Merry *sniff* Christmas

The Christmas knitting is all done, the baking is tucked safely away, the fridge and pantry groan with abundance and our little tree shelters a select trove of presents.  But one extra gift has come to me in the form of a nasty head cold. 

It arrived yesterday, on the first day of my holiday, and seems firmly entrenched on my head this Christmas Eve day.  There'll be no family celebration for me tonight as a head cold is not the sort of thing I want to re-gift.

I hope you and yours are healthy, warm, safe and happy this Christmas.  And that you have no head-colds. 

Christmas Crazies

Christmas is crazy making time.  There's just too much of it.  Too much to do, too many "shoulds", and too little light to keep me energized.  I've tried to pare away the shoulds but it's a constant struggle to keep them from creeping back in. 

This week I stressed myself making sure my Christmas knitting got done.  First up, I bit the bullet, bought the yarn and finished off the fingerless gloves, Susie's Reading Mitts.

I bought two balls  of the Rowan Kid Classic so I can use the extra yarn to make myself a pair of mittens to match my lovely hat.  One ball would have put me right back where I was with regards to stash busting.  That's a good justification, I think...

Then came a pair of socks, which were so much fun to knit as the yarn is Fleece Artist merino. 

I love these socks.  The color is like a juicy fruit (too bad my poor photography doesn't do it justice) and I'm very pleased with the design I threw together.  All the elements flow nicely one into the other. 

Finally, I just finished these gloves today.

They are for my grandmother who had a very specific requests.  Her eyesight is poor, so they couldn't have any busy patterns.   Most gloves such as Selbu ones put a snowflake on the back of the hand and then some small pattern on the palm.  They also generally include patterning up the fingers.  None of that would work for grandma though, so my solution was to keep the same design on the front and back of the gloves.  This also means that each glove can be worn on either hand.  This could ultimately save wear and tear on the gloves.

 

It's a lot of fun to just plug and play with different design elements to come up with something unique.  The cuff is from Nancy Bush's Folk Knitting in Eastonia, the blue wrist pattern is an old fair isle one that I pulled from somewhere, and the snowflake is from the Selbuvotter book.

Personally, these gloves are too sweet for my tastes.  They look like grandma gloves, but that's a good thing since that's who their for!  Another instance of the best gift knitting is happens when we don't suit ourselves.

So that was it for the original gift knitting list and I'm done two weeks before Christmas.  Hooray for me!  And what will I do with that extra time you ask?

I started another pair of fingerless gloves as a stocking stuffer for Luke of course!  Bring on the Christmas crazies!