Fear me

I've been just zooming through the knitting, to the point where I now have the delusion that I might actually finish all the Christmas and other deadline knitting (including the twin size blanket) in time. This is probably not true, but I'm starting to believe it could be.

Firstly, the sleeeves on my brother's hooded cardigan are, I'm guessing, about half done:

And I've burned through 4 of the 10 balls I'll need for the whole thing.

Secondly, DD1 discovered that her second teacher a) likes pink and b) is expecting a baby girl in late March. So she wants me to make something baby, in pink, for this teacher as her winter holiday present. Fair enough. I have two balls of hot pink Zara in the stash which I think the girls gave to me a few years ago for my birthday or Mother's Day or something like that, and it'll be perfect for baby stuff because it's soft and superwash. In an attempt to use up all all 273 yards of it, I'll be making Ewelina Murach's Baby Flower Hat, Regina Willer's Blue Steps baby booties, and perhaps some mittens, too, since I expect I'll have quite a bit of yarn left over after those two things are done. In order to make them match a bit better, I'm going to switch the ribbing on the hat from 2x2 to 1x1.

(Honestly, I'd rather just make a Seamless Flower T-Shirt - also by Ewelina Murach - but the smallest size requires about 55 yards more yarn than I actually have. :( )

But so far, I'm making very good headway on the hat. I love it:

I also whipped up a new pattern and most of its prototype. It's a double knitted bib:

All that's left is to do the collar and weave in the ends. I like it very much. I'm going to be selling it to benefit Sick Kids, aka the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. This is a hospital very close to my heart - I spent a lot of time there after I was born to get my oemphalocile fixed up; my brother spent a lot of time in there when he was a kid after we discovered he had chronic renal failure; one of my BILs had his cleft palate corrected there; etc. etc. It's a wonderful hospital that does wonderful things, and I'm hoping I can raise money with this pattern to support them.

In other excitements, an order came in from Knit Picks! I haven't taken a picture of the loot, but the box was full of goodies. Firstly, there was Alasdair Post-Quinn's book, Extreme Double Knitting. (Like you're surprised I was interested in this, eh?) And in order to get a reduced shipping cost, I also ordered a few more things: Alice Starmore's Charts for Color Knitting, four balls of black sock yarn (I can always use more black sock yarn), and some more yarn that I can't talk very much about because it's for a design that's been submitted somewhere. I still need to do up the sample piece, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get yarn support, so I bought enough yarn for it myself just in case. If it gets accepted and I get yarn support, I'll just use this yarn for something else. Really hoping to hear back one way or the other soon, but I suspect I'll cast on really soon anyway with the Knit Picks yarn, just in case.