Holiday roundup 2014

With the holidays now behind us, I can post what I made as gifts in that compressed post-surgery period where I was supposed to be all caught up on everything and ended up making absolutely nothing for anyone else.

For my college best friend, J, a Capitan hat in a moss green:

Modeled by her niece, E, who is just adorable and maybe should get her own version of this hat, now that I've seen her in it.  This was one of those gifts that I handed over, and the recipient went absolutely crazy for it.  It is exactly the right reaction to have if you want more hand-knit items from me.  And J was wearing it when I saw her this past weekend - score another point for her.  She'll probably get a scarf out of me before the winter's over, at this rate.

I also did another Capitan for my 14-year-old cousin, S.  Here it is, unfinished:

I am going to be giving it to her this weekend for her birthday, and hope to get a shot of it on her before I leave.  Unless she doesn't like it - then I'm taking it back.  Someone will wear it, by god.  Won't be me - I look ridiculous in this hat. 

I finished the Men's Winter Wheat Socks, by Donna Seex, for my husband:

Here they are, on his feet - he has subsequently worn them since this photo, since he knows I'll steal them back - his feet are only a little bigger than mine, so unworn socks are commandeered into my own collection.  These were originally supposed to be for my father, then husband casually mentioned he liked how they looked, and he's usually pattern-averse.  So dad still has not gotten hand knit socks from me, although he has several hats.  Someday, dad.

I did the usual pair of socks for my goddaughter, E:

I used Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet 100 Splash and it was nice to work with, but notice that the socks are essentially two different colors.  It's fine because the current trend for middle schoolers to wear two different socks, so this kind of works, but I don't think I would buy the yarn again because I am a little particular about having socks match.


Except this year, non-matching socks seems to be a theme.  To wit, mom's birthday socks:

And of course, I only had one sock finished by the time her birthday arrived.  Given that I finished E's socks on 12/22 for a gift date of 12/24, last minute was the theme of the holiday season, apparently.  I brought over the one finished sock and the second under construction sock and asked mom if she wanted them to match.  She did not care, figuring she will be wearing these with jeans and who will know?  I will. But I'm learning to let go.

Finally, I currently have a baby sweater under construction for our neighbors' daughter, who will be 1 at the end of February:

It is called Cherry Cobbler Sweater, by Lorna Miser, and calls for three skeins of Malabrigo Rios for the 12 month size, which I just happened to have in my stash and was wondering what to with when this pattern was in the Winter 2014 Love of Knitting magazine.  Granted, the pattern calls for the color English rose, and I had Lavanda, but I decided on the substitution because it's a purple / grey-lavender colorway and before the baby was born, her mother asked for a grey knit hat with knit flower options if the baby was a girl (which she was.)  I know they'll like the color and I think the sweater could be worn by any future siblings as well.  I just started the sweater on January 5 and I have already nearly finished the back, leaving only the 2 front pieces and sleeves to do.  I like the pattern and the yarn - I would definitely recommend both.


Happy New Year, everyone!

Sweater weather

I have started several sweaters for myself in my career as a knitter. Last spring/summer I made myself a short-sleeved shrug in a beautiful shade of purple:

Still on the needles

Unfortunately, I did not pick up enough stitches when I went to knit the 2-inch ribbed trim, so it flops unattractively when I put it on, so I need to unstitch it, rip out the trim, and pick up the correct number of stitches.

I've also started 2 winter cardigans for myself:

Neither of which are yet finished.  The problem is that my primary knitting time is on the train, commuting to work, and the sweaters are too large for my cosmetic-sized knitting bag.  At least, that's my excuse.  I suppose I could stop packing my lunch, and then I'd have more room for yarn.  Who needs to eat, when you can knit?

But I have finally finished a sweater!  A friend of mine from high school and her wife have a three-year-old daughter who is obsessed with Tyrannosaurus Rex - every night she and her mother play "dinosaur," with E telling her mother, "Mama, you be the TRex!" and my friend chases her around the house, roaring.  They bought her a 3-foot inflatable TRex for Christmas, and put it under the tree wearing a Santa hat.  I love that she is so into dinosaurs, because I went through a phase between about 6-10 where I couldn't get enough of them either.  So while perusing Ravelry and thinking about knitting her a hat, I stumbled upon a pattern called Tony Tyrannosaurus Rex Jumper by Christine Grant, I bought it.  It called for Intarsia, a type of color work knitting I had taken a class in but never tried.  I am so excited by how it turned out:

Even the inside didn't turn out too bad:

I am meeting her mother for lunch in just a few hours to hand over the sweater.  I really hope it fits her.

Why I don't block

One of the key components in most knitting patterns comes right at the end, where the pattern writer tells you to bind off your knitting and "block."  I have never blocked.  It's simply not my thing.  Everything I've ever read about it told me I needed to soak my knit item (shudder - what if the colors run & it's a gift on deadline?) then pin it flat and allow it to dry.  I have successfully avoided that for the nearly 20 years I have been knitting.

Until now.  I finished a scarf this week for my cousin's husband A, he of the pestering-knitters-on-the-commuter-railroad story from November.  I saw him just after Thanksgiving, and he was wearing his hat.  The family tells me he wears the hat a lot - to work, indoors, on weekends - and he proudly showed me a black scarf he was wearing that, ".....almost matches this fantastic hat!"  Because I cannot keep my mouth shut, ever, I blurted out that the hat had a matching scarf pattern, and was he interested?  Say, after Christmas?  Of course he was!

I forgot how much I hate knitting scarves, but I persevered.  75" at 31 stitches per row doesn't sound like much until, well, you spend 2 weeks, 2 hours a day, knitting it.  This scarf is a physical manifestation of proof that you do not have to be a blood relation for me to love you.  Quite honestly, the fawning over the hat pretty much cemented his ability to get whatever knit item he wants, now or in the future.  Except maybe a sweater.

Anyway, finished the scarf and it curls up on both edges, pretty significantly.  So I knew my day of reckoning had come - I was going to have to block a piece.  I was not looking forward to it, but at least remotely confident because after all, this is a completely black item so if the color ran, it would not ruin the garment. 

First step, into the sink:

I soaked it in Eucalid (per the instructions) for 15 minutes, then squeezed all the water out of it.  No color seepage, so that was good.

Then, the hard part - laying it flat to dry and pinning it.  Which makes my dining room floor look like this:

The good news is, if I was a little short on that recommended 75", I have it now.  But blocking doesn't really show the pattern all that well, as you can see here:

It looks like the hat, though, so that's all that counts. 

You might notice to the left of the scarf a very small knit strip - this is a piece that goes on A's wife's hat, that also curled once knit, so I decided to block that as well.  You can see a little better how I pinned the pieces on that one:

So that's a close-up photo of what I did to that 75" scarf to block it.  Every few inches. It was tedious.  My instincts to avoid blocking were totally correct.  But now that I've done it, I have no excuse not to do it in the future.

Speaking of that little piece for M's hat, this is what the finished product looks like:

On my head, of course, not hers.  The pattern is called Capitan by Rosi Garmendia and my friend Dorothy says this is a hat that makes everyone look cool.  Guess what?  Not me.  I was so excited to knit myself one after this and then I put it on to check the button placement and discovered I look like an idiot in this hat.  Which is a total bummer because I can use all the help I can get to look cooler.  I still think I'll make a couple more - one for M's sister J, and my college best friend.  All women who can rock hats, apparently better than me.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a toddler cape!

Somewhere along the way, I got it into my head that I should be making new projects for all those babies who got blankets and socks and whatnot when they were born, now that they are toddlers and preschoolers.  And what do small children like?  Capes!  (Honestly, we all like a cape when you get right down to it.)  Who doesn't want to be a superhero?

An internet search led me to Thread Riding Hood, who posts not only the pattern for making capes out of felt (best fabric ever for kids' dress-up stuff) but a quick tutorial.  She recommended Googling for Superman logos, which led me to this website.  I decided to start small by getting enough materials to do four capes, in case this turned out to be a goat rodeo and I ended up Freecycling most of it.  Which is what happened when I tried to a project that involved satin.  We will not speak of satin, fabric of the devil.

Anyway, I bought a couple yards each of light green and light blue fabric (very gender-neutral), coordinating squares for background color, and some white stick-on felt to make the letters.  I cut out the letters, stuck them to the shaped squares, sewed them onto one side of the cape, sewed up the other piece, added Velcro, and got this:

The inside of this cape is the same shade of green as the background for the M.  I cannot tell you how pleased I am with how this came out.  It took about two hours to make, but I think that was because it was the first version.  After sewing the two pieces together, I did have to trim around the edge because they were not exact mirror images of each other, but that was a quick fix.

Deep winter is birthday time for many of these toddlers & preschoolers.  Guess what everyone's getting this year?  I'm a little sad the pattern only goes up to 4T.  I could use a cape myself.

No closer to finishing the Christmas gifts

I have been plugging along on all my holiday crafting projects.  Unfortunately, those projects have mostly been for me.

Here's a couple of shots of the sweater I am knitting for myself, using the Tucker's Woods Mocha's Worsted I bought at the Fiber Festival:

This is a better color representation than that blue shade that showed up when I photographed the skeins on my counter before dawn.  I photographed these shots before dawn, too, but smartened up and used a white dish towel as a back drop.  This is also my very first attempt at knitting cables.  I have no idea what I was afraid of for so long.

So in my spare time (ha ha ha) I serve as the president of the board of trustees for our local food pantry, and I also volunteer there a lot.  There are people who volunteer there more than me (retirees who are available weekdays, whereas I am expected to show up at my office to earn my check - so unfair) and one of them mentioned she needed a hat.  With ear flaps.  And a pom pom.  In red.  Ok, then!  I could use a break from knitting socks:



Look ma, more cables!


It took me about 8 days to do this hat - the pattern is from Classic Elite Yarns and is called Lavish Flap Hat.  It is lavish, I suppose, because it supposed to be knit with cashmere.  I chose Debbie Bliss Rialto DK, which is a superwash marino and much more practical, in my mind.  The pattern also does not feature a pom pom, which was my own (easy) addition, to meet the requirements given by the recipient.  A tip - when trimming the pom pom, do it over the trash, not sitting on your couch or you will then have to get your vacuum out to get all the little bits of yarn that will go everywhere.  File that under "things I have learned the hard way."

It was a fun break from socks, which is pretty much what I will be working on exclusively right now until early January.  I decided to interrupt the Christmas knitting because she needs the hat now, not January.  Also, she sits on the board with me, so I have a feeling she'll wear it during board meetings.  She's that sort of fun person.

I also made a couple of Christmas dish cloths for our kitchen:

These were a simple stockinet stitch done with Lily Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn, and took about an hour apiece.  I expect they won't make it much past the holiday season but given I paid about $1.49 for the skein and got two dish cloths out of it, I can't be too upset if they end up in the garage rag pile in January.  At that price, I should think about doing the dish cloths for the house on a regular basis, because that's cheaper than what I can buy at Target.  (Sure, in all my spare time!) Unless they only last a month.

How many days until Christmas?

My fall has been crazy between work & volunteer obligations, and I've been very lax about documenting what I am working on, besides Halloween decorations.  But no more!  Here's what I've been up to lately:

My fall edition of Love of Knitting magazine had this beautiful Falling leaves hat pattern, made out of Berocco Boboli, which I just happened to have four skeins of sitting in my stash.  Fate! I used one for the hat, which knit up in about 4 days, and then decided to modify the pattern to make a matching scarf, which I haven't photographed yet.  It needs to be blocked, and probably never will be.  Just after finishing the scarf, I wandered into my favorite local yarn shop and discovered they were carrying Boboli Lace in virtually the same colorway, so of course I needed to make matching gloves......  This ate up about a month of prime holiday knitting time.  Which I feel a little bad about, but then I note that it will be a wonderful set to keep someone warm, and this is New England so this project was necessary.  Totally.

Way back in June we were in NY for my cousin's youngest son's christening, and my other cousin's husband asked if I would knit him a hat.  He has always wanted a hand-knit hat, you see.  He rides the Long Island Railroad every day to work in the city, and apparently there are several women on the train who knit (hello sisters!) and he asked one of them who was working on a hat if he could buy it from her.  She kindly explained to him that most knitters are working on something for a particular someone and suggested he find someone he knew who was a knitter and ask for a hat.  My mistake was working on a pair of socks in front of him, although I don't think it's much of a secret in the family that I knit, as I have knit his sister-in-law three baby blankets in recent years.  Anyway, he wanted a black hat.  Snore.  So I found this cute pattern by Jennifer Burt called Changing Seasons Men's Hat, and knit it with that.  It only took a couple of days.  The photo makes it look grey, but it is most definitely black.

In addition to the knitting, I have just finished an 8-week class for 4-harness weaving.  I liked the weaving, and my classmates and teacher, but oh boy, do I hate warping that type of loom.  Our first project was a sampler, using scrap yarn for the weft, to try out different patters:

I am not crazy about some of those colors, but it was a practice piece, so you don't want to spend a lot of money on yarn when you're just starting out.  I didn't have too much of a problem following all of the different treadlings to make the patterns, so I probably could have used more of a coordinated color scheme, except that it would have been against our teacher's directions.

Our next project was called a Rose Path Sampler.  For this I chose a rayon-cotton blend warp, in three separate colors, and a contrasting weft to make the patterns stand out:

I love the colors, and a lot of the patterns, but the blocks of pattern are not all the same size and the asymmetry of it bothers me a bit.  I had thought about turning it into a gift scarf, or maybe two, but the end piece, which is all one pattern, is not long enough and I can't do much fringe for either end of the scarf.  I guess that means I'm a pretty efficient weaver with not a lot of waste, which is the silver lining here.

  There are about 40 days until Christmas, and the project list for gifts isn't getting any smaller.  I think I will get over my dismay about the asymmetry on that woven scarf rather quickly as the calendar counts down.....

The Fiber Festival

So, this year I journeyed out to the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, MA for the 4th annual Fiber Festival of New England, which happened the first weekend in November.  I went with a knitter friend who is a festival veteran, and therefore my guru - seriously, she pre-screened the vendors & had a list of places to stop; had a project list for "must haves" and "would be nice" for yarn, drove, and brought water for both of us.  I put on clean clothes.  If I ever have to go into battle, I am totally putting her in charge of operational supply lines.  She has four kids, though - and she still has time to knit like crazy.  We should bow down to her incredible time management and innate organizational skills, I think.

There were over 200 vendors.  Most of them selling yarn.  Much of which I bought.  (But we'll get to that in a minute.)  There were also vendors selling animals, like alpacas:



Photo courtesy of my friend Dorothy

Look how cute! They were kind of expensive, though:



Photo courtesy of my friend Dorothy

My friend and I got momentarily silly, deciding that if I bought them, we could stick them in the back of her mini van.  I am particularly enamored of alpacas, not because I think it's the fiber equivalent of farm-to-table (hoof-to-garment?) but because my husband thinks they are a pyramid scheme.  He makes a strong case that people raise alpacas to sell them to other people who will raise alpacas....to sell to other people.  "Where does it end?" he always asks.  Anyway, I went home and told him we could have been the proud owners of two new female alpacas, and he started in with the pyramid scheme theory again.

"A lot of people knit with alpaca," I argued.

"How much alpaca yarn do you have in your stash?" he asked.

"Um, none....but I have an unusually small stash for a knitter, given that I only have stuff in one cabinet and one short rolling cart in the family room."  J's eyebrows went back into his hairline at this point, which is even more impressive than it sounds given he's nearly bald.

"Pyramid scheme," he announced. 

I was going to buy some alpaca yarn to knit him a pair of socks, but got distracted by all the choices and forgot about it before leaving.  Also, he doesn't know what it feels like, so I could buy some crap yarn at a commercial big-box store in beige or brown, knit him some socks and tell him it's alpaca.  But I won't, because I have plenty of good stuff on hand.

The Alpaca Pyramid Scheme conversation served as a nice distraction for the bag full of yarn (mostly sock yarn) that I brought home from the festival.  Seriously, I pretty much spent the year's budget for fiber in 4 hours.  My friend was no help, because after offering to fold down her car seats for the alpacas, she kept telling me sock yarn does not count towards stash.  I took her pronouncements as gospel, because I bought 12 skeins of sock yarn.  But oh, the colors!  And I'm supporting local small businesses!  Right?  RIGHT? 

I also bought yarn to make myself a sweater.  Because I've been so successful with sweater knitting - I've almost finished exactly one, and it needs to be ripped back because my stitch pickup was wrong for the hem and the sweater hangs crooked.

It's a lovely teal color, which doesn't really show since I photographed this before sunrise on my very blue kitchen counter using artificial light.  I'll try to get a good shot of the finished garment, sometime in 2021 when it's done.

I understand that it's a slippery slope with yarn, that your stash starts off small and continues to grow until you're stuffing it in random closets and hiding it from your spouse.  My spouse cares deeply about animal pyramid schemes (not really) and not at all about the yarn.  (He likes to tell me that it's more productive than a crack addiction, and certainly more socially acceptable.)  I have made a pact with myself to use up my stash and not buy anything new until at least June of 2014.  Except the yarn for a baby sweater for our neighbors.  And some for a hat for J for Christmas.  And.....

Since I am semi-restricted from shopping, expect to see lots of sock project photos going forward.  And maybe I can knit J a hat with an alpaca on it.  And a pyramid.

It's Still Wool Weather

So this is the view out my back deck today:



 .....which may or may not be clear enough for you to see that it is snowing.  HARD.  Sigh.  First day of spring is tomorrow.  Most of us in New England think that's a joke.  On the upside, it is cold enough that I have an excuse to wear my fingerless gloves in the house (because it's far cheaper than turning up the heat) and I am still enthusiastic about any project involving wool. 

Currently I am working on a couple of pairs of socks.  Shocking, I know - you had no idea I knit socks.  (More likely, you had no idea I knit anything but socks.)  Currently on the needles, a pair of socks for my friend Holly's birthday, coming up April 1st:

I am using my classic sock pattern, because time is of the essence (these socks are a suprise) and I'm using Regia Design Line "Random Stripe" yarn.  It tangles.  A lot.  Still, the socks are turning out nicely, but I'm under the gun at this point since there are only 13 days until her birthday, and because we ride the train together, I am losing some of my most valuable knitting time because I can't do it in front of her.  I am a little nervous about this one.  I have just finished the cuff on the second sock.  It will be close.

Also on the needles, those long-delayed socks for Himself:

It is an olive green/gray blend, also Regia but Jet Set Color this time, and it ALSO tangles.  A lot.  I'm thinking maybe it's the yarn.  (Fool me once......)  I am using a new pattern called Macho Socks, which does something of an architectural design in the sock.  Mine is coming out differently from what is photographed on that blog, mostly because I am doing top-down socks and decided not to reverse the pattern from the bottom up.  I knit these on the train, so they will be a surprise for Himself, and while they are not quite as snooze-inducing as the last pair I made him, they are up there.  Hence the thinking to go with a new pattern - it might be just interesting enough to keep me awake.

Finally, I managed to get a good daylight shot of the shawl that's being woven:

I am still struggling with warping as it looks crooked in this photo.  When I unwind the tension at the end, it straightens out. I will have to ask my friend L, who got me into weaving, what I am doing wrong.  Still, it should look fine when finished.  It will likely be something I only wear in the house anyway - in New England, you are pretty much either in a parka or short sleeves when you leave the house.  And it would be a little fancy to wear while out gardening.

Knitting for new arrivals

I don't knit as many baby blankets as I used to, as many of my friends and family have completed their families and now need hats and sweaters rather than blankets for newborns.  But I am always in search of an interesting knitting pattern for babies, particularly ones that look much harder than they are.

My cousin J had a baby on February 11.  L is her third son (she has 5-year-old fraternal twins) and bless his little heart, he stayed put until almost his due date, giving his cousin the knitter enough time to get his new blanket done just after he arrived.  Those were some dark days, though, right around his birth, where I was committed to knitting 10 rows a night in order to be able to meet my own self-imposed deadline to send out his blanket via post to Chicago.  I pondered calling in sick, but then we had a huge blizzard (Feb 8-9) so I had plenty of time to work on it while I watched meteorologists and television news reporters scurry about, looking for yard sticks long enough to measure the snow that arrived.  (It was about 27" where I live.)

The pattern is Knit Teddy Bear by Barbara Breiter, which I found for free on the web and really liked.  The pattern comes with a teddy bear chart, but I have found it easier to write out the pattern by row rather than count, lose my place, recount the chart, recount my stitches, lose my place, count again, lose my place again, give up and pour myself a glass of wine and watch Mad Men instead.  A good friend of mine, a much more expert knitter, double-checked my counts and I was good to go:

Now, the yarn for this is Merino 5 by Crystal Palace Yarns and calls for 5 skeins of 2 colors held together, for a total of 10 skeins.  The best price I found on it was $7.90 a skein, so the blanket was looking to run me about.....$79.  Before tax & shipping on the yarn, and shipping to send the blanket to the baby.  I would be better off writing him a check for $100 for college at that point and making myself something nice.  Still, third baby and I didn't want him to be treated any differently than his older brothers, and I did love the pattern, so I went to my favorite local yarn shop with the pattern & asked for some advice. I was steered towards some Plymouth Encore DK yarn, which retails for $5.99.  Already I was liking this better.  Based on the weight, they were recommending a single strand for knitting, rather than doubling up. Things were looking up even more.  And when they said I would need 4 skeins as opposed to 10 because of the yardage difference, I had my credit card out so fast it would have made your head spin.  I am really pleased with the way it came out, and would make it again.  It's nice to have a blanket over my knees while knitting in January & February.  I am less inclined to knit baby blankets in the summer; it is just too hot.

The other thing that I love is that I'm getting much faster at knitting patterned baby blankets.  It used to be that as soon as I found out someone was having a baby I had to start the blanket, in a gender-neutral color, if I had any hope of being done when the baby was born.  Whipped this one off the needles in about 6 weeks, a new record.  It is just knit and purl, though, which helps.  A lot.

Yet another hobby

So really, what I didn't need was another crafting hobby.  In the past year I've picked up card making, tried crochet (epic failure) and set a goal for myself of making decorations for upcoming holidays.  (Sometimes this is successful, usually it's a giant miss.)  I also sew, garden, write two blogs (kind of) volunteer 15+ hours a week, cook and work 60+ hours a week (including commuting time.)  So, you know, I don't really need new hobbies.

But I have one:

That, my friends, is a knitter's loom.  I took a class at the end of October that ran two weeks and included the "loan" of the loom, which meant at the end of class I bought one, and the stand, so I could keep on weaving. 

My first project was a scarf with scrap yarn (which came out pretty good, if I do say so myself) and the second project was a baby blanket for a friend who's just had her first child and is now living in Canada in an area where it starts snowing in October.  That came out really good:

Unlike crochet, which I have no talent for nor any urge to practice, weaving is much faster, easier and produces a beautiful project.  A knit blanket like the one above would have taken me 2-3 months, with weaving it was just 2 weeks (of half-attentive effort; I was out a lot at meetings during those 2 weeks.)  I could probably weave a whole blanket in a weekend.  The possibilities are endless.

I am practicing my weaving using some of my stash yarn - up next are placemats for Valentine's Day using some fuschia, white & red yarn from my stash so I can practice hem stitching and Spanish lace weaving.  Sounds very fancy, doesn't it?

The Start of the Holiday Season

When I was younger, I remember that some retailers would advertise "Christmas in July" sales as July 25 is 6 months from Christmas.  In June, while working my way through the Vorticity sock pattern, I realized that I should probably make myself a list of holiday knitting projects so I could stay on target.  I also had two November birthdays (my friend J and my mother-in-law) that I wanted to put on that list, so I sat down and wrote it all out.  In a time frame from November 3 - January 3, I need to have finished 2 scarves, 1 hat, 4 pairs of adult socks, and 6 pairs of childrens' socks. This is only marginally more than what I knit for last year, but I am determined that this year, the caboose gift receiver (my husband) will not get shorted by getting only one sock.  (I finished the other one about 2 weeks after his birthday.)  Fortunately, I finished my sock project in time to cast on July 25 for the first project, a scarf:

This is the Vine Lace Scarf pattern by Marin Melchior.  She recommends knitting this pattern using Vermont Organic Fiber Company O-Wool Legacy DK sock yarn, but I had this yarn (Berrocco Softwist Bulky) which was given to me by a friend and it's the perfect color for my friend as she has worn this particular color in my presence several times.  It is somewhat slippery yarn, so I've had to be careful when knitting the yarn-overs in the next row.

As compared to the baby blanket I am also currently working on, this scarf is flying off my needles.  I cast on on the 25th but sort of dawdled on the project until the 30th, and then managed to knit 28" (of a 33" piece) in 4 days, just working on it during my morning commute.  (Ah, 31-stitch projects, how I love you.) It is knit in two pieces, and then a Kitchner stitch joins it together. 

At this rate, I could possibly be finished the project by the end of this week.  Perhaps I should consider making everyone a scarf, instead of socks, for Christmas.......

Socks! (As if I could knit anything else....)

A friend of mine was in a terrible car accident at the beginning of February in Texas.  Thankfully she is home now with her husband and children but she still has a long way to go to normal.  Rather than send flowers, I knit her a pair of socks:

They were mailed off to Texas on Saturday.  Be well, K.

New Year, New Leaf

The holidays are over and that, my friends, is a very good thing.  I knit 7 1/2 pairs of socks as Christmas gifts this year.  Seven and a half, you ask?  Yes, it's only half a pair when your husband only gets one sock on his birthday, which was the 3rd of this month.  Here's my 2011 holiday sock gallery:

Goddaughter:

My lovely goddaughter opened her socks on Christmas Eve and immediately put them on.  Her mother later told me that she had to bribe E on December 26 to take the socks off to be washed before they walked away on their own.  I will be making her another pair for her birthday, in March, just so her mother can rotate them!

Cousin A (age 6):

Cousin W (age 4):

Cousin M (11 months):

A, W & M are all siblings.  One cannot knit socks for one child and not the other two.  Well, I could probably have skipped M, since he's not part of his siblings' sock craze and does not talk, but the goal is to be fair and equitable, unlike many things in life.

I spent the week between Christmas and New Year's pretending that mom would not be getting socks.  On Christmas, when she first asked about the socks, I made the excuse of having to knit for so many people this year.  Then the next day, when we were headed out on a shopping expedition, I brought over a bag of sock yarns I have stashed in my knitting bin for her to, "....chose a yarn for her next pair of socks."  She did, and it was similar to the yarn I had already knit her socks with.  Finally, on her birthday I showed up with those air-activated toe and foot warmers and a pair of SmartWool socks, layered on top of the hand-knit socks to leave them for last.  Of course, I don't have a photo of them, as I was too busy being devious about their actual appearance.  Someday a birthday or Mother's Day will arrive where she will not get socks, and that will be a dark, dark day indeed.  Probably for both of us.

I also lack photos of the matching pair I made for Stella Caroline and her lovely daughter, SuperG, but they are a spectacular set with a red base color and lots of striping, and they did me the honor of wearing the socks when they came to visit me last week.  They have discovered the secret to staying on the hand-knit gift list - wear what I gave you when I can see you wearing it.  Mom also adheres to this principal, but she's getting close to having enough pairs of socks to wear hand-knit ones every day.

Currently, I'm finishing the last pair, those of the man who is eternally shafted when it comes to hand-knit gifts, my husband.  While he chose the yarn for the socks, I was attempting to give him his pair as a surprise and thus could not knit in front of him.  So I struggled desperately to finish the socks before his birthday, knitting furiously on the train in and out of Boston, and getting up early on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to work on them before rushing to hide them when I heard him get up.  He was genuinely surprised by the sock when he opened the package: 



I photographed this going in a different direction, just for some variety.

It's a nice German sock yarn (Schoeller Stahl) 75% virgin wool, 25% polyester and I'm knitting it on size 1 1/2 double-pointed needles.  It's a very manly-looking sock - very sedate, good for wearing out in public.  I am so bored knitting it, because it doesn't make patterns.  I've fallen asleep at least a half dozen times on the train while working on it.  I have the same problem with "Pulp Fiction" - I've tried to watch that movie five times and I've fallen asleep every.single.time. 

I should point out that he did get a homemade gift for Christmas - new sleep pants:

Ole!

For some reason, Cinco de Mayo has become this HUGE holiday in our Western European-ancestry household, and when I saw this ridiculous flannel on sale, I could not leave it behind.  For what it cost me to make them, they almost qualify as a stocking stuffer.

After I finish his socks, I'll return to the pair that I was knitting in front of him over the holidays, the ones I refer to as my Cinco de Mayo socks.  The yarn is red, orange, yellow and magenta and I just love it.  Particularly after weeks of this Schoeller yarn!