third time the charm?

not long ago  made Mr Cute a new sweater with all kinds of construction equipment on it (pictures of it in this post)

there was some yarn left over from that project, so I decided I would make him a hat with a tractor knit in from that left over yarn as a Christmas present

the hat knitting has not gone well (you'd think it would, I've literally knit over 100 hats in the past few years)

there is no picture of the first attempt -- shall we say that a mobius hat is not desirable -- and somewhere between the cast on and the 2nd row of ribbing in the round I managed to get it twisted, so it was quickly ripped out

the picture on the left here was the next attempt -- no mobius!  all good, right?  uh, not so much as it wasn't until I had the ribbing finished and started to think about the pattern knitting that I realized that my brain must have been on vacation --

unless you are doing an all over repeating pattern of some sort, you can't do pattern knitting in the round -- the knitting of a tractor requires carrying the yarn back and forth over the back of the work -- so last night I ripped all that out AGAIN! and started again, working back and forth in rows

we'll get this figured out yet

it's finally finished

I started this piece back in August, originally intending to enter it in a "mini fest" of one of my beading groups, but with all the other things I've been doing, I just couldn't get it done by the deadline

I do like the way it came out -- I had forgotten that doing the inside edge of the open work was so difficult (I hadn't done that on a piece for a very long time) -- and I would do another one with that open work because I really like the way it looks

since the last post, when I was still working on this piece, I did the rest of the hand stitching on this piece

and I've started working on this one

somehow at the beginning of this one I started working at the top edge with all those little pieces and then realized I should have started at the bottom edge -- so I've been working both ends to the middle -- it's coming along

while the DH was having his cataract surgeries, I spent some time in the waiting area of the surgery center

this was the view out those windows -- pretty amazing!  it was fascinating to watch the shadows on the mountain change as the clouds moved across the sky

the packing continues -- books, music, dishes into boxes -- several trips to donate van loads full of "stuff" -- we've lived in this house the longest of anywhere I've lived since I left my parents house and we've not been good at keeping down the clutter -- I'm resolving to not let this happen again!!

last week I painted a wall in the living room and did a "skim coat" of wall board compound over a wallpapered wall in the kitchen that I plan to paint white -- its a struggle to just keep moving even when my knee and my back hurt -- I have moments when I would like to just walk away (but so far the adult side does return -- reluctantly -- )  we want to get the house on the market by Nov 1 and some days I feel like that is a pipe dream --- just keep putting one foot in front of the other