And now for something completely selfish

Socks. For myself. Nevermind the fact that I still have to finish my MIL's afghan and rip out the mitts for Dex and make them bigger. I stopped and knit something for me. It feels pretty good.

Finishing up every thing for Christmas

I haven't posted in a while because I've been too busy knitting. Here are some pics of every thing I've gotten done for Christmas. All that's left is a pair of socks for the man, a mystery square lapghan for MIL and the picture calendars for the grandparents. Every thing else is done! Woohoo!

Dyeing

I recently read some Ravelry posts about dyeing with black beans. Until then I had no idea you could use black beans for dye. So of course I had to dye some yarn with beans. This is what I ended up with. It's a lovely shade of greyish blue. Almost exactly the color of my daughter's eyes. I think she might need a hat knit out of it even though it was supposed to be a pair of socks for Clay.

Test knitting

Every once in a while I volunteer to test knit a new pattern. I just did this for the supercool hat Twisted and I'm in love. It was incredibly quick to knit- only took 3 hours start to finish! And it's cabled and thick and warm and gorgeous. I'm saying to hell with holiday knitting and knitting one up for myself in Malabrigo this weekend.

Skulls

There seems to be two themes this Christmas as far as my knitting goes. There's the owls which I've already shared and then there's skulls. Mr Knitterrific requested an orange and blue skully hat for Christmas. It's knit and already been claimed by him. Then the little monkey children requested hats just like Daddy's. Boy1 wanted the exact same thing while The Girl wanted green and blue. Now I'm wondering whether the baby needs a skully of his very own...

You can see in the orange one where my floats are too tight. If I'm going to continue doing colorwork I really should look for a tutorial and make sure I'm doing it properly. Fortunately, 4 & 6 year olds aren't too picky when it comes to my knitting prowess.

A little break from holiday knitting

I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I needed to get done so I took a break. I'm doing a trade with a friend of mine. She gets this supercool hat for his son and I get pj bottoms for my 2 older kids. She asked for greens and blues so I dug through my stash for worsted weight wools on those colors and plugged them into a random stripe generator. This fishy is the result.

Nephews

I have 7 brothers and sisters and 2 stepsisters. This means there are A LOT of kids in my family. Fortunately quite a few of those kids are now adults themselves so I don't have to wory about gifts for them but there are currently 10 kids aged 11 to 1 months who will be expecting gifts this Christmas. 6 are girls but I'm not talking about them today. I think I have their gifts figured out. It's the boys on my mind tonight. Not even all 4 of them, really, just the 2 older buys, ages 7 and 9.

I find older boys harder to get gifts. I have a 6 year old but since she's a fairly typical girl she's a completely different animal than these boys. I never know what to give them. This year I've decided on a boook and hand knit hat but even that is proving problematic. Will they bother reading the books? What kind of book would either of them be interested in? And in the case of the 7 year old, who's parents are very conservative, will he be allowed to read it?

I've found a book I think Ryan, the 9 yo, will enjoy. The Mysterious Benedict Society is full of smart, compassionate children who have some very entertaining adventures. I haven't found the right book for Christian yet but I have a bit of time to go. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Now, the hats. I have a few to choose from for them since hats are one of my favorite things to knit. There's that cool grey and dark turquoise skully hat, the green and orange mosaic, or the very colorful green and harvest seamed hat. I was going to knit a Spidey hat and an R2D2 hat for them but have run out of steam and just don't feel like dealing with the colorwork involved. I could do another mosaic in different colors or even another skully since those were easy enough. I just don't want to have to fuss with and try out a new hat pattern with lots of color changes and add ons. What do you think the boys should get?

Owls every where

Owls are the big thing with my girl right now. Her cousin is into them, too, and Zoe's interest is in large part due to a serious case of hero worship. Because of this my knitting is overrun by the cute little things. There's owl sweaters, hats, mitts, even toys.

The little toy owls, Hedwig and Pigwidgeon, are the Wise Owl pattern from Lion Brand. Free pattern, cute and easy. The sweaters are for my boys and there will be a third coming along for my girl. She insisted she needed a Hedwig sweater for Christmas so hers will be white. I used Kate Davies' very very cute Owlet pattern. Once I get through all the Christmas knitting I think I'll even make myself one using her OWLS pattern. Her patterns inspired other designers to come up with the Who? and Owling patterns which I used for my 11 year old niece's gift.

Teacher's gifts

My kids have some great teachers this year so they need great gifts. I decided on a hat for each of them.

The blue hat is the Hurricane hat knit with Malabrigo in Jewel blue. It's the bestest, softest yarn ever. If I could afford it I'd knit with nothing but this stuff.

The maroon hat is the Butterfly hat, also in Malabrigo. The pagoda color.

Home made holidays

This year my goal is to make all of the Christmas gifts we give. I'm tired of the crazy consumer driven rush and would like to boycott gift giving all together but doubt that would go over well. So I'm making every thing this year.

I'm new to this whole blogging thing so my pics and posts will be scattered and crazy until I figure it all out.