a pair of fingerless gloves - 1) because they'd be fairly fast & 2) because I'm hoping that keeping my hand warm will ease the arthritis I have in the heel of my left hand. One glove is completed and I've been wearing it while I start work on the second. So far, so good - I don't think my hand has hurt as much, but that might be wistful thinking..



The yarn is Red Heart Fiesta Jewel Tone variegated, worsted weight, worked on size 7 double points. I know that I have a set of aluminum double points here some place in size 7, but can not locate them. So, on the way to our friends' house, we stopped at the LYS and I picked up a pair of Bryspun 8" size 7s. I was afraid that they'd be a little long (there were no 6" ones in stock, and the 4" ones looked to be too short), but they're working out ok. I do have a tendency to hook the left end of the dp into the glove when I'm changing needles, but that isn't too awkward. The other glove is cast on and almost to the point to start the thumb gusset.

After dominos and dinner last night, we settled in to watch the third Harry Potter movie on DVD - our friends have a very large screen tv set up with surround sound so it's almost like being in the theater. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to see to do the gusset increases in the low light, so I switched over to another hat - this one in a medium sage green - that I'd just started. I finished that one and started a tan one before the movie was over, so it was quite a productive evening. I finished the left glove & started the right one this evening while watching Desperate Housewives & Boston Legal.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho...

To the library we go.... Wandered through the knitting book section of the library today (Dewey Decimal 746) and picked up copies of Folk Bags (Vicki Square), Folk Mittens (Marcia Lewandowski) & Debbie Bliss - Celtic Knits. Will be fun to browse this afternoon while I continue to work on #6 Rag-Tag afghan.

The K4 meeting was yesterday and while only three of us showed up, we had a good time chatting and knitting. Someone had dropped off more yarn along with quilting magazines and a small stack of WorkBasket magazines from the early 50s. Those brought back some memories as that was about the time I was learning to knit and I remember my mother getting me a subscription. Anyway, I dropped off three afghans, four hats and two scarves & picked up some more odds & ends of yarn to work into this latest afghan.

I'd probably get more knitting done if I spent less time surfing the Knitting Blogs ring, but it's a lot of fun seeing what other people are working on. I was zipping through a number of blogs last night looking for the one with the pattern for fingerless gloves shown in variegated and lots of photos on how to make them. I thought that I had copied the pattern to a Word file and saved it, but I didn't, plus I don't seem to have bookmarked the site. While blogging through probably 70+ sites, I came to this conclusion: Blessed is the Blogger who puts the ring link either at the top or the bottom of the page where it can be easily found, who uses one of the recognizable buttons and who makes sure that the link text stands out against the background. It didn't take long to scan each site for the pattern, but there were a few times that I could NOT find the link to the next site in the ring and had to go back to the main page and pick random. Frustrating! Ok, that's my rant for the day ...

Addendum: I surfed the ring for a while longer and then tried a Google search for "wrist warmer" pattern free - it took about another half hour going through the links, but I did find the site I was looking for. Unfortunately, the page completely refused to copy into a Word document, so I wound up jotting down cryptic instructions on a file card. Since then, I've browsed the books from the library without finding anything that screams "drop everything else and make me right NOW!!" That's the nice part about libraries - I'll take the books back next week and not be out of pocket. Right now I'm thinking that somewhere around here I have a skein of Red Heart jewel tone variegated that might make some nifty wrist warmers..

Busy Fingers

Photos still aren't working, but one of these days they will and I have them all ready to upload. I've finished a second "plain vanilla" hat - I thought about adding a second color but realized that the white yarn was heavier than knitting worsted but not quite up to bulky so I didn't have anything that would match it in gauge. The bronze scarf below is made out of rug yarn which knits up in a hurry with 18 stitches on 10½ needles. This one took three 70 yard skeins. Rug yarn isn't my first (or even fifth) choice for scarves, but there is a large garbage bag full of it at the Senior Center and this scarf was an attempt to see if it would work up in an acceptable manner. The feel is a little harsh, but it's thick and warm.



Here are two more of the rag-tag afghans.. For these I had enough yarn on hand to coordinate colors.





Then there is the "color-blind" rag-tag, or what happens when the yarn supply is down to the dib-dabs.. The one thing I can say for it is that it will be just as warm as the others..



Our K4 (Krazy Kool Knitters & Krocheters) group meets again tomorrow so I'll be turning all these items in for distribution through either the local FISH organization or the Baldwin Soup Kitchen. It's wonderful when doing something I enjoy so much also helps others.

Plain Vanilla

The first almost finished project of the year is nearing completion and I'm sincerely hoping that it does not foretell the months to come. I hesitate to admit that it is a perfectly plain white knit cap (66 stitches on 10½ circular needles, 2½" of rib, then straight stockinette with two rows of k2tog decreases at the top separated by one plain row) - it's about as appealing as a dish of plain vanilla ice cream, but it will eventually fulfill it's purpose of keeping someone's ears warm. It's another of the same pattern I've been making for the last three months for the charity knitting group at the Senior Center. We're getting down to the dregs of the donated yarn, hence the lack of ornamentation on this cap. I still need to pull the top stitches tight and run the cast-on yarn end in, but that's the work of a couple minutes. There should eventually be a photo of this boring piece of work below but at the moment my son-in-law's site (which is hosting my photos - thanks, Bill.!!!) isn't responding so I can't upload the JPG and you can't see it, or any of the other photos in this blog.



The second project that is nearing completion is another rag-tag afghan. These afghans are destined to be sent to the local soup kitchen where they can be handed out as birthday presents for the Seniors who come there. I really hope that the person that gets this particular afghan is slightly color-blind as it is beginning to resemble Jacob's Coat (and that is not a complement). Again, I'm using up the dibs & dabs that are left over from other projects but there isn't a wide enough variety to produce a planned color arrangement. The result is, in a word, ecletic..

Otherwise, I picked up two skeins each of a slate blue and a light green sayelle (8 oz for $1.80) at Meijer's today in anticipation of knitting new sweaters for my grandson & granddaughter. I'll be working out the patterns soon, but they'll probably be the same style as the last ones I made - drop shoulder, crew neck pullovers with knit in motifs on the front. Matthew's sweater was called the "Creepy Crawly" worked in a dark brown and it has a turtle, a frog, a snail & a snake on the front.



Megan's was worked in pink with a white bunny rabbit.



I need to do some thinking and a bit of designing for the new versions, plus I need to get new measurements as I know that both of them have grown quite a bit in the last year. Working on some fancier designs will be a reprieve from "plain vanilla" projects where the emphasis is on getting as many done as possible in the shortest time.

A Little Background Music

I learned how to knit when I was 8 years old thanks to a neighbor in her early teens who had been taught by a cousin. It's frightening to stop and think that was over half a century ago as I am now on the cusp of Senior Citizen-hood. Over the years, I've lost track of how many sweaters, vests, hats, mittens, scarves & afghans I've made. Suffice it to say that, despite the fact that I probably only have 1/5th of them in my possession, the rest having been gifted to family & friends, I could probably bundle up enough to survive the next ice age.

Crocheting was something I taught myself at age 19 using a 'learn-to-crochet' series of Barbie doll clothes in a McCall's Needlework. They were the perfect present for my 10 year old sister-in-law at the time. I still do a lot of crocheting, especially recently as I'm turning a variety of donated yarn scraps into what I call Rag-Tag afghans - 110 stitches in double crochet, knitting worsted and a size K hook, when one color yarn runs out, I tie on the next and keep going. It's a wonderful way of using up dibs and dabs along with some larger balls of leftover yarn and ending up with a colorful lap robe for charity. This is a picture of the first one I finished for our charity knitting group at the Sr. Center. I finished two more before Christmas (along with a couple dozen knit hats and 10 knit scarves) that were given to people in need at the local soup kitchen. One afghan was raffled off at the Sr. Center to provide funds for more yarn so our group can keep making items. The furry critter in the photo is our eldest cat, Moki - aka Monster.



Probably the best thing I ever taught myself is to knit and crochet without watching. This lets me read and keep on stitching. Now if there was some way to stitch while I'm at the keyboard, I'd really have it made.

I started quilting in 1982 and have finished 52 quilts ranging in size from crib to king (100" square for our waterbed). I do all my piecing and quilting by hand having a very acrimonious relationship with sewing machines - mine has had a broken needle for about 7 years now which I may or may not get around to replacing one of these days. The quilt shown here, just after I finished stretching and pinning it, is quilted and on the bed. It is as close a copy as I could manage of an antique hexagon quilt shown in a Lady's Circle Patchwork Quilting issue from the early 90s.



Most of my quilts, unless they're for other family members, are antique reproductions. It took me about 5 years to collect the fabrics used in this Birds In Flight quilt which was shown in a Better Homes & Garden quilting book.



Counted cross-stitch, usually on 28 count linen (I have a very *good* lighted magnifier) is something else I enjoy, but haven't done too much lately. I'll add a few pictures of the reproduction samples I've made at a later date.

A trial run

Let's see if this will work - this was originally a Red-Heart free pattern for a drop shoulder sweater that I reworked to a raglan and knit in the round for no seams. The fair isle pattern is worked in Red Heart jewel tone variegated.

A Beginning

While growing up, I used to HATE the term "Plain Jane", but when it comes to knitting & crocheting, I've realized that I really *am* a Plain Jane in that I don't use fancy yarns.

The few times that I've emptied my wallet to get a premium skein or two, the resulting project hasn't stood the test of time (wearing, washing, etc), while sweaters knit of good old sayelle 30+ years ago are still going strong. Recently I've been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting for a charity project at the local Senior Center and there again washability is all important for the hats, scarves & afghans we've been making. I've been browsing various knitting blogs this past month and I'm awestruck by the projects I see displayed - still, I'm going to be sticking to the tried and true at least in materials.

This past year, I've been designing more of my own patterns or improvising on published ones to eliminate all the seams that I possible can. One undying truth about me is that I don't like to sew things together - my idea of an ideal project is one that is finished other than running in various yarn ends when it comes off the needles. Thank goodness for circulars & double points that make this possible!

So, with this initial post out of the way, I guess I investigate this new landscape and see if I can discover how to upload a photo or two..