The Pasta Machine

Our Christmas Day was lovely - peaceful, co-operative, and filled with fun, food, and laughter. It's the first time in twenty-five years that Howard and I have woken up in a childless house and that was a bit strange but not horribly so. We had coffee together, talked, went for a walk, read, knit, and moved slow until our sons arrived around ten. After that, we spent the day doing the things that we normally do. They stayed until seven that night by which time four introverts had had enough together time - LOL - and were ready to go to their corners. Our daughter and son-in-law weren't here but thankfully we had several phone calls throughout the day which is good and they'll be here tomorrow and that's even better.

GarnStudio.com is a fabulous site for free knitting patterns. I started the one above - Drops 110-28 - a few days ago using the re-balled black and hand-dyed yarn mix only mine is different, of course. I don't ever seem to knit anything exactly like the pattern. Instead of the berry stitch, I'm using a seed stitch for the main body. It's equally textured, knits up to the same stitch count, and is less involved making is much easier to stitch while knitting in a group. Since I mostly knit at knit night, that's an important factor.

The pattern requires casting on a specific number of stitches, knitting the main body, and then picking up the exact same number of stitches to knit the ribbed edging. It would make more sense to use a provisional cast on for that edge - which is what I did - over a cable - using the second method demonstrated in this video with Eunny Jang from Knitting Daily.

After three rows of garter stitch, the stitch count is decreased by 24. The instructions say to decrease every fifth and sixth stitch by which they mean eliminate stitch 5, 11, 16, 22 and so on only when you're knitting, you count to five, stitch two together, count to six, stitch two together and so on which shuffles the decreases toward the end meaning that when you get there you haven't decreased nearly enough. I used twenty-four stitch markers to spread the decreases evenly rather than try to count and add at the same time. It works with way less frustration.

All the gifts I received this year celebrated my individuality or creativity in some way. I haven't opened the one from our daughter and son-in-law yet. It's coming on Wednesday. However, she told me they had a really fun time picking out all sorts of interesting things for me that are - I believe - to do with working with polymer clay. Howard's gifts also had to do with making things as did Kyle's and Aryck's was a silky scarf in me colors and a coffee card. I drink a LOT of coffee. I really appreciated that they worked hard to find things that were me. That in itself - that the gift matches the person - means a lot. IMHO it's a critical element of gift giving.

Howard bought me a pasta maker with nine different thickness settings that can be motorized if desired. Possibly. It depends how things go. So far, I've only looked at the machine, figured out how to operate it, and watched some how to videos. We're quite busy over the next few days so I'm waiting until after the holidays to get started. I prefer time and space and quiet when I'm attempting to learn something new PLUS... there are still a few supplies to get before I can start, like clay.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - a lovely Christmas Day