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.