Christmas Knitting

A few photos of knit Christmas presents!

Brandy requested a kitty hat, modeled here by me:

Cabled Cat Ears Hat (mine ravelled here),

knit in Loops & Threads Cozy Wool, Granite colorway

These seemed to go with the hat:

 Cat Wrist Warmers (mine ravelled here),

knit in Knit Picks Mighty Stitch in Ash and Cascade Heritage Solids in Pink

I gave a couple of presents from this post, the Gummy bear socks and the Turn a Square hat. Deanny looks awesome in the hat.

Turn a Square hat (mine ravelled here),

knit in leftover Noro Silk Garden in colorway 252 

and Knitpicks Swish Worsted in the Cobblestone Heather colorway

And then I went on the Book of Faces and saw this!

Holly's wearing her hat and cowl (and I'm going to believe she's wearing her mittens, too). I love love love seeing photos of knitting in the wild. It's great to see people wearing knit gifts going about their day-to-day lives.

My nephew went shopping with us one day and picked out yarn he liked and requested a hat. When a junior in high school requests knitwear, you can be sure I'm going to oblige. I can't predict how long this will last.

Squarshy hat (mine ravelled here),

knit in Loops & Threads Facets

I hope you had a Merry Whatever, too!

Santa Mouse

It's been a long time with no posting. The longer I go, the more I begin to doubt whether I should still blog, or whether anyone reads it, or whether I need to catch up on All The Things.

That's silly. Let's just talk about something fairly recent.

I made a Santa Mouse.

Santa Mouse (mine ravelled here),

knit out of random bits and bobs

Family lore has it that my oldest sister checked out Santa Mouse, Where Are You? from the library as a first grader. From that point forward, Santa Mouse has been a tradition in my family. Because I am a pusher, it is now a tradition in Andrew's family and in one of our little circles of friends. Remember?

Santa Mouse travels with Santa in his sleigh. In the book, he accidentally falls from the sleigh, and he is able to make his way to a home to wait for Santa because he sees that home's Christmas lights glinting off a yellow ribbon on a package. As an expression of his immense relief at being rescued, he now leaves tiny packages nestled in the Christmas tree, all tied with yellow ribbon. Not gold ribbon, mind you. YELLOW. This is important. Do not screw up the Santa Mouse ribbon or a hole will develop in the space-time continuum and you'll find yourself playing the accordion in a pizza parlor for the rest of your life.

I briefly had thoughts of knitting Many, Many Santa Mice to give away at Christmas. Then I realized they were fiddly and not all that fun. December is too stressful and busy to be knitting projects that are fiddly and not all that fun. This Santa Mouse is nestled in our Christmas tree, and I'm glad he's not lost in the snow as in the book.

I hope your traditions bring you happiness, too!

Sad Christmas Socks

The Sad Christmas Socks are finished and dry.

Sad Christmas socks (ravelled here),

knit in dyed-by-me Universal Yarn Ready To Dye 

Superwash Merino Sock Weight

They photographed better than they look in person. The red is stronger in the photo. They're not terrible by any means, nor are they what I wanted. Gift knitting!

Happy Christmas Socks

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted. Rather than get bogged down by what I haven't posted about, I'm just going to post what's happening now.

And what's happening now is HAPPY CHRISTMAS SOCKS.

Happy Christmas Socks (mine ravelled here),

knit in Cascade Heritage Solids in 5656 Christmas Green

and Knitpicks Stroll Tonal in Gypsy (discontinued, 

which seems dumb since it's a lovely red)

These are Happy Christmas Socks, as contrasted with Sad Christmas Socks. Those bad boys are still drying, so you'll just have to imagine a striped sock with gray, a too dark almost wine-y red, and a light green. Very sad. Luckily, my mom likes them, so I'll give them to her.

The Sad Christmas Socks are knit out of yarn I dyed myself. I'm currently 4 classes into a 6-class yarn dyeing extravaganza. Self-striping yarn is a pain in the ass to dye. Now I know.*

Sad Christmas Socks are actually attempt #2 at making myself Happy Christmas Socks. The first attempt was equally terrible.** It, too, had colors just off enough to make me yearn for someone who understood that Christmas is bright red and bright green and has nothing at all to do with the color salmon.

Nothing happy has ever had even a passing acquaintance with the color salmon, in my opinion.

The answer, which was obvious as soon as I stopped being lazy, was to stripe it myself. And so I am.

Third time's a charm.

*As if I needed another reason to buy Felici. I have a sickness, and it is stripy.***

**Poor Mom got those socks, too. I wonder if she's just too polite to agree with me when I say I've knit really unattractive socks.

***Oh, for the love of wool, they're having a sale on remaining Felici. I cannot allow myself to order more. I'm two balls away from Crazy Yarn Hoarder.

WIP Ornaments

I like to make Christmas ornaments. It started with a cabled ball, then went completely insane, got ahold of myself, then I found a pattern for some awesome knitting-in-an-ornament ornaments, then I made the dove that was stuffed way later than it should have been, and then there were the knitting baskets, then I made some felt ornaments for a change of pace. Last year I made a trillion little socks and a Packers hat. (Packer's? Is it possessive? It's a sign of how little I care about football that I can't be bothered to look it up.) There are even more ornaments than the ones I listed* on my Ravelry page. Suffice it to say, I've made quite a few ornaments, mostly knit, but also painted and decaled and glittered.... 

This year, I thought I might not make any ornaments. A girl has to pace herself. There cannot be an infinite number of ornaments on a finite amount of Christmas tree limbs.

But, you know, maybe I'd take a quick search of Ravelry just to see if there was anything that really spoke to me. But there wouldn't be. 'Cause I wasn't making ornaments this year.

WIP ornaments (mine ravelled here),

knit in teeny-tiny bits of scrap

These are so fast**--just a tiny bit of knitting on size 0 needles, glue wooden beads on the ends of toothpicks (I had those from the knitting-in-an-ornament ornaments already), transfer knitting to toothpicks, wind a bit of the yarn into a ball, and judiciously apply some superglue, hence my last post, and wind some fishing line through the ball to make a loop for hanging.

I know that every speck of the Internet that is in any way associated with making things is telling you that you have time to make something before Christmas. My friends. that may be a dirty, dirty lie. You do not need to make a damn thing. Sit on the couch and read a book if you want. Eat a Christmas cookie. Stare at the lights on the tree and lose track of time. Listen to the Space Cowboy/Lady Gaga song "Christmas Tree." Do whatever you want that makes you happy. I mean it. Take care of yourself. The holidays can be rough.

However, if you want to make something, I recommend these.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

*in this very long, linky paragraph that no one really wanted to read

**I'm using a knitter's sense of time. These aren't as fast as placing an amazon order. These took me way, way less than an evening. Way less. Seriously way less. 

Tiny Socks Everywhere

In our family, Santa Mouse comes along with Santa. He leaves a present in the tree for each family member. Each is tied with yellow ribbon. The tradition started when my oldest sister read about him in a library book years ago.

The tradition is important to me, and I've introduced it to Andrew's family and some friends. This year, Mom had little wooden sock blockers made, and I told her I'd help her knit socks for them. These became our Santa Mouse gifts.

It ended up that Mom didn't have time to knit the socks, and since I have scrap sock yarn from now until eternity forever and ever amen, I knit them.

It would be fine with me if I never knit another tiny sock again.

Hang Them With Care

Note to self: It's wise to finish Christmas gift knitting early for two reasons. 1) I have lots less time to knit during November and December than normal, what with wrapping and card writing and attending holiday parties with people I don't like.  2) Inevitably, I end up doing projects I didn't have on my list. 

In that spirit, I just finished Christmas stockings for two of my nephews.  My sister had knit stockings for her and her husband shortly after they were married, and she asked me to knit one for her firstborn when he came around.  I did, but I was new to knitting and didn't do a very good job.  (Contrast color?  We don't need no stinking contrast color!) Her second was born in May, and I decided I couldn't face knitting him a subpar one to match his brother's nor allowing the first one to hang by the new one.

So I knit two.

My sister is confident that she's not having a third child.

I'm a third child.  My parents thought they were done after sister #2, too.  I'M JUST SAYING.

I told her that if she does have a third, I'm going to reknit all three.  It's very clear that these two are a set. Doing a third with different colors wouldn't fit.

When we were kids, there were three elves that sat under our Christmas tree.  (Well, four.  Elmo was a light-up elf.   We're apparently really into elves.  They do all the real work of Christmas anyway.)  One elf wore red and white stripes, one wore green and white.  They had the same freaky oversized plastic face and splindly body. 

Do you know what my elf looked like?  He was green and stuffed, half the size of the other two, and looked a bit like a troll/elf lovechild who would be comfortable riding a (very small) Harley.  Every year, we put the two elves that matched under the tree and then we put the third, weird troll-like elf under there.  It was always clear to me that they had bought the first two together and then tried to figure out what to do when I came along later.

I'll knit them again if I need to.  Don't worry, Hypothetical Child Three: I've got your back.

A Very Tiny Bit of the Bug

If you were around last year, you may remember that I had a bit of a falling down with regard to knitted Christmas ornaments.  This year I decided to make only one ornament, which would be given to my in-laws.  Last Christmas, they gave me a kit with yarn and patterns for ornaments, so they deserved to get the first ornament I made from that kit.

It's so adorable that they only reason I've been able to abstain from knitting more is that I'm currently obsessed by these.

Christmas Stockings Complete!

Now I don't need to feel sheepish (get it, SHEEPISH?!) that the pets have handknit stockings and the humans don't.