Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Hubby's Sweater: Maintaining Focus

I finished the sleeves on Sunday.

Did I tell you that?

It was quite the adventure. I had measured the back to the designated length and thought I would need six rows of maroon. But the sleeves were half an inch short. So I measured the back again and suddenly needed all 10 rows. I worked three more rows on the sleeves, at which point they were measuring half an inch to long. I measured the back again and eight rows seemed right.

So I made a whimpering noise and went to bed.

Of course yesterday the sleeves measured the correct length. I stopped measuring and bound off. I know not to push my luck.

I didn't get to do a lick of work on them yesterday. Well, that's an exaggeration. I was able to devote about an hour to the sweater (maybe less, we do fast forward through commercials). However that was only enough time to weave in the ends on one edge of one sleeve. Does that mean I have three more hours of sleeve end weaving to go? I tremble to think about end weaving on the front and back pieces.

sigh.

I was even being good and trying to knit the ends in as I went along. This was only really effective on the knit sides. I trapped the yarn when I was on the purl sides, but it isn't quite the same. Hopefully this means I only have to weave in half as many ends are I potentially could have faced.

Of course, all the ends have to be woven in before I sew it together, or its not going to happen. Which would be bad. Visions of the sweater unraveling....aaaahh! Sadly the ends aren't long enough to be used for the seaming. That would be a real pain. Woven in they must be.

I blame the holidays
My evening was tanked yesterday because first I had to do an interview for an article I'm working on. That went til 6:45.

Then I had to make the tassies for Thanksgiving (I volunteered to help my MIL out). They are little bite sized pie thingies. Do a search on "cashew tassies" and you'll find plenty of recipes. Only I used walnuts left over from the date nut bread I baked Friday. (I am racking up the awesome daughter-in-law points this year).

The tassie dough is basically butter mixed with cream cheese. Samson and Baru were going nuts. They were right on top of me the entire time. Breathing their hot puppy breath on my legs. I kept ordering them out of the kitchen, but a few minutes later they were back.

Anyway, you mix the butter and cream cheese together with a little flour, then push it into mini muffin tins like little pie shells. That was the high maintenance part. I forgot how long that took.

And the whole production was interrupted for an hour and a half by dinner. I ended up putting the muffin tin in the freezer while I mixed the brown sugar/egg filling so the dough could stiffen up a bit and be easier to squish into shape.

They weren't done until well after 9 pm. Sadly, two tassies got stuck to the pan. I had no choice but to destroy the evidence. No one will know they are missing.

Good Hubby
We were watching that show Lie to Me while I was weaving in end.

The teenaged daughter on the show had on a cute, red, knit hat. It was a few rows of ribbing, then seed stitch in the center, then wide ribbing on the crown. And there were two little buttons on the side.

Oh, how do I know what it looked like so well? Because after the third or fourth shot of it Hubby hit the pause button unprompted (we have digital cable with DVR service). He said something along the lines of, "I bet you like that hat." And that he was pausing it so I could get a good look.

Isn't he adorable? Further confirmation he does deserve a handknit sweater.

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