The one official Christmas gift

Technically, it's a thank you gift that I foolishly offered to my makeup board Secret Santa (SS) which she gladly accepted. Otherwise, I am officially wisely refusing to knit any x-mas gifts this year. If I make any, they'll be quick & very small (eg baby-sized).


Pattern: Rainy Day Socks
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in pale pink (my SS said she likes pink)
needles: size 3 KP circs
no mods

I went with relatively quick and fairly easy. I made Tapmouse laugh 'cause at the Monday lunch knitting group, I threw sock 1 to another knitter who wore the same size shoes as my SS to see if they would fit. Being a good knitter, she lined them up next to her foot to verify that the socks were long enough although I did already plan to wash them before sending.


I find it ironic that while I recently bought a bunch of brown yarn, I'm currently knitting in mostly blue.

Top left is Monkey2's sock. She picked the blue Crystal Palace Merino 5 while we were at the Purlescence Pajamarama sale. Yes, I dragged her cute little patootie with me at 6 am that morning and royal blue is very much her color.

Top right is the start of my Waterfall sock. Not too motivated still despite the fact that these are on size 3 dpns. While winding the skein, I found a knot approximately a third of the way through and not at a more convenient spot like smack halfway through or a quarter way through where I have a decent hope that I would finish with that quarter section to spare. Oh well, hopefully I won't need to get to that section 'til right at the toe.

At the bottom is the start of the back section of my Grace sweater. Most of this was knit at last week's Tea and Sympathy at Purlescence. This time w/o the monkeys in tow. I hope to get more of this sweater done this month as I'm going to do an experiment and not knit any socks this month...with the exception of Monkey2's second sock, of course. Which means that while I started the Waterfalls sock, it's going to go nowhere this month.

The other reason for the temporary sock knitting ban is that I joined another sweater KAL. I'll be redirecting the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran I bought at some online yarn store sale (sadly, I forget which one) that was slated for the Cardigan for Arwen. I find that I am way too lazy to do the math adjust the short row shaping on the sleeves since the pattern has the same sleeve for all sizes.

Last but not least, here's my birthday yarn from tapmouse. It's a superwash merino/mohair blend from Liisu Yarns with the lovely name of Waves of Memories. This like my other merino/mohair blends will be aquiring a fine ripening in my stash 'til I find a pattern that will befit its loveliness.

Still procrastinating

Over the weekend, my self-imposed stress started to affect my sock knitting, so I decided to do a quick little project and knitted the Drops Alaska headband (once known as the Panta headband) in the orphan Crystal Palace Taos Painted Desert (#7) skein I bought from the Creative Accents closing sale. I initially bought the orphan skein to try yet another Calorimetry, but I'm happy that the Drops headband fits without any messing with the pattern at all.

So after I got the headband done, I re-cast on for the Rainy Day socks that are slated for a makeup board friend of mine. I first cast on using US size 4 needles not paying attention to the fact that the metric size stated in the pattern 3.25 mm is actually size 3. So of course, the sock was way too big. Thankfully the sportweight yarn (Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino in light pink) makes for a quick knit. I won't get to the second sock 'til after T-day, but at least they'll be done well in time before x-mas. This'll actually be my only x-mas knitted gift 'cause I didn't want the undue stress of knitting for others on a rigid deadline.

But the real reason for my procrastination post is that I wanted to thank Carrie for the great STR Raven lightweight mill end in what we believe is the Pallas Athena colorway. She managed to snag this skein at the BMFA Destash sale. The other possibility is Rauen, but I don't think the red in this is red enough.

It may be darker than the other Pallas Athenas around, but it's still awesome. So thank you so much!

And since I may be too busy/too tired on YPF to post, I'm showing the totally adorable XS-Firestarter kit I got from Yarnissima. I opted for the surprise kit and so I ended up w/some Opal. (I'll have to pull out her note again to get the deets on which colorway this is.) Too, too cute.