Gifts galore

I'm getting my Christmas tree today and I've been planning my Christmas gifts. Hopefully I'll be ready to give them when the big day comes!

First things first. Here's my Christmas gift to myself. You should never overlook yourself in all this holiday planning. I'm making the over-the-knee stockings from the book Handknit Holidays. The cable ribbing is what (supposedly) keeps them in place above the knee and the darker line you can see running down them is actually a little cable lace pattern. The lace runs down the back of them, mimicking a fancy stocking seam. I'm using Knit Picks Essentials sock yarn and it's treating me fine so far. I think I can get them both done by Christmas. I'm giving my aunts pretty lace scarves this year. One is getting the trellis scarf I finished a while ago. I bought some beads to add to the ends of the points to fancy it up a little. I have another skein of the same yarn so my other aunt is getting a similar scarf that I recently started. The pattern is from the cathedral lace afghan in the Interweave Holiday issue and I added a wavy edging.

Next up is a blanket made of old, felted sweaters. It's really big and I haven't started sewing the squares together. I'm kind of afraid to start because I'm worried it will be harder than I'm anticipating. When it's just all planned out, it seems so nice and simple. I'll let you know if it really turns out to be nice and simple. I think I'm going to give it to my mom. It seems like her kind of colors. I finished my yarn-dying class. Here are my skeins! I'm in a hurry (Mike's rushing me to go out and get our tree) so I won't take the time to dredge up from my memory what dyes I used. If you want to know, just ask and I'll try to remember. The one on the left is a skein I dyed last week. It's the one on the right in the last picture- the one that's yellow and grey and green. That's right, the ugly one that you were all too kind to point out. I decided I hated it so I took it back and dunked the whole thing twice in the indigo dye. Now it has really pretty shades of blue and blue-green and it's one of my favorites! It's great to able to fix your mistakes by just dunking it in another color. I think I'm goint to knit the hexagon scarf from Knitting Nature. It's probably not quite enough yarn but I'll figure something out.

Lastly, another gift for me! My lovely secret pal sent me some gorgeous yarn, candles that didn't make it into the picture and some candy that is already eaten. Thanks secret pal!

Answers

Hi readers. The 2 questions I got about my last post were: Where did you get the elephant buttons? and Who is the lucky baby that gets the sweater?

I got the buttons at a store here in Portland and I don't remember the brand. Sorry to disappoint those of you who wanted to buy then online. They're probably there somewhere but I don't know where.

The baby is, or will be, MY baby! My lack of knitting and blogging lately is because I have been feeling really sick and tired. I think I went almost a month without knitting because all I could do was sleep or lie on the couch watching stupid tv. I'm starting to feel better now so I'm happier and slightly more productive.

I've been knitting my frost flowers and leaves blanket but it doesn't seem like I'm getting anywhere. It's quite repetitive.I took it off the needles and spread it out so I could see that it really has gotten bigger. It's about 2 1/2 feet square so I still have a ways to go. It was fun to see it all spread out but it took almost an hour to get all those stitches back on the needles!

My other project has been dying yarn with natural plant dyes. I'm taking a class at Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks and it's super fun! I think I'm hooked. The little skeins at the top of the post are tiny mini skeins I dyed at the first class so we could practice. They're tinier than they look in the picture. I could maybe knit one baby bootie out of each one. Any ideas for what to do with them?These are my skeins from the last class. The blue is indigo, the pink is cochineal (actually a bug, not a plant) , the yellow is osage orange and the purple is logwood. I don't remember what the other dyes were. Next week I get to dye the rest of my yarn and I can't wait!