Happiness through knitting

Gave these to DH for his birthday this week:

I keep thinking that one of these days, he's going to open one of my gifts, roll his eyes, and exclaim, "Socks? Again?!?"...but no. He continues to be delighted each and every time. As a result, I keep making him socks! This pair, upon first sight, got a frown-with-jawdrop expression of admiration, and an exclamation of, "This is a great colourway!!!" Then they immediately went on his feet, which began to wiggle happily thereupon. He says they fit great, and that they are one of his new favourite pairs. So...hooray!

I also ripped back all the lace bits of my Fabergé shawl, and started that part all over again with the purple. Then, when that ran out, I continued with the variegated. That ran out after about four rows, so today I went down to Lettuce Knit for WWKIP Day (where they were having a 15% off sale!) and bought another skein. I'm so gleeful at the thought of being able to finish this!

I did not, however, go on this shopping excursion alone. I took the kids! DD1 knit (thus being the only person in her family who actually honoured the day) while DD2 played with a loot bag treat from Friday night - a plastic cellphone that opens up to reveal a lollipop, which is pretty darn cool since you can stop eating the lollipop partway through, close up the "cellphone" and be able to resume lollipop licking whenever you want without having a sticky mess on your hands.

And DD3 greatly enjoyed communing with the owners' dog, Sunni: (Soonie? Soony? No idea how to spell it.)

Clearly, a good time was had by all. Unfortunately, we had to leave shortly after noon to get the car back home in time for DH to make his shift at work, otherwise we would have stayed longer and enjoyed the company of the people who showed up later in the day!

Happy WWKIP, all!

Surprises

Well, the first surprise is that I'm actually blogging again. Good grief; not sure how I managed to go almost a month without doing that, sorry!

There are also knitting surprises to talk about. First of all, I've been working on something for DD1's upcoming birthday. She wanted me to use the "Errol" pattern from the Harry Potter-themed "Charmed Knits" book (which I have made before with much difficulty but now have my notes from that project to make it vastly easier now) to make a "Hedwig" owl. And so, I have:

(about a month ago)

(what it looks like now, minus the beak, which is done but I forgot to photograph it)

I bet she'll love it.

I also made a cardigan for Sylvie, owner of Lettuce Knit, who had a birthday recently. Earlier in the year she had given me a gift of yarn out of the blue, so I thought it was only fitting that I use it to make something for her. :) I had some of the same yarn in a few other colours, left over from a gorgeous shawl I did a few years ago, and the combination of all that yarn was just enough (seriously, I had nothing left of one of the colours when all was said and done) to do the Hap Cardigan, which I wanted an excuse to make. :) It comes from the same issue of Knit Now as my Stippling blanket, and I think it's really beautiful. Especially in these colours, which suit Sylvie bee-yew-tifully:

back

front

I guessed at the size, but apparently I'm a good guesser because it fit her perfectly. I was ever so pleased.:)

I also finished my husband's birthday socks:

This was a challenge, because about two thirds through the second sock, the colourway pattern changed. Not a huge amount, but definitely enough that I had to start doing some strategic chopping-and-reattaching of yarn in order to end up with vaguely identical socks. I hate that.

And also, I've been working on my mom's Christmas present, the Maja shawl. Here it was a month ago:

But by now it's almost all done - I finally blocked it this afternoon:

Finally, I started something for DD3's birthday, which is coming up in August:

I'm not sure at this point whether I like the lack of good contrast between the two colours, so I may yet frog it. But I adore the pattern - it's Lady Emmeline, by Holly Yeoh (I love her stuff), and it's from the same issue of Petite Purls as my Flutterby Tam pattern.

More coming; hopefully way sooner than this post took!

Socks

So, in other project news, I finished off my first 'Starry Night' sock:

But then I realised DH's birthday was coming in two months, so I thought I'd get a jump on his present:

(sock #2 has been started since this shot was taken)

I just love the way this stuff stripes up. It's the unfortunately-discontinued Regia "Twin Color" yarn, in the colourway "Paul Color" (#07317). Solid, thick colour striping. The transition between the stripes is intentionally fuzzy, which I'm not a huge fan of (in this colourway, I think it would look better with crisp, clean demarcations), but I still like it a lot a lot.

Currently I'm storing the sock project for DH underneath my Starry Nights sock project in the same project bag, in the hopes that DH won't notice it at all.