Welcome, William! December 24, 2008. Healthy, whole, and well-loved. 
William's dad, my Andy, modeling the Devan sweater while getting me online. Congratulations!
Eight days and I still let it slip by (maybe . . . I think.) 
Street view out front window--blurry patches are "kitty prints."
The promenade to the front steps. I don't know what the N stands for, but it seems to be stuck to the window
The snowbanks on either side of the little walk that goes out to the street are nearly up to my hips. Nope, I'm not that tall, so let's say 28-30 inches or 70 cm. See the snow at the end of that little walk? It's probably about half that high. It's a foreshortened picture. This is what happens when the plows come through and make another pass. You can't wait for the plowing to stop because then it gets really high, thick, and it'll be all chunky and packed from the plowing and very hard to move. A foot is really not too bad. I have to clomb over that to get to my ride. Clomb is not a typo. It's kind of charming to watch somebody, especially if that somebody is wearing nice clothes, negotiate a bank that is a mixture of great lumps of ice and giant fragile lumps of snow that appear identical, all held together by quicksand. Clomb is the right word. If I shovel it down to the pavement, somebody always parks directly in front of it. Yeah-no, I don't do my own shoveling. Silly.
And here is my newest WIP courtesy of the most gigantic, perfectly formed skein of yarn I've ever found. A 14 ounce/400 gram skein of cotton. It was 6 bucks and there were others as well, but only one in this color, which is the one I wanted right then. The color is called cornhusk. It turns out that I like it better than Sugar and Peaches. I was expending a gift card and 50% off coupon at JoAnn's. The 50% came off some very shiny, very red pleather I bought for table cloths. It was even called pleather. Did I mention that I had a birthday yesterday? I turned EGADS! Gulp, gulp, gulp, 50. (Gulp.) I'm not trying to complain, it's just that I'm so da*n surprised. 
Here is another WIP that arose courtesy of yarn that I could not resist. It is a wool/mohair sock yarn will that is becomimg wristwarmers. I got the yarn here . It was a good Thanksgiving sale. Naturally, there was only one (50 gram) skein of that, --not enough for a pair of socks. Pink and grey together without purple or blue is a favorite color scheme of mine, despite the fact that I've been eschewing pink for 25 years. Maybe now that I'm 50, and I don't mind when people call me a girl, I can be more accepting of the pink. This is called Leili sock. It's by the Unique Sheep--er, THE Unique Sheep, since in the table of contents, you will find The Unique Sheep under T.
When I seamed the front to the back at the shoulder the correct way the second time, I considered that that could be a hint. I considered, and then I went back to un-three-needle-binding again in order to seam the front on the "wrong" way with the reverse stockinette side to the outside. Not a believer in divine intervention and/or my unconscious am I apparently. I chose this route because I thought the color changes on the reverse looked more mellow, more subtle. The difference isn't great, but it wouldn't make any more work, nor would it take any fudging. The picture is just to show you the difference. The shoulders are not yet seamed there. 
It became hard to figure out if the sweater was inside out or rightside out. Then I went to bed. I got up and went to work. I had a busy day at work. I stopped at Target on the way home. I spent a ton of money. I ran into one of the kids from school there. I had a 2-3 minute conersation with her and she introduced me to her brother and sister. Her step mother was 3 feet away waiting in a line of which she was the only member, but she never turned and acknowledged me. I got the feeling she (the girl) didn't rate. The other kids weren't faring too much better maybe. They looked a little disheveled. Creepy, huh? Poor kid, stuck with a frickin' nutjob/very angry person--I couldn't tell which. I suppose it's very angry person. Sigh. I know this student can really (really, really) get on a person's nerves, but this woman's behavior was embarassing.
By the way, I did frog and reknit the back. Here it is in stripes. In other knitting news, there isn't any. There isn't any unless you count the 2 hours I just spent at DBNY looking at all the luscious yarns and going back and forth to Ravelry to see how people are using them and how the colorways look. What a magnificent waste of time. 
I normally wouldn't contribute to a private school, especially in Milwaukee because of our public school dollars draining out to "choice" schools, but this is for Bev. I know that the students of that school surely need warm things, too. Don't look too closely at the photo of the hat. It'll hurt your eyes because it's a combination of blurry and blending yarn. Despite that, it's accurate, so I put it on anyway. This was a stash yarn.
The ski band is not from stash yarn, though I had it as a WIP long enough that it may qualify as stash. I suppose the leftovers do. It's 2 finer pink yarns from my school stash held together to achieve a nudge over aran weight I'd say. I believe they're both acrylics. Only one yarn had any leftover. I think it turned out just loverly. It looks like a wedding band, no, not the kind that sings. (I sometimes have to defend against puns that form without permission in my mind.) 
It's Essential sock yarn from KnitPicks. I am adding the Fair Isle sections to use less green yarn, just in case. You see, I've never run out of yarn on a project before. I didn't use as much less as I thought I would. But then, just before I placed another (fairly rare) KnitPicks order, I "remembered" I had a full skein in addition to the large partial I've been using; It would only be a matter of a deep stash dive to find it. I thought about adding a skein of this to it. But then I reasoned, why add to my stash? "I have way too much yarn already!!!!" shouted that voice in my head. So I didn't add in that ginormous 50 gram skein of really nice, soft, sheeny yarn.
Sometime yesterday I remembered that I've made a pair of infant socks and used it double stranded in 2 previous hats. So, no, I don't have any more. Incidentally, I only remembered when I actually saw one of the hats being worn by its recipient. Now the question is what to do about it. Frog and reknit the back in alternating green stripes with the front colors, rather than Fair Isle? Try to find some other green fingering yarn in my stash that is close enough? (which, indeed, I have, but it is not superwash) Order some from KnitPicks? Try and beg for some on Ravelry and the Knitty board? Go to the LYS and buy some that I will decide later doesn't work?
*Sort of.
for socks with the exception of some Koigu I bought in Sun Prairie on my way to the last Last Saturday Knitting in Madison. (I only bought 2 of those!) Here's a picture of the Packer socks in progress. I may knit them only during football games. I got the stitch pattern from Ravelry. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the pattern, so I can't give you a link. I was very impressed by the way the yarn pooled in the pattern stitch, which is really just a 3 x 2 rib with a slipped stitch and a twisted stitch in the knits. It's early yet for my socks, but they just may do it. See the white bars? That's hopeful. The original yarn in the pattern was a 3 color variegate of red, black and white. It looked all checkery and poolish. There weren't a lot of examples, but not all of them demonstrated the same effects. I'll get back to you when I find the pattern again. 
I think you can see that slipper number 3 turned out smallish. But this was not the end of the journey. There was felting still to do. These are before pictures. Here is the before of the jumper.
Here is the after. 
Now there is this.
I'm sick of hauling ass all over town for buttons. I took the polymer clay bead class this summer from Lynne Bergschultz just for this type of occasion. I'm not saying these are the best match either, but as separate objects, they are pretty. I should have polished them a little, though. Do you like how you can see my fingerprints? 
And here's the blanket I've recently finished. It needs blocking and end weaving, but I must say, I like it. It's after the OpArt pattern on the Fall, 2008 Knitty. The center is different because I started out making a simple log cabin, but as some of you may know, I can't resist any design that swirls, twirls, turns, or spirals. Uncharacteristic of my mad photography skills, it doesn't look any better in person, but that is the fault of the yarn, not the pattern. The yarn is a hundred percent acrylic fake mohair. Oxymoron. It sure is soft, but I don't know how well it'll hold up. It's not strong like real mohair. I loved this yarn and I've had it for awhile. It's Red Heart Harmony held doubled on 5.5 mm needles. I've got more. I bought it in some sort of daze when I somehow forgot that I won't even buy or wear clothes that aren't 100% cotton or other natural fiber. This has been my policy for like, 30 years--not exaggerating. I should have held it tripled. 
I only had to hold him down on it for a minute or so. When I let go he stayed. This is a first. He did feel compelled to knead and mash down the whole front edge first, but it's a start. 
It is now about 14 inches (35 cm) long, but I failed to medal because I set it aside to do 3 ad hoc projects. This knitting has been interrupted to bring you the felted teddy bear in that I posted 2 times ago and now two hats. The brown one is for Bev's 50 hats project. It's actually using the yarn from earlier incarnations of this scarf. The purple hat has a recipient, but he or she must remain secret.
(50/50); held with 2 strands of lace weight alpaca.
I was worried I had made too thin a fabric. But I reasoned that the looser the knit, the better it felts. Well, "reasoned" isn't exactly the word. "Hoped," is the better word for what I call my thought process there. I even duplicate stitched and otherwise added more yarn to areas that I didn't want pull in too much, like the nose.
