Triumph!

The three-quarters of a skein of Silky Tweed that I needed to finish off DD1's ballet teacher's gift was FOUND. So I was able to complete it. Here it is blocking, upside-down as I always do so I can sew in the ends:

Here it is all finished, lying flat, with the front showing:

Lying flat with the back showing (I love mattress stitch; I would have knit it in the round, but the only 4.5mm circular I could find was being used for my brother's cardigan, so I had to resort to straights):

Being worn:

Being worn with the back pulled up a bit over my head:

I think she's going to love it. She's a redhead, so the colour will look fabulous on her.

Also found: the tenth ball of yarn I need to have enough for my brother's cardigan. This is the only holiday gift I have left to complete, so, despite the siren call of other projects, I am concentrating exclusively on the cardigan and am forging ahead.

The sleeves are finished:

And I'm making progress on the fronts. Like the sleeves, I'm knitting the fronts at the same time. I did, however, realise that I'm going to have to find a zipper for this thing somewhere.

No wait, I'm wrong - there is one more holiday gift left to finish: DD1's Ruby poncho/skirt. However, all that's left there is the sewing of the last seam and the weaving in of all the ends. Okay, also I need to attach some sort of flat band to the hem to stop it from rolling up. I have no idea how they managed to get the hem in the model garment in the book to not roll up while they were doing the photo shoot, because there just isn't enough garter stitch at the bottom to prevent it.

I also gave DD2's teacher's hat a good steaming so the top would be more smooth. It looks great.

And then in the middle of all this, I went to a charity knit night at my LYS. Thanks to the owner taking DD3 for pretty much the entire evening, I was able to cast on for a beret and get quite a bit done before we all packed up and went home. The next morning I finished it:

Pattern is Linaeus Beret by Jennifer Burke.

Also at the knit night, I discovered they had new sock yarn: "Sock Print", from Nova's Value Collection. 100g balls for just $7.99 each! And the colourways are great. I know it's close to Christmas (heck, how could I not know, what with the rising sense of panic), but I couldn't resist picking these up:

(that one is way more green in real life)

So...how's your holiday knitting coming along?

Prepping for Santa Day

• DD2's teacher's gift is finished! Here it is modelled on DD1, on whom it is obviously too big, but will still give you the idea of how it looks on a human head:
  
  
  side view
  
  
  
  
  top view
  
  
  
  
  front view
  
  
  
  
  I think I'm going to steam it first, though, before tagging it and wrapping it up, just to smooth out the top some.
  
  
  
• DD1's afternoon teacher's gift is finished! It used up all of my two skeins of Zara. And when I say all, I mean all. I had 18 inches left over, which will be used to affix the hang tag. Not a drop left. You can imagine how panicked I was as I approached the end of the second bootie!
  
  
  hat, from top
  
  
  
  
  hat, from side
  
  
  
  
  booties
  
  
  
  
  booties, 'in action'
  
  
  
  
  I made the set to fit when the child is about 9 months old, which is perfect, since that's when the weather will be getting cold again. As you can see, I did switch out the ribbing on the hat from 2x2 to 1x1, but I also added a ruffle. The ruffle is the "belle epoque" stitch pattern from Nicky Epstein's book, "Knitting on the Edge". I increased it only 4 times to 9 stitches per ruffle instead of the called-for 15. I then added the same ruffle to the booties to make it all look like a set. The ruffle on the booties is smaller; I increased only 3 times to 7 stitches per ruffle. I am very, very pleased with the whole thing.
  
  
  
• DD1's "Ruby" poncho/skirt is coming along well, I'm probably about 75% done the second half. The only problem is that I seem to be off in my stitch count. I'm going to have to sit down and see where I went wrong. I have a horrible feeling there will be a lot of frogging and re-knitting in my near future.
  
  
  
• I am also coming along with my brother's hooded cardigan - just about an inch, inch-and-a-half left to do on the sleeves and then I can get going on the front.
  
  
  
• I also realised that I should be giving a holiday gift to DD1's ballet teacher (a.k.a. my old ballet teacher). She has been admiring my ability to churn stuff out for a while now (yes, of course I bring my knitting to my daughter's dance lessons!) and recently lost her scarf when shopping at a mall. She asked if I could knit her a replacement, and of course she would pay me back (I wouldn't have accepted the money, but she offered). However, she ended up going back to the store she thought she lost it in and making a nuisance of herself to the staff until they actually bothered to look for her scarf...and she got it back. (Turns out it's actually a cowl.) She did, however, indicate that she would be interested in me making her another one, perhaps in brown?
  
  
  Since I needed a gift idea for her anyway, and since the holiday knitting is coming along pretty well, I figured I'd go for it. I have just enough brown Silky Tweed left over (about 1.75 skeins) from my midwife's scarf to make Eleanor, which has been in my queue for a while, so that seemed perfect.
  
  
  Until I couldn't find the three-quarters of skein that I'd finished off my midwife's scarf with!
  
  
  Seriously, it's nowhere. DH and I have checked all the logical places and a number of illogical places. I need that yarn, because I used up the full skein that I never ended up touching for the midwife gift, and I'm only this far along:
  
  
  
  
  
  Arrrrrrggggghhhh! Please send "finding" vibes.
  
  
  
• Finally, although it might seem strange to be getting things for myself this close to Christmas, I recently made an order that came in this week. The purpose of this order was to get the rest of the yarn I needed for a sample piece, and in order to reduce the shipping costs, I added a few things to the order that I wanted to get anyway. I got some sock yarn:
  
  
  
  
  
  Also got myself a book - Fairy Tale Knits by Alison Stewart-Guinee - and some knitting gadgetry - two yarn stranding finger guides and a cheapie yardage counter. And then, be still my beating heart, I also got Interweave's special issue, "Jane Austen Knits 2011". This is an unbelievable magazine. There are so many gorgeous things in there that I will actually knit, it's a real steal of a deal. My favourite is, hands-down (no pun intended), the Chawton Mittens. I LOVE THEM THEY MUST BE MINE.
  

So, generally speaking, things are going well. Therefore, if you'll excuse me, I have to go do some more knitting!