I swore this year (as I swear every year) that I wasn’t going to knit anyone gifts this year, but my Christmas present idea for my mom (who is awesome) fell through and suddenly I had knit half of a pair of mittens for her. Oops.
They are the Keefely Mittens from Handknit Holidays (my favorite knitting book ever) and they are made of Classic Elite Lush, which I’ve never worked with before but is completely delightful. There’s angora in it and they are just super soft with such a nice halo. I’m also using them to practice knitting colorwork with two hands, which I just learned from the Philosopher’s Wool website – there’s a great video – and I’m going to use this technique on the Wisconsin Heartwarmer, so I’m practicing. I’m not quite as good as it yet – my colorwork is bumpier than usual – but it’s not bad and I’m hoping it will block out.
I’m also knitting a baby blanket for one of my bosses – she’s due on January 2nd and she’s amazing. There is an exception to Selfish Knitting if the person is a brand new human infant or is in the process of producing or acquiring a brand new human infant.
You can’t really see it because it’s all clubbed up on the circular needle, but it is the Pinwheel Baby Blanket (from Knitalong) and it’s going to be totally cute. I have 13 skeins of Plymouth Happy Feet in colorway 21. So far I’ve knit almost six of them (held doubled). They don’t know what type of baby they are having, but they’re doing the nursery in a jungle theme, and I think this will work for either a girl jungle baby or a boy jungle baby.
To counterbalance all of the knitting for other people I have started knitting up some of my birthday stash. Those of you playing along at home may have noticed that I bought a skein of Gingerbread Dudette the week before my birthday and then received another one from Jorah. They are surprisingly different dye lots, but both beautiful and I wanted to knit some stockings for myself. I’m knitting them at the same time from both ends of the ball and switching from one to another ball every row.
I’m doing them toe up so I can make them as tall as possible. It is making for a fussy tangled mess, but I think they look great and I’m really excited.
I was planning on finishing these before I started anything else, but then this happened:
The socks that I knit for my sister were so delightful I wanted some for myself, so these are Heelless Sleeping Socks (with heels and inside out) for myself out of Gail’s Autumn Joy. I love, love, love how this is knitting up. It’s going quite fast too, because I just want to knit it all of the time.
I also finished the MacIntosh Socks last week and they are just super comfortable to wear and I love the colors.
They are my new pattern; Stock Socks. Like a chef uses stock as a base for a delicious soup, this pattern is a base for a great pair of socks. I like them plain too though – it really shows off the pretty sock yarns I like!
