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!

The definition of insanity

I have recently requested several books of sock patterns from the library, just to see if I like the patterns before I buy them.  There's a new book on the market called The Knitter's Book of Socks and it was the first one to make it into the house off the library request list.  It's a great book, if you like to knit (like I do) and you like to knit socks (ditto.)  The patterns, though?  Whew, boy, they are not for the faint of heart.  Cables, ssk (slip slip knit) yarn-overs - they will definitely be a challenge.  More challenging will be taking on one of these patterns to knit a new style of sock as a Christmas gift.  And I'm only half-finished the pair I am knitting for my goddaughter E for Christmas, so those have to be finished before I can start anything new.  This is the definition of insanity - starting a brand-new sock pattern for a pair of adult socks with five weeks to go until Christmas.  I'll likely be bald by halfway through Advent due to tearing out my hair.....

Man, it's a total bummer about the expectations they have at my job.  I'd have so much more time to knit if they didn't expect me to show up and do actual work for my check......

(Knit) Wit

So I'm a knitter.  In some circles, admitting this is like admitting you have a fondness for crack cocaine or beating baby seals.  I have always been old before my time, and getting married and buying a house in a semi-rural area (we have no stoplights in town, so in my mind this counts as "semi-rural") was the best thing that ever happened to me - it's like society expected me to stay home and cook and craft, not go out to fancy restaurants and engage in late nights.  Which I couldn't do even if you gave me a double espresso at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.  Most people think my knitting is a quaint, cute hobby.  They smile benignly, like one does at a small child whose stick figure pictures look nothing like the dinosaur the kid is claiming it is, and probably resist the urge to pat me on the head.  Those that really embrace it get the benefit of my hand-knit gifts for themselves or their children.

One of my biggest recipients is my mother. About two years ago I took a class to learn how to knit socks.  Walking into the class, I didn't know how to cast on properly (don't even ask what I was doing), knit in the round, or pick up stitches.  I walked out of there 4 hours later able to do all those things and knit a basic sock.  Best $40 I ever spent.  Best $40 my mother ever saw me spend, too, since before I even sat down to knit a stitch she insisted I knit her a pair of socks.  Which I did.  Thereby creating a monster.  Now twice a year (Christmas/her birthday, which are 8 days apart, and Mother's Day) there is an expectation that socks will be part of the loot.  Which is fine, but the average pair of women's socks has 400 yards of yarn (four football fields' worth!) and can contain 20,000 stitches.  That's love, right there.  Because according to one of my favorite knitting bloggers, who also writes great books, when you knit a pair of socks you are committing to the creation of an item that will eventually wear out, since it takes constant abuse by being on your feet.  So far mom isn't wearing them so much that they've worn out, but I know that day is coming.  That will be a sad, sad day.  She does always wear socks I've made her when she comes to the house for dinner.  Maybe that's the only time she wears them?

So because I'm up to my elbows in the Christmas Crafting Extravaganza right now (I have target goals for completing various gifts - knit and sewn - on a week-by-week basis in the hopes that I make it) I haven't posted everything I did for Halloween.  I'm planning on photographing the household decorations (of which there are many) as well as the two projects (a light-up trick-or-treat bag and Halloween sleep pants) I started for the holiday.  Notice I said started.  Neither is currently finished.  I could use the excuse that we got whacked with a major Nor'easter the weekend before Halloween, but we never lost power at our house and I wouldn't have been done with these projects anyway even if there hadn't been a major weather event.  So my goal is to finish both this weekend, so I can photograph them, post and then put them away for next year. 

Or worst case scenario, hide them in a drawer until February and work on the furtitively through spring and still not finish them for next Halloween.  Which is more likely.

Doesn't it snow all but six weeks a year in New England?

So since I started the other blog on gardening the most common question I get is, "Yes, but what do you do the rest of the year?  (What, besides spend time with my husband, work and volunteer?)  I do a ridiculous amount of crafting and cooking for someone with a full-time, 60-hour-a-week-plus job.  I do it because I enjoy it, and because I'm always, always amused by people's amazement that I have hobbies that are domestic.  Apparently, my personality does not lead people to believe that I would ever consider things like sewing, cooking or knitting fun.  But I do.  Mostly.  This time of year the knitting and sewing is generally directed towards creating holiday gifts, so I'm hyper-focused on timelines and deliverables.  Much like being at work, although at the end of a work project nobody ends up with variegated socks - usually just paper cuts.

A dear friend of mine writes a really great blog on all of her cooking adventures and her family's history surrounding recipes, which is amazing to read but doesn't really work for me because I don't necessarily cook something elaborate or even noteworthy most days.  Also, my family does not have a long and storied history involving recipes.  And because I tend to dabble in a variety of craft mediums, a blog focused on one specific thing (knitting, sewing, scrapbooking) doesn't work either.  So this blog will likely be a mishmash of whatever I'm up to on the home front.