I’m making pillows for my granddaughters for Christmas–but don’t tell! Kind of a “celebrating 2012” heirloom, and I say heirloom only because I hope to make this a tradition. No pressure, though, okay? I have done labor-intensive knitting before on a manual machine, LK 150, with graphs and beading. Now I have DAK and an electronic machine. And results! After hours (read: days) of planning, many false starts getting DAK to talk to me, and a couple of test swatches, yesterday I was able to put it all together. The first pillow front fairly flew off my Singer 560. Under an hour, I’m sure, but it felt shorter. The beauty of the design is that one swatch determined the gauge for the fronts of both pillows and thus cut that work in half.

The second front–slightly different because gd #2 praised my hearth room pillow and asked for “one like that, only, you know, more me-ish”–was done this afternoon. The backs (can a pillow have two fronts?) are to come, which means more swatches, but now that I have the confidence built from projects going right, I look forward to moving forward. Even the looming deadline of the 25th is looking very possible. I will post pictures here, but don’t spoil the surprise.