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!