Kelle can knit by ones or knit by twos. She can knit forwards and she can knit backwards.
She can zip zippers and button buttons. She could even finish knitting a ten foot long scarf by Thanksgiving, but Kelle cannot make a blog entry everyday in the month of November.
And that was a problem because she said she would. She told all her friends she would. Kelle had failed.

November winds proved much too strong,
the days too short and the nights far, far too long.
Falling down from the sky,
big fat flakes to land in my eye.
Falling down on the blog, my goal unmet.
Could not find my words, much to my regret. :(

I had my doubts going in to this that I would be able to make it through the entire month. ( which is why I never did officially sign up for NabloPoMo, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.) November and December are tough months to make this sort of a commitment to, especially if you work in retail. Perhaps I will try this again for the month of January as a new year resolution, but until then:

We now return you to your irregular scheduled programming:

So for Saturday, November 17 when I started this entry, I intended to show you a Saturday Sky Picture.

The problem with Saturday sky pictures in Minnesota is that during these chilly months of winter on any given day you can go outside and the sky will look pretty much like so.



That is if you can manage to see the sky during the brief hours we have of daylight.

More and more lately, I'm thinking that the bears have the right of it.
Sleep. Hibernate.
Why brave all the snow and the cold, when you can be warm and cozy slumbering in peaceful bliss? Oblivious to the dark and cold world swirling all around you? Trust me, they're not missing anything by skipping the winter.

Anyway, what I was going to say was when the sky looked like the first picture, you wouldn't expect much chance of snow, oh there certainly could be the occasional flake, here and there but nothing to write home about.

However, when the sky looks like this.
You can bet it will soon look like this.

As it did on Thanksgiving day.
Thankfully, ours was a quiet and peaceful Thanksgiving at home with all of our children home with us.
There was mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes and cranberries and stuffing and pie but no turkey.
We decided to buck tradition this year and eschewed the bird and opted for ham instead. Our family's not big fans of turkey.

Hope all of your Thanksgiving days went as planned and you had time to enjoy your family and friends and give thanks.

Oh, and it snowed, but that was outside, so all was well.


















and then it snowed,














and it snowed.







and it snowed.















Hello Minnesota.

You know, this blogging every day for a month is not as easy as one might think.
I'm like all, "this is hard".
Guinifer at Half Way Down the Stairs went in a different direction she is doing NaKniSweMo - National Knit a Sweater Month. Had I been up on my blog reading and read about this sooner, I think that perhaps I would have had chosen this route and have had an easier time of it.
Then again.... maybe not.
This is currently the sweater that I am knitting.
This is a Jo Sharp Sweater Design named Stellar.

I started knitting this sweater that my sister, Lynn chose for herself, back in March when I was waiting for spring and needed something green to look at. Being who I am I decided I would rather knit the sweater in the round rather than back and forth and in pieces, so I adjusted for knitting the front and back together and started on my merry way.

I was about this far when I had one of those moments where you put your hand to your head and say, "Why didn't I think of that sooner!"

I was having lunch with a couple of knitter friends after our weekly meet up, and I was complaining that the sweater is knit mostly in reverse stockinette.

Now I have nothing against purling per se, but given my preference I would just prefer to knit, also it's faster and I was having a hard time reading the chart because usually empty squares are knit and the dots or lines are purls and this was just the opposite.

So even as I was complaining about all the purling in the round, the thought occurred to me that since I was knitting this in the round, if I knit this sweater inside out and reversed the direction I could be knitting instead of purling. I'm pretty sure I sat there with a dumbstruck look on my face. Duh!

Of course, this would mean starting over, which as usual put the project on a back burner for the summer. When I picked it up about a month ago, I decided I didn't have to rip the whole thing I would only rip to the ribbing, do one short row on the back and instead of turning back keep knitting the sweater in reverse reverse stockinette. Get it?

So this is where I was before I ripped it back.

This is where I am now.

Okay, so it's the same picture but it really is about how far I am and it looks the same knitting it inside out as it did purling from the right side. I'm also having an easier time with the chart reading.

Back View

Yoke Detail, It's the two button closure that makes it for me.

So we all are getting excited about the project and we are now getting excited about getting gauge. But before I get gauge I need to get yarn. I made an impulse buy a week or two ago of this Paton's Classic wool in their Autumn color way because, well because I like autumn colors.
Of course when I got the yarn home, I thought just what are you going to knit with that anyway? I don't know, I was thinking maybe an afghan? using small squares of colors or something, I don't know. I hadn't thought that far, it was on sale and it's pretty.

So I'm going to play around with this a bit and see if I can come up with something that might work for the duster. If not, so be it I have another month to come up with the right yarn for the job.

Anyone else interested in knitting a duster along with us?