nothing can be easy with her!

My mom is the best knitting recipient because she always loves what I make her. I'm pretty sure I've said that before. This year I decided that I'd ask her if she had any request for Christmas - usually I just make what I want to make for her, and I think she's only asked for something specific once. I started wondering if maybe she was thinking "I'd sure like a green cardigan with 3/4 sleeves, but she just keeps making me mittens!" So I asked - and also sent along some pictures of sweaters and other things I'd seen and thought would look good on her because I figured it might be hard to just come up with something out of the blue like that. I'd seen this pattern for Cobble a couple weeks ago and I really liked the fact that it was a non-lace shawl - and it looked like something my mom would like. Turns out I was right.

However, in a fashion typical for my mother, it'd be great as long as it was something different. It's similar to how she can't buy anything off the rack without saying "this would be great but it needs different buttons" or "i wish they didn't put this stupid tag thing here on the sleeve" and worse, when she thought that the dining room chairs would be better with oak seats instead of the upholstered ones they came with. some things are easy to change, like buttons, and some things, like carved oak seats, are not so much, but she kind of acts like they're all the same! So she told me that she loves the stitch pattern and the weight and length of this shawl, but would like it better as a short poncho. So i said "for you, I'll find a way to do it!" I bought the pattern and my plan is to just use the main stitch pattern to make two rectangles and connect them - that's the way I made her last poncho (the one thing she requested!) then I'll pick up stitches all around the edge and do some math to figure out what needs to be fudged so that it works out. I'll knit the edging from the top of the chart down and I'll use the corner/peak part of the edging in two places - on each point of the poncho. God willing it'll all work! Ooh - and the other cool thing is that I sent her a bunch of pictures of MadelineTosh yarn (Tosh Merino Light) for her to pick from (because the way she dyes will be fantastic on this, I think) and she chose Ginger. So at least I get to knit with lovely yarn. I bought 3 skeins because I just don't know what this is going to take and I don't want to run out - so maybe I'll have some left over and I can eek out a little beret or something for me!

all's well that ends well!

Thanks to all the solutions to my unfortunate mitten situation, i pulled it together finally and everything turned out great! I found a Raveler who still had a skein of each color left over from her Christmas stocking kit and was willing to send them to me. She asked if I had any dark colored sock yarn to trade because she's working on a mitered square blanket! i had some in my stash that i didn't feel very likely to use, so I mailed it off to her - you were right Emily, it was only like $1.30 so it was a great deal! perfect! it came on Friday though - and thankfully I had taken a vacation day so i was at home as soon as the mail came. The birthday dinner was on Saturday so I knit until my finger had a divot in it, but I finished just before 1am. I tossed it in some water to soak then blocked it - of course stranded mitten take forever and a day to dry, so they were still wet in the morning (despite the power of the ShamWow!) and I had to stick the blow dryer in the open end and stand there for 30 minutes - even that didn't do it! my mom love them (but my niece said "why are they wet?") and i guess that's what matters! now i just have to get myself to do mitten #4 so we can have our mother daughter mitten set!

oh geez!

I made a hell of a mistake on my mother's birthday mittens and now I'm in a whole new pickle.

I don't know if I haven't had enough coffee today, or what, but I'm just not able to make a decision on what to do! Ok, here are the finished mittens:

I love them! But here's the problem:

Yep. Two right mittens. yes, I'm serious. I can't believe I did that. what a numbskull. So I decided last nigh, when I realized what I'd done, that I'd just knit two left gloves and then I'd have a pair too. I made these out of Knitpicks Telemark and they're always fast with shipping, soI figured I'd just get another ball of each color and all would be well. Unfortunately, I find out this morning, Knitpicks doesn't sell that shade of blue anymore. There are two people on Ravelry with the shade in their "for sale/trade" stashes, so I could try to buy one off of them but for some reason it seems like a lot of work for a $2 ball of yarn (it retails for $1.99) - I feel like I should buy something else from their stash to make the shipping worth it. Ugh - I don't know why, but it's just more than I can make a decision on this morning! I'm pretty confident that I have enough yarn to make a 3rd mitten, which I just need to start doing now I suppose. but I've got the Knitpicks website up and I just don't know whether I should put in an order with an extra ball of white (and enough other stuff to get to $50, because I always do spend extra money unnecessarily to avoid shipping, as silly as it is) or not. wait - I'm going to see if that person with the blue on Ravelry also has the white - hers came from their stocking kit, just like mine did, so chances are good! whew - maybe that's the solution! Bah - please, someone just tell me what to do!