The swelling of the ego

So big news right off the bat - I have actually finished my 12-in-12 challenge! 42 days early! (The significance of that number is not lost on me.) And in fact, I went beyond the goal, because I have actually designed and submitted thirteen new designs this year, and am even working on another one. Plus, I recently submitted another design on top of that which I'm not counting towards the challenge because I did all the design work a few years ago and just hadn't submitted it anywhere until now. So I am feeling very heady with productivity and designerishness right now.

Another thing that's inflating my head is one of the two designs I sent off yesterday - the mittens I made for our daycare provider. For several days after I finished them, every time I looked at them, I was struck anew with how gorgeous they are and what a genius I must be to have invented them. Fortunately, this incredible level of conceit (which feels disturbingly un-Canadian) is starting to wear off a bit, otherwise I would be at real risk of landing myself in the hospital with a wrenched spine caused by excessive patting of myself on the back.

The good knitting news continues to roll, however - I'm pleased to say that I continue to make headway on the holiday gift knitting. As already mentioned, I finished the gift for our daycare provider, and I also finished the socks for my older BIL:

(horrible photo, unfortunately, but these days there isn't a lot of sunlight time at home during which to take shots)

That brings my total count to nine completed gifts (although I mustn't forget to steam my dad's hat), out of thirteen. And the tenth - the second pair of socks for my mom - should be finished shortly. Here they are a few days ago:

They're much farther ahead now - the second sock has a completed heel and foot, and I've begun the leg.

Once those are done, I will have only my brother's hat (sadly, I have yet to hear back from him about his head measurement), DD3's cardigan, and DH's sweater. These three projects are all tricky in their own way, particularly the cardigan and the sweater, which face the very real possibility of yarn insufficiency. So I'm definitely not out of the woods yet. But things are looking very decent, I think. I have certainly not given up hope of having time to make a few more things, so that DD1 and DD2 will also have handknits under the tree on Christmas morning.

Some progress

So in my last post, I called my dad's hat the eighth of thirteen knitted holiday gifts on my to-do list. Welllll...turns out I can't count very well. Because although I do have thirteen gifts planned, the hat was only the seventh completed one. Then I brought myself down to six when I gifted my BIL's socks to him for his birthday. Arg.

But things are picking up. Because I've finished my younger BIL's dress socks:

Hat heels, of course. :)

I'm really pleased with them. Of course it's hard to tell because they're black, but they're very tidy around the edges of the gussets. I've been using a different method for the gussets lately - I use a combination of short rows and increases when knitting them so that when I go to do the leg and the foot parts, virtually all the stitches I'll need running up the gusset sides are already there, no picking up needed, except for just a few right at the top of the instep. This produces a stretchy gusset edge, which was lacking in the original version of the pattern, where the gusset shaping is done by decreases and the stitches are picked up at the side edges later.

But I digress.

I also started another pair of hat heel socks as a replacement for the ones I gave my older BIL for his birthday. I've gotten as far as finishing the hat part (no earflaps yet) for the first heel. No picture yet, but I'm using this Stroll sock yarn that I got from Knit Picks a while back:

That's the same yarn (but different colour, obviously, called "Caper") as I used in those black socks above. I love it - it's deliciously squishy and smooth. Really gotta get myself some more of that.

I also finished the knitting on our daycare provider's mittens, and now just have to block them and weave in the ends. I did the second mitten a bit differently from the first one to make it a bit taller and the thumb a bit wider, to (hopefully) fit better. That means I had to rip back bits of the first mitten and re-knit it to match the second one, but the result was worth it. One of the women at my office (also a knitter, so she knows what she's talking about), who has large-sized hands, tried one of them on with the new sizing, and she said they felt perfect. Hooray! I cannot begin to describe how giddily happy I am with this design. Whether it's accepted somewhere or I self-publish it, I am going to be so excited once I get to share it!

At any rate, I am now definitely finished seven of thirteen gifts, with the eighth very close to being done. I've also been swatching for my brother's hat, and am just waiting for him to measure his head circumference so I can know how many stitches to cast on.

My 12-in-12 challenge is going rather better, in terms of progress, than the holiday knitting. As promised, I sent off my tenth submission this week (not on Monday as I thought, but still, it's now on its way), which means I have just two more to go, with three designs pretty much ready to write up and send off once the issues I want open up. I've also got a fourteenth idea for a submission call I just found out about, and I'm planning to go yarn shopping for that later today.

And finally, some lovely news - my "Beloved" baby bonnet pattern, which appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of the absolutely superb Jane Austen Knits magazine, is now available for individual purchase at the Interweave online store: linkie.