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!

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.