Ethan's Blanket is Done! And he loves it!

I finished Ethan's blanket at about midnight on Christmas Eve.  Whew!  I stayed up working on it until 4am from Monday through Saturday.  And it got done.

Here's a photo of my Christmas Eve table.  I inherited my great-grandma Cromar's gorgeous china and flatware, which I used on Christmas Eve. 

Christmas Update: Sydni's Hat and Ethan's Blanket

Sydni's hat is done!!  It turned out much nicer than my first attempt at this hat pattern.

I machine quilted Ethan's blanket, and it was easier than I expected.  I think it looks pretty good.

Here it is before I added the batting and backing:

Here it is after I sewed on the batting and the backing:

One last task: I need to bind the edges of the quilt.  I'm going to do it in the cream skull & crossbones material.

Ethan's getting two Lego Pirates of the Caribbean display boats for Christmas, a lamp, and bed sheets.  His bedroom is going to be really cute when it's all done!

Christmas Projects Update

Here's a quick update on my Christmas projects.  I've lost time because: a) I've been sick, b) I've had to work overtime at work, and c) I've been really sick.

Cross-stitched bread cloth
I haven't even begun this one yet.  I may not get to it!

Nativity pillow
I still haven't begun sewing the quilted border for the pillow.  I may not get to this either!


Hats for Sydni and Brynn
First I worked on Sydni's red hat.  I got cocky and figured I could do fair isle (multi-color stranded) knitting without reading the techniques in my knitting books.  And when it was done, it wouldn't fit over my head!  The flowered design was too tight because I didn't use the right technique.  I actually broke a strand of yarn trying to get it on my head. 

I decided to do better with Brynn's purple hat.  I studied the multi-color knitting techniques in my knitting books, and decided to use the two-handed method.  In this method, one color is in your left hand and you knit it continental style.  The other color is in your right hand and you knit it english style. You just knit the right color according to the chart.  I'm proficient at the continental style but the english style is new to me.    I'm not very good at this two-color method yet; the two colors end up puckering funny in the finished project.  So I still have some learning to do.

Here is Brynn's hat, when I finished the knitting.  I made a smaller bulge at the top of the hat, and knit the ribbing at the bottom of the hat more tightly so it wouldn't flare out like the red one.

After the knitting was done, I added the embroidery.  Here's the fully finished hat.  You can see how the multi-color areas pucker:

I am working on a new hat for Sydni, since I don't like the way the red one turned out.

Jen's Washcloths and Towel
I finished Jen's towel and gave it to her last weekend.  There were only 3 washcloths and 1 towel in the box.  I have a lot more yarn, but I've been too busy with other things.

Ethan's Blanket
Ethan's blanked is a pirate around the world blanket.  I finished the around the world part; next step is to add the border panels around the edge, then put the pieces together for quilting.  I am going to do machine quilting, rather than tying.  I tied a really nice quilt with inferior yarn one time, and the yarn frayed the first time I washed it. It really ruined the effect of the quilt.  So I will try machine quilting.  This project is still a surprise.  He doesn't know he's getting it!

Bottom line, I've still got a lot of work to do.  I'm on vacation until Jan 3, but spending all of Friday out with Craig for our anniversary (12 years!) and hosting a Christmas Eve dinner on Saturday.  I was going to go all out but Craig kind of reined me in.  I really want to use my great-grandma Cromar's gold-edged china and gold silverware, but that means a lot of hand washing, so I'm going to play it by ear.  If I'm still eager to use the china on Saturday, I will!

Last-Minute Christmas Project: Flowered Hats

I have 3 babysitters who watch my kids after school. They rotate who watches them. Two are girls, and we decided I would knit them hats. I ordered some Palette Yarn from Knit Picks and am going to start on it... in time to finish it before Christmas. Brynn is getting purple and Sydni is getting red.  I may buy some felt to line the hat with; I haven't decided yet.

Digi Scrapbook Project: a Wall Calendar

I'm posting in the Design House Digital blog this week about my 2012 wall calendar project.  I don't know exactly when it will be published, but once it's published I'll update this link.

http://www.designhousedigital.com/content/category/blog/

The wall calendar project is the one I've been putting off for weeks because I knew it would be a ton of work and I just didn't want to get going.  Once I did though, I remembered how much I enjoy digital scrapbooking.

And I do.  And I'm very lucky since, as an owner, I have access to everything on DHD.


Speaking of DHD, the site has been a constant point of stress for me since May.  The site just slowed down and got slower and slower.  We moved hosting companies, got bigger hardware, moved our database to its own server, moved our downloads to Amazon S3, and still the site was just not performing.  None of the analysis I was doing explained why things were so slow.  Last week, the average page load time was 30 seconds!  Absolutely awful.

Well, I was brainstorming with one of my colleagues about the problem and a light bulb went on in my head.  I built these widgets.  People who post their scrapbook pages in our gallery can put this widget on their blog and display their DHD layouts.  And it is NOT tracked for our analytics. Here is what it looks like:

I searched through the server logs to see how much these widgets had been used, and found 50 million of these buggers. My widget code set a 5-second timer and each time the widget would refresh itself with a random picture. So it was just used so much it was taking down our store. I removed the timer and site speed went from 30-second page loads to 3-second page loads. I'm still kind of floored by it, but glad the problem has been solved.

Update: Jen's Kitchen Stuff

I've got a hand towel almost completed to go with Jen's washcloths.  As you'll see, one of the weird things about this yarn is that every once in a while a big dark patch comes along.

Here are the washcloths I've done (I've posted these before).  One of them has a dark spot too (the first photo).

Jen lives in San Francisco but I'm meeting her in Salt Lake City for brunch on the 17th so I need to have a nice finished bundle by then.

A little about the yarn: It is Kertzer Down to Earth Cotton, 100% cotton, fingering weight (knit with a size 2 needle).  I think the color name is "Sea Spray."

The yarn matches Jen's newly remodeled kitchen so I went kind of crazy and bought every single ball Heindselman's had.  I found one store online that still sells this yarn, but reason won out and I stopped hoarding this yarn.  I've got a lot of yarn and it feels like I'm always buying more yarn for more projects.

Juggling: work vs. projects

This week I was made a team lead at work.  The twist: my team members are in China!  I'm excited but it will be challenging, since I'm new to leadership and the Chinese team members are new to web development.  Next week I work all week, but after that I'm taking 2 weeks off for Christmas!  And I think they only get one day off for New Year's, since they don't celebrate Christmas.

It boils down to this: I've got a heck of a lot of training and setup to squeeze into one week.  I'll be working a different shift just for Mon-Thurs next week: 2pm - 11pm.  The good news: I will have the whole morning to work on Ethan's quilt while he's at school (it's a surprise).

Tomorrow will be a complete loss project-wise because Adobe is having a big company party in Salt Lake City tomorrow night!

Update: The Nativity Cross-Stitch

I have finished the cross-stitching of the nativity project.  The buttons are also sewn on.  I just need to piece a quilted border for it.  I have cut out the pieces. I just need to sew them on.

Update: The Pirate Blanket

I have been stealthily working on Ethan's pirate blanket.  It is going to be in the around-the-world pattern.  I'm still strip-piecing the center right now.

A scarf for Lorelei

I promised my niece Lorelei a scarf.  We planned to have it be black with pink.  I started knitting a cabled scarf in black worsted weight, but I just didn't like the way it was turning out.  And black is an awful color to knit in!  It's hard to tell what you're doing because it's so dark.

I found some grey and aqua fingering weight yarn in my stash.  I was going to use them on socks, but I've re-purposed them. Now Lorelei will get a grey/blue scarf.

I made up my own pattern for this project.  Here's the jist of it.

Use fingering weight yarn and size 2 needles (I use a circular needle but it's not necessary).
Cast on 40 stitches.
Work the entire scarf in double moss stitch:
Row 1 (right side)  - *P2, K2, repeat from * across the whole row.
Row 2 (wrong side) - *K2, P2, repeat from * across the whole row.
Row 3 (right side) - *K2, P2, repeat from * across the whole row.
Row 4 (wrong side) - *P2, K2, repeat from * across the whole row.


In double moss stitch, knit according to these colors.

Knit 2 rows in aquaKnit 2 rows in grey
Knit 2 rows in aqua
Knit 8 rows in grey
Knit 12 rows in aqua
Knit 2 rows in grey
Knit 2 rows in aqua
Knit 2 rows in grey
Knit 12 rows in aqua

Knit 13 inches in grey

*Knit 4 rows in aqua
Knit 6 rows in grey
Knit 4 rows in aqua
Knit 8 rows in grey
repeat from * 3 times

Knit 14 rows in aqua
Knit 8 rows in grey
Knit 14 rows in aqua

*Knit 8 rows in grey
Knit 4 rows in aqua
Knit 6 rows in grey
Knit 4 rows in aqua
repeat from * 3 times

Knit 13 inches in grey

Knit 12 rows in aqua
Knit 2 rows in grey
Knit 2 rows in aqua
Knit 2 rows in grey
Knit 12 rows in aqua

Knit 8 rows in grey
Knit 2 rows in aqua
Knit 2 rows in grey
Knit 2 rows in aqua

The Pillows are Done!

The pillows are done.  Timmy wrapped them and I just have to get them off to the post office!