SailingKnitter

Have you heard or read about "Arm Knitting"? It seems to be being pushed by the yarn companies to sell more yarn - especially to non-knitters. Well, Arm Knitting is SO 2014!

Introducing Neck Knitting! Make your very own warm and fashionable cowl with a single skein of yarn! No needles, hooks, or arms required!

Simply open up the skein, and cast on by putting your head in the center hole of the skein and let it rest on your neck. Then, pick up the front part of the skein and using your neck as a giant knitting needle, twist the skein once and pull the second loop down over your head.

Voila! One stitch made!And the best part is you're done! I demonstrated this new and exciting technique at our knitting get together last night with a friend's hand spun and hand dyed yarn skein. It is yummy! But wait...there's more! If you get tired of wearing your new hand-crafted cowl, you can reuse (recycling is green remember!) the skein and knit with it to produce something else when you actually do learn the craft.

During our cross-country return trip I focused (or unfocused as the case really was) on plain old garter stitch knitting. I just didn't feel like counting, or working even a simple pattern. Yep. It was the beginnings of the knitting blahs. So with just a couple of needles and an endless supply of donated yarn and I was content to mindlessly work thousands of knit stitches.

Working just the knit stitch allowed me to be able to look out the car window and watch the scenery. No, I don't need to look at my project

ESCAPE ATTEMPT

when working this simple stuff. But, to add a touch of excitement I did change colors along the way. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention to the strips as they kept trying to escape from the car when we stopped.

This charity project (final size 49" x 42") was donated to the Seafarer's Center here in Brunswick, Georgia. The Seafarers International provides comfort and support for the men and women who travel worldwide working on the big shipping freighters.

Mad Miter Scarf

At the same time that I was working on this blanket, I also was test knitting a garter stitch mitered square scarf worked with various (donated) leftover self-striping and variegated sock yarns. The Mad Miter Scarf by Drachie Crafts is available for sale on Ravelry. The colors of the yarns I used didn't look so hot (aka ghastly or clown barf) when put together so I lightly over-dyed the finished scarf with a sapphire blue soak.

Some kid in Kazakhstan will have a new wool scarf next winter and I got to keep occupied.

Hey...these mindless projects can be quite rewarding! So, next I knit myself a simple warm hat. For the first time in 9 years my head got cold on a walk. I needed a hat.

TERRY'S NEW WOOL HAT

This was an easy project - just knit stitch with a few purls thrown in for show made with leftover yarns.

Hmmm...there was a bit of the green yarn leftover from the seaman's blanket so I knit a hat to donate too.

The knitting mojo was slowly and quietly sneaking back into my life. At Michaels Crafts store I saw a collection box for knit or crochet 7x9" rectangles for the Warm Up America campaign. Garter stitch squares? Sure, I can knit those - so I did, and actually got them delivered into the box at the store.

Seafarer Cap

plain 7x9" garter stitch squares

Oh look! There's a partially worked pair of mittens that just need a few hours of work. This was a group Knit-along from 2013 that got lost on the boat. I wasn't happy with how my color choices turned out so I lost interest in the project and tucked it away.

FINISHED!

The Motherless Child Foundation leader discovered in her December visit to the orphanages in Kazakhstan that there was again a great need for mittens. So I finished up this lost project and then got started on several more pairs of mittens.

At the same time (that phrase "at the same time" is a difficult one for knitters who work patterns that have you do knitting gymnastics in multiple places in a row/round) I worked on a pair of gloves for my younger son Brett. These were a special request from him as he had just moved from the warm beaches of Southern California to damp and chilly Seattle.

So, I dug out some very, very dark brown/black alpaca/wool/acrylic blend yarn and knit his

THUMB'S UP TO NEW GLOVES

mittens. For fun, I added "conductive thread" to the tips of both index fingers and thumbs so that he can play with his touch screen devices without having to take off his gloves (his idea). And for a touch of safety while driving, I sewed on a patch of buttery soft leather to each palm. He likes them - and I'm a happy knitting momma.

So, while I've been knitting, baking to keep the boat warm and running around with some of my new knitterly friends here in Georgia, Jonesy has been making some progress on his boat projects. The machine shop work on the engine "head" was completed so he picked it up and we hoisted it onto the boat and down into the salon where it waits for installation. No blood, broken bones or buises during this episode! We still don't have the refurbished heat exchanger unit yet, so work will have to continue at a later date.

LOWERING THE "HEAD" inside NIKI WIKI

We're loving the new birds that have shown up here in the marsh lands of southern coastal Georgia over these past couple of months. The other day we saw our first Hooded Merganser Ducks diving and hanging out by our boat. Small flocks of White Ibis breeze through occasionally and of course we have the pelicans and comorants for entertainment.

Alpaca/silk (Bobbi K)

Now I'll leave you with photos of a few pairs of mittens for the kids in Kazakhstan. As you can see the knitting mojo has returned.

Alpaca fingering weight yarn

Life is good.

THICK large mittens