Happy New Year, everyone! Aside from the travails of traveling, I had an excellent holiday with my family. I hope you had a wonderful time doing whatever makes you happy for the holidays.
Of course, the best part about making Christmas gifts for people is showing them off after you’ve given them (okay, maybe not the best part).
My mom specifically requested a scarf, as I mentioned before. She almost didn’t get it. I finished the scarf with plenty of time to spare, blocked it out, and decided that I wanted it for myself.
It’s so soft! And warm! And has such delicious drape!
Never fear, I was a good and dutiful daughter and gave her the scarf on Christmas morning. And managed to resist sneaking it into my luggage.
I also made an Ishbel for my friend Catherine as a belated birthday present, but then I forgot to take a full, finished object photo. But here’s the detail shot of the pretty yarn!
As I mentioned before, there was a lot of sock knitting over the holiday. Here’s one pair I finished, using Gherkin’s Bucket’s hand-dyed and hand-spun yarn.
A simple, toe-up pattern shows off the beautiful color variations without obscuring them. I especially like the effect that the handspun has on the solid stockinette portions; a sweet, heathering effect makes plain stockinette look awesome.
(Guess which sock was knit magic loop and which was knit on DPNs, hah!)
I also started another sock, using yarn from my “dealer”. This is Fresh from the Cauldron’s Bavarian sock base in her Pride and Prejudice and Zombies colorway.
I have an entire story in my head about how I was wearing my socks while walking the fields of Pemberley when I came upon a band of zombies. It’s much funnier in my head, I promise.
And finally, I’ve challenged myself to knit 6 adult-sized (read: for me) sweaters this year. That’s two months per sweater. This is totally doable. Ish.
My first sweater is Kate Davies’ Owls sweater. I’m taking a bit of a risk here, as the largest size is just slightly too small for me, but that’s the size I’m starting with. My thinking is that, since I tend to knit loosely and frequently have to go down a size in needles, if I knit in the recommended yarn on the recommended needles, the sweater should come out a bit on the large size, which is just what I need. Of course, I need to bother with putting my progress so far on some waste yarn and trying it on. There’s no point in continuing if the bottom is too small! Then I’ll have to do some math.
That’s what I’m up to right now. What projects have you finished or started so far in the new year?
Lovely scarf. I would have kept it. What does Mom need a scarf for, anyway? She lives in Florida. Oh, yeah, it gets cold here sometimes. Like now. Wishing I had a scarf!
The socks are fabulous, too. You always make the prettiest socks.
Good luck with the sweater challenge. That’s a lot of sweaters, but it totally is do-able! I’ve been eyeballing that Owls pattern, and I think I might take a stab at it eventually. It’s pretty far down in my queue, though. Sigh. There’s never enough time to knit all that we want.
Hopefully she’s wearing the scarf now during this cold snap. If not I may ask her to send it to me. 😀
I need a lot of sweaters! I’m thinking I can do the 6 with (hopefully) minimal fuss. Especially if I pick a lot of sweaters with fairly mindless stockinette, which is what Owls is at this point. 😉