The Holidays are almost here! Do you know what you're knitting?

Only seven more weeks (OMG is that correct?) until Christmas! Do you know what you're knitting and giving as gifts this year?  I have so many nephews and nieces I have to start knitting for the next year right after Christmas. 

Well this year as always, I have procrastinated and now am behind on my gift projects. I've been concentrating solely on making items for the Pre-Black Friday Holiday Bazaar that I'm participating in that I have completely neglected my family's projects.  My consolation is if my items don't sell then I can give them as gifts, which in my book is a win-win situation.

Last year's gifts for the fam were felted slippers - I made twenty-two pairs and was still mailing off slippers in March of this year. They were such a big hit that I have back orders that I still haven't filled.  So this coming weekend will probably be devoted to back order items and finishing those pesky unfinished projects hidden in my upstairs closet (you know the old saying..."out of sight, out of mind").  Well that's where they've been for a couple of years, out of mind - but not anymore, it's time they saw the light of day once again and finally get finished - no more putting it off...well that's the plan anyway.  Can you tell I'm trying to psych myself up for this endeavor?  Is it working?  Not really...but I know it must be done.

So last night I went through the bag I had hidden away upstairs and found that I had no reason to be intimidated - there seemed to only be crochet projects in the bag and only two knitted caps that I cleary had intended to give as a gift but never did.  Apparently this is my MO, I get excited about a new hat pattern, knit it, and then squirl it away in a bag in the back of the closet.  Well no more - these cute little caps will find a new home, once I make a nice matching scarf or fingerless gloves to go with them. So I pulled them from their hiding place and right now have them lined up across the back of my couch settled on styrofoam heads like the one you see here that a friend of mine is letting me borrow to display them at my table during the holiday bazaar.  They look really kind of cool - but my son thinks that I've really gone off the deep end when he saw the heads sitting on the back of the couch with all these hats on them!  He says I'm turning into a knit-a-holic, and that's a bad thing? 

Well it looks like this year, hats and scarves and/or fingerless gloves are on the agenda for the fam - my first attempts at making hats was when I first began to knit several years ago. I only knew how to work on straight needles and had to sew a seam up the back of my hats. Well I certainly hope that I've advanced a little since then.  When I discovered patterns that showed you how to make hats without seams using circular needles I was doing the happy dance - my hats now look so much better without the seam going up the back - as my mother (who was a seamstress that did piece work for a big manufacturing company) would attest I'm a terrible seamstress and I am very happy not to have to sew anything if I can help it.  Thank goodness for circular needles!

So I'd like to hear from you about what's on your needles for the holiday gift giving season, post a comment and tell me what about your favorite pattern or item you like to give as gifts.

Rolled brim skull cap - 1st time using
circular needles

back view: 1st time decreasing on double-pointed
needles (dpns)

So you CAN teach an old knitter new tricks!

So I was on Ravelry yesterday trying to scope out a new knitting circle to join.  Because I live in between Seattle and Tacoma a lot of the groups are located either in the South end or the North end and poor me is stuck in between with no place to go.  So I happened across a forum that has a knitting group "The Renton Knitters" that meets locally (well Renton local) once a week and I figured that was going to be as close as I was gonna get.  So I joined the forum and asked if I could join their knitting circle. 

I'm happy to report that they were very welcoming and it just so happened that they were meeting tonight (last night) in Kent!  Well I was exstatic to be joining a new knitting group - they were even showing a few new techniques that I just so happened to want to learn - knitting two socks at the same time, toe-up socks (two at a time no less), and the magic cast-on - being a self-taught knitter some techniques are not so easy to learn by reading instructions and looking at pictures. 

I prepared my knitting bag with what I thought I would need and made my way to the designated location.  It was a small group - a few people had already left by the time I made it there at 8:40 p.m.  But those that were still there welcomed me and I'm sorry to say that I never did get to learn everyone's name - but hopefully next Wednesday I will get introduced to everyone and will be happy to remember their names.

So the lesson was quick and seemed to be easy, well anything is easy when you have someone standing right there instructing you on what to do.  But I've been wanting to learn how to knit two socks for a while and I was eager to learn this technique, I only hoped that I would remember what I learned when I got home.  I so didn't want to go back to knitting one sock at a time on double pointed needles (dpns) or even circular if I could help it, because everyone knows that knitting one sock at a time (even on circular needles) is very time consuming and from my own experience they take so long that I end up not even doing the second sock - I have at least two different socks still on dpns that have not seen the light of day for a very long time and forget about starting a second one!

So I listened diligently and followed the magic cast-on instructions from Knitty and with guidance from the instructor, I had two toe-up socks started on my needles - how cool is that?  I couldn't wait to try this new technique out on this really cool yarn [Rowan - Calmer 75% cotton, 25% acrylic/microfibre 50g/175yds] I bought about a year ago intending to make a pair of socks for my nephew - at that time was two years old - but never got around to it, well now he's three and I still intend to make him his socks and now I can make them both at the same time.

I went home excited to put my new knowledge to work and after much trial and error, because of course I couldn't remember all the instruction and I kept having to pull my work apart I finally got the toes started and at 12:59 a.m. I finally put my work down and called it a night. Here is what I've got so far:
 


Yep those two triangular shapes are the beginning of
a pair of toe-up socks!