Knitting meets Camera

I finally got my camera, my knitting and my ambition together at the same time so - we have pictures.

First up - the Wonderball Shawl. You may remember for Christmas my knitting cousin gave me a Wonderball. I had a problem deciding what to knit because I didn't know what kind of yardage it had so - I decided on a shawl and if worse came to worse I could add yarn from my stash.

Size 10 1/2 needles - Cast on 5 sts and I did the yarn over increase at each end and either side of the center stitch. I did the whole shawl in knit so it's a garter stitch.
When I came to some of the yarns they definitely had a right side and wrong side. Check out the light purple fringe stripe. Once I knit that yarn I pulled all the fringe to the right side. The yellow/teal stripe is fun fur but that fulled in enough so I didn't need to pick any to the front.

Besides not knowing what yarn will "show up" next the Wonderball includes presents wound in the ball throughout.

I ended up getting 5 presents: a crocheted bunny which was at the very center, a felt pin cushion, silk ribbon, a crystal Christmas ornament, and stitch markers. The stitch markers and crystal gave me some problems because they popped through long before the whole item so I had to be careful pulling yarn around the sticking out part.

But - it was fun to knit and an adventure to see what yarn or present would show up next. Had me thinking about making some Wonderballs of my own for presents to fellow knitters.

Other knitting?

I started making some bath mitts to create spa baskets for presents. No time like the present to get started on next year's presents.

This mitt is Sugar'n Cream and the pattern was on the ball band.

One friend stayed with me at the hospital the whole day during my surgery - drove me there and home so I decided to make him a pair of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Woodman's socks. These socks are great for outdoor Minnesota winter activities. One sock down - one to go.

Slow but sure. I'm making the Tree of Life Afghan. It's been sitting next to my chair all month so when I have nothing else to do I pull it out and work on a few rows. So far I'm over half done

The second pattern is a flower garden and supposed to be 4 flowers high but - the leaves are yarn pulled through making long strands. To me it's asking for someone to get their fingers, toes, etc. caught in it and that would pull the stitches out of shape making the afghan look ugly. I came to this decision after a couple flowers and changed the pattern up a little. It only has 3 rows of flowers and I added another little design above it to keep the length of the whole afghan.

What I really like about this afghan is the tree of life pattern. The afghan has 4 of these across and repeats it at top and bottom and in the middle.

I can't go a complete post without mentioning the foot. It's been 2 1/2 weeks since my surgery and I'm finally starting to walk around a little. I also managed to stand in the shower a few times and it feels SO good to be really, really clean! My walking around is usually to the kitchen and back to my chair followed by a nap or at least sitting around for 2-3 hours to recover. My foot no longer looks like something out of a bad horror movie but it has a new feature that amuses me.

Three weeks ago my 2nd toe was the same length as my 3rd toe. No more. My toes is now longer than all the toes, it sticks out past the big toe even. This length comes at a cost. It no longer bends. When I bend the toes of my foot all the others bend as they should and the 2nd toe stays sticking straight out. Good thing it wasn't the 3rd toe or people would think my foot my giving them the finger!