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?