Another Christmas Knitting Finish

I never did find the same ornament pattern I'd lost, but this is a pretty cute replacement. If I ever do another one, I'll use sport or fingering weight instead of the worsted the pattern calls for and make the neck a few stitches wider.

Still no progress on the slippers because I was feeling way too pregnant and achy to knit after taking the kids to a Christmas craft party and karate yesterday. Maybe tonight...

The Christmas Knitting Continues...

I finished Heath's hat at 3am Sunday morning, despite the fact that I hadn't even cast on until after midnight. My plan was just to get it started, but I did the first five rows the pattern and then the purl rows, and then thought I'd just keep going until it was time to decrease the top, and then the top only needed eleven more rounds, and by then I'd totally lost track of what time it really was and was forcing myself to ignore the fact that I've got little kids who expect Mommy to actually move in the morning....

Alex insists that it's far too girly for her brother and that she should wear it instead. At least she spotted the hat in my knitting bag and not her slippers, which I'd hoped to finish after she went to bed last night. Instead, I gave in to exhaustion and went to sleep myself about ten minutes after I got the kids all chased off to bed.

The day wasn't a total knitting loss -- I started the second Cape Cod Sock and a sock for hospital knitting (because it's finally sunk in that no matter what else happens, I am going to be spending some time in a hospital at the end of this pregnancy and may want something mindless to knit on.) I love toe up socks, but the figure-eight cast on is fiddly and I don't always get it right on the first (or second) try. So I tend to put off starting new ones. Now, I've got my Cape Cod sock for a simple project to work on while the kids are in the room, and the other one as an even simpler project to work on when I just want to have my hands moving.

As for the rest of the Christmas knitting... The needles I own won't cooperate with the laceweight yarn for the neck warmer, so that's on hold until I drive into town. I did find some yummy grey yarn in my stash yesterday, so I may go back up and dig that out to see if I can adjust the pattern for bigger yarn. It'd knit up faster and probably be warmer, so if the ruffle doesn't work I may just pick a nice lacy stitch pattern and work with that. My ornament patterns vanished sometime between 3am Sunday and yesterday afternoon. I know they just got picked up and put in with something else, but I can't find them and I can't print out another copy from the internet because of course I don't remember the name of the pattern I finally decided to use.

Today's goal -- finish the slippers!

My Christmas List

Over the past day and a half, I've managed to put a very reassuring dent in my Christmas knitting list. DH's present, a helmet liner to wear hunting, is done and took a lot less time than I thought it would. Either that, or I squeezed in more knitting hours than I'd expected to. Whatever did the trick, it left me feeling a lot calmer about the rest of the knitting I still hope to get done.

I've decided not to tackle the wristwarmers for my sister, because they look difficult even before I add in the fact that the pattern's written in Norwegian. Maybe she'll get those next year. For now, I'm debating between two scarves I already have finished.

There's an ornament for the Knittingmothers exchange, which could be done in an hour or two if I used a simple pattern, but I really want to try that itty bitty aran stocking I found a pattern for...

There's a pair of slippers for Alex, which should go quickly. I had one almost half done this morning before I realized how impossibly far off the gauge was. Now that I've found the size dpns that pattern called for, I should be able to knit them in a few hours.

I want to make something for a friend who I swear bundles up more than anyone I've ever met in my life, so I'm hoping that the lacy little neckwarmer I found in InKnitters will knit up in time.

If I make something for Alex, I've gotta make something for Heath, so there's a hat pattern in the 2006 Knitting Pattern a Day Calendar and some yarn he picked out ages ago. How long can a hat take? And if I knit for the older two, I've got to knit for Quinn. Probably the basketweave toddler socks from my to-knit list.

21 days till Christmas...five projects left on the list....it could happen...

dreaming of sock yarn...

I dreamed of soft merino sock yarn last night, after finishing the first of my Cape Cod socks. The wool was soft and yummy in the skein and to work with, but I wasn't prepared for how it was going to feel to slip my foot into the finished sock. I was just hoping it would fit right, and suddenly my foot was wrapped in this heavenly warm cocoon of gorgeous yarn. My husband might have thought I was a little nuts when I made him try it on so he could feel for himself why I need more sock yarn from Knitpicks even though he seems to think I have enough yarn already. Once the second sock is done, I've only got two more skeins of this wonderful merino to play with. In Paper Doll, the colors I was dreaming of last night.





I can already tell the second sock is going to interfere with my Christmas Knitting.

Craft Warehouse has racks and racks full of fluffy novelty yarn on sale for $1.99 a skein, which we discovered totally by accident yesterday when the kids and I stopped to price yarn for Christmas presents, just in case I couldn't knit what I need to finish with stash yarn.



The pink eyelash is for the bodice of this. The red stuff is for a scarf for me, because I absolutely love the color and was intrigued by the texture of their sample scarf. The black and white zebra is to swatch and see how it would work with a scarf pattern I want to try. And I've got my fingers crossed that when we go back up to town next week, I can find something that'll work for a Vegan Fox. There were lots of shades of brown in different textures, so I'm hopeful.

And if I wasn't sock crazed enough by the merino, Socks Socks Socks finally came in at the library. I've checked this book out before, but now that I know I can actually knit socks, I'm looking at it through new eyes, thinking I could knit that and that and that and that.... I definitely need to get my own copy of this one. I was so absorbed in it last night and this morning, I totally forgot I also brought home Loop de Loop.

The Christmas knitting is looking less and less like fun....