About gifts

So it's almost the new year, and everybody - except for the younger BIL who told us that he wasn't coming down for Christmas too late to be able to ship anything out in time - has received their knitted gifts. (Said BIL will, sadly, still have to wait a while before we can mail his presents, as DH hasn't wrapped the last one yet.)

The handknits were certainly appreciated. My dad loved his hat and has been enjoying showing it off to people. My mom was extra-delighted to receive two pairs of socks - she felt that one pair would be normal as a gift, but two, well now, that's extravagance! :) My brother really liked his hat, although personally, I think it's far too big for him - the motif doesn't stretch out at all, which it needs to do in order to look right. :( However, I refuse to feel bad about this, since I asked numerous times for his head measurements, to no avail. Various teacher and care provider gifts were very happily received, and DD1's dance teacher in particular seemed thrilled at how ballet-customized her fingerless mitts were. Even my generally-undemonstrative elder BIL got pretty animated over his socks. (Although to be fair, even though his reactions to his knitted gifts may initially be pretty laidback, he will then visit weeks or months later and mention how awesome they are and how much he has been enjoying wearing them.) So - hooray!

As for the immediate family, DH adored and waxed rhapsodic over his knitted present, but I cannot speak of it yet. And as I mentioned last time, DD3's cardigan was a hit. But my older girls also loved their stuff...

DD1 was incredibly pleased and surprised with her bolero:

DD2 was in raptures over her legwarmers. ("Oh, Mummy! I've always wanted legwarmers!")

(The two pairs of elf slippers you can also see in that shot were from my SIL, and they were a tremendous hit.)

As for my haul, Santa gave me some stitch holders, DD2 gave me the purple sock yarn I showed in my last post, and DD1 gave me two balls of a wool/acrylic blend:

I'm planning to make Wendy D. Johnson's Victorian Neck Cozy out of it.

But then...oh, but then. We went over to my parents' house for the wider-family celebration and the exchange of more gifts, and they gave me Margaret Stove's book, Creating Original Handknitted Lace. I've been wanting this for ages. I am going to read it cover-to-cover. Ska-wee!!!

My husband also designed and knitted me some truly lovely socks with a cabled monogram (!!!), which I can't show you right now because he didn't finish them in time for Christmas. (He felt very badly about this. For my part, I don't mind.) One of them is currently blocking, and the other is having its ends woven in as I type. But I LOVES THEM. Beautiful and they feel terrific. Can't wait to wear them.

I hope the coming year is absolutely splendiferous for all of you, and that your holidays have been wonderful! Thanks for sticking with me throughout the year, and I will certainly continue to blather on endlessly about my knitting in 2013.

Après nous, le déluge

So I finished all the Christmas knitting well ahead of time. Here is the last of it - DD3's 'Secret Garden' cardigan:

front:




back:




DD3 liked it:




because she can play peek-a-boo with it:

I did indeed run out of the Stroll sock yarn that I was using doubled up for the vast majority of it, and then continued work with the Swish worsted. You absolutely cannot tell. I also bought a very snazzy ceramic button from Lettuce Knit, which got the stamp of approval at the holiday party from several other knitters who weighed in when I asked for button opinions.

So, you know when you've been really good and responsible at something for a while (e.g. food diet, yarn diet, keeping on top of the housework, sticking exclusively to Christmas knitting, etc.) and then you suddenly let yourself go completely (e.g. binging, massive yarn purchases, letting the house get disgusting, coming down with a massive case of Startitis)?

Yes. This is what has been happening to me. I finished my Nennir cowl - I decided to do only two repeats of the cable charts instead of three, because at two repeats it was already as wide as I wanted it. No pictures yet, but it's gorgeous and I love it and I wore it home from work yesterday after finishing it in the afternoon.

I also got started on a shawl that I have loved ever since it came out in Knitty First Fall 2012 - Bauble. I'm using some of the 24 balls of 'barn red' Stroll sock yarn in my possession, and it looks great so far:

I got some sock yarn from DD2 for Christmas, in her favourite colour:

So I'm using it to try and solve her perpetual sock shortage problem:

I think I'm actually going to be able to get three pairs out of it when all is said and done.

And lastly, DD2 came home yesterday complaining that her gloves weren't warm enough. Okay:

Just one more to do. She should have new mittens by Monday. The incredibly adorable pattern is Piggy Mittens by SpillyJane. I am enchanted.

Next time, I'll talk more about what I got for Christmas, and cover more reactions to the knitting gifts I gave!

Presents!

In good news, there have been progress and FOs.

I finished the pinafore dress for my aunt's niece's new baby:

Front:




Back:

It's really adorable and I love it. I think the best way to hand it off will be to do it in a way that sounds completely convoluted but which is actually really simple. You see, the baby's grandparents are coming to my aunt's house for a Christmas dinner (my aunt being the sister-in-law of the baby's grandfather), and my parents are also invited to this dinner. Therefore, I will give the gift to my mom to hand off to the grandparents, and it will thus be able to find its way to the parents, and therefore, the baby.

(I and my family would have been invited to this dinner, but my aunt knew we would be entertaining my husband's brothers on Christmas day, and so did not present us with an invitation we would have had to decline. Isn't holiday scheduling fun?)

As well, thirteen of fourteen holiday gifts are now complete, as I finished DD2's legwarmers:

Even better, they're now wrapped! DD2 mentioned to me today that she had noticed the new parcel underneath the tree, and I told her it was for her from me. Her eyes lit up with excitement and she thanked me for giving her a gift! It was so sweet. I hope the reaction when she actually opens the present is also that good.

All that's left to do in the way of holiday knitting is DD3's cardigan. (I have decided, after all, to axe DH's Durrow sweater project and do it again - hopefully next year - with a less vibrantly-coloured yarn.)

This past week also saw the arrival of some yarn support. With the holiday knitting almost done, I couldn't resist casting on for the pattern. It's going really well and I love it and can't wait to share. (Although I strongly suspect I will have to rip the whole thing out eventually and do the borders with a smaller needle size. But we shall see.)

And finally, the new Knitty came out. It's got some very nice things in there, but the one I couldn't resist was the Nennir cowl. It's getting colder, and a cowl would be great to have, and I just bought some gorgeous dark turquoise sparkly fingering weight yarn from Knit Picks, and the cables on this cowl were really beautiful, and I'm sure I could do up some mittens to match, and...and...and...

(This is what it looked like this morning. It has grown 20 rows since then.)

I am very weak.

But in the interest of not being stupid about the deadline knitting, I have given myself a twenty-row-a-day goal: no more, no less. So far, so good, and I'm 100 rows in. That should give me a new cowl by Christmas Eve. Merry ho-ho to me!

The worst reason to frog

Last weekend, even though the holiday knitting wasn't (and isn't) all finished yet, I could resist no longer and cast on for the Summer Pelisse for my co-worker who was expecting twins (one boy, one girl). The yarn is Stroll Glimmer, from Knit Picks, and it's lovely stuff. I got this far by the end of the weekend:

I came into work on Monday to the news that it was no longer needed - the girl twin hadn't made it.

I'm so gutted for the mum. And then got gutted twenty times over on Friday with the news out of Connecticut.

I don't even have the heart to frog this, actually. I think I'll just put it gently away for the time being. It will also probably be a while before I can work up the courage to do anything about the jacket I was planning to knit for the boy twin. Later. For now, I will concentrate on hoping for good things for the boy twin, the mum's health, and her family.

I think the universe owes us all a better week of news coming up. Way better.

More stash and more progress

In my last post I flashed a bit of my latest stash enhancement, but not all. So let me fix that right now.

I also got some "Chroma Fingering", in the "Gossip" colourway:

They're from the same dyelot, although they really don't look it. Mind you, it may be that I will find that more vibrant pink you can see on the right ball deeper inside the left ball...and the cream you can see on the left ball deeper inside the right ball. However, if they really are completely different from each other, they're 100g each, so I could just do one pair of socks out of each, so it wouldn't matter if they didn't match. But I'm hoping they do actually match because I'm thinking I might want to do a sweater or a jacket for one of the girls out of them.

Next, we have this lone ball of "Wool of the Andes" in the "Hyacinth" colourway:

I bought it just in case I decided to keep going with the idea of knitting the Durrow sweater for my husband out of my existing Hyacinth Wool of the Andes, and, if that's what I decided, just in case the amount I already had turned out to be not quite enough. However, since I'm pretty sure that I will be giving DH something different for Christmas and saving the Hyacinth yarn for something else, I think this particular purchase will turn out to have been a little pointless. But that's okay! It's gorgeous and will no doubt find a wonderful use somewhere else. (Possibly for me, as I adore the colour.)

Here is some more of the Stroll Glimmer, this time in "Peacock":

No clue what I'm going to do with it. But it's so preeeeetty! And it was on saaaale!

Also on sale - more Glimmer, in "Frost":

Again, no definitive purpose for this one. Although it would probably look marvellous paired with the Peacock. Maybe a hat/mitts/scarf set for DD1? Plus leftovers for other things? Who knows.

Finally, there is a single ball of Swish Worsted in "Green Tea":

Unfortunately, the colour is represented horribly in that photo, but it's the same colour name as the Stroll sock yarn I'm doubling up to make DD3's Secret Garden cardigan with...specifically, that's the same Stroll sock yarn that I am totally going to run out of before I can finish DD3's Secret Garden with. I can't buy more Stroll sock yarn in the Green Tea colour, because they've discontinued it, so I did the next best thing and bought a ball of worsted in the same colour.

I haven't compared the Green Tea stroll with this new Green Tea Swish yet to see if they really are the same...frankly, I'm scared to, because I'm very nervous that they will be noticeably different and I will be up s**t's creek for DD3's Christmas gift. But I will have to compare them sooner rather than later, because that cardigan needs to be finished, and I'm rapidly running out of projects I can work on instead of it as an excuse to avoid it.

Why am I rapidly running out of projects I can work on instead of the Secret Garden? Because I keep finishing Christmas knitting, that's why!

DD1's Shetland Shorty, front:




back:

I love it, I'm so pleased, and I just know she's going to be thrilled about it! Hee hee! And once I give it to her for Christmas I'll photograph it actually on her, and in better light, too. It will rock.

I am also almost done the first legwarmer for DD2:

(it's actually a bit longer than that now)

And I'm making excellent headway on the Ellis dress for the new baby of a family friend. No photos of that, sorry, it's the one thing I haven't taken updated shots of yet.

So far, so good! Except...I...still...have to...wrap...it...all. Urg.

Baybeeeeez!

Early last week I found out that a co-worker is pregnant - with twins! She's due in March, but of course it's quite likely the babies will come before then, so I need to get going pretty soon on the gift knitting. She's already got two young boys, and she's expecting a boy and a girl. This means she's going to end up with three boys and a girl.

Now, I usually don't go for the whole dressing-by-gender, put-girls-in-frou-frou thing, but with three boys in her house, I don't think it's such a horrendous thing to make something ridiculously girly for the female twin. Fortunately, I just happened to have ordered some yarn at the Knit Picks Cyber Monday sale, which arrived this week, that will be perfect: pink sock yarn...with sparkles:

This is the perfect excuse to make Summer Pelisse, which is a little girl's cardigan from the same issue of Jane Austen Knits as my baby bonnet pattern, and I love it. It calls for a DK weight yarn rather than a fingering, but I want this cardigan to be small enough to fit the baby shortly after she's born (and she's likely to be born rather smaller than average), so I'm going to size it down by using thinner yarn and smaller needles than called for.

For the boy twin, I really want to go with the Robin Hood Jacket pattern, by Zoë Mellor. It's been in my queue for ages, it's gorgeous. I have some very nice blue sock yarn that I recently bought at Lettuce Knit that I think will work great with it. Again, the pattern calls for much thicker yarn than that, but I will take advantage of that discrepancy to shrink the jacket down to preemie size. Now I just need to get my hands on the book that contains the pattern.

In other news, my mom called this week with super-awesome news from her sister (my aunt, obviously). Firstly, my aunt's niece (on her husband's side, so not my cousin, but definitely a family friend) has just had her first child! A little girl. I am very thrilled. (My mom emailed pictures - she's gorgeous, and you can totally tell already that she has her mummy's nose.) Clearly, I must knit something. Once again, I will be dipping into the queue and making the Ellis Dress. I've got some wine-coloured yarn that I expected would look great and so far, I have definitely not been disappointed:

Best news of all, though, is that my cousin and his wife are expecting their first! This is so tremendously squeeful I can barely stand it. :) DH pointed out (quite rightly surprised that I hadn't thought of this before he did) that a motif fusion reflecting the baby's ethnic heritage would be ideal. (He's brilliant.) I won't go into more detail because I'm sure I'll submit the design somewhere when it's all done, which means it needs to stay hush-hush until publication. I think I can say, however, that I might use some of this, also a Cyber Monday purchase:

That thar is twenty freakin' balls of Stroll sock yarn in a fabulous red. I bought that many a) because it was being discontinued, and b) it was $1.84 a ball. That's $3.68 for an adult pair of socks. Couldn't pass it up.

So...SQUEE all round! Add to that the lovely baby news about Will and Kate (yes, I'm a Royal watcher) and I'm surprised I haven't floated into the air yet.

Does it count as Startitis if it's Christmas knitting?

So I decided to elevate (lower?) the Christmas knitting to "stupid" level, and cast on two more projects over the last few days.

Firstly, we have the Shetland Shorty bolero I thought I might make for DD1:

Secondly, we have legwarmers for DD2:

I also finished my brother's hat, so my current count is twelve completed gifts out of fifteen (probably fourteen, as I'm getting closer to deciding to scrap my husband's sweater...although I might do socks for him instead). It's modelled here by my very obliging husband:

light side:




dark side:

And I wrote up the pattern - it's available for free. To get it, you can either click on the "High-end Hat" square in the left sidebar, or...