Christmas Wrap-Up

I failed. I admit it. I felt bad, but I'm over it now. I'm sure you can all deduce which of the gifts broke me, but I'll tell you anyway that it was my grandmother's socks. I gifted her one sock. She was less confused than I'd have expected, and although I promised I'd work hard on the second sock while I was at home, that didn't happen. I knit 3 rows of ribbing, and I've still not picked it up again. That's right, I'm still on the ribbing. But I'll get them done soon. As soon as I actually start knitting again, which I've not been too inspired to do (stop the press, this is scary!).
Anyway, now that the gifts are given, I can show them off!
I made this lovely scarf for my mother:

This is the Backyard Leaves scarf, from Scarf Style, knit in Knit Picks Andean Silk. I used almost exactly 4 skeins in "Leaf." There is a long story with this scarf. Last Christmas (2005), I told my mom that I might want to knit her something, and I sent her to Barnes and Noble with a list of the knitting books that I owned and asked her to dig through them and find somethings that she would like to have. This was one of the things she liked, which was great because it was one of the many scarves from that book that I'd planned to knit. So I ordered some yarn and cast on. Soon after I realized something was wrong with my yarnovers (danger sign #1), but couldn't really figure out what it was. I merrily knitted away on the plane on the way home (danger sign #2), but was only about 6 repeats in (of 22) by Christmas so I didn't gift it last year. It languished in the bottom of the knitting basket in the living room until early fall, when I dragged it out for this year's Christmas knititng. At some point in the summer I had sorted out my yarnover problem (turns out I was knitting the next row and twisting the yarnovers, so they weren't opening up properly), and although I could've carried on with the scarf making that same mistake the rest of the way, I figured that would bother me and I didn't want to gift an inferior scarf with 4-6 mistakes every row. So, ripped out it was, and it looked much better the second time around. I knit more than half of it whilst recovering from my getting my wisdom teeth out, but I don't think the painkiller fog resulted in any problems!

This scarf was also a gift, but I talked about it here so I'm going to wax on about it again, just share a photo. This was for my aunt Susan, who has recently moved and now has high-speed internet and claims she is a blog reader. Perhaps she'll comment and let us know, but either way I hope she's enjoying her new scarf! (I'm realizing now that I should've taken photos of the giftees in their gifts, and I think I even thought of that at the time, but I didn't do it).

Let's see. I also made several pairs of felted clogs. You saw Dave's here, but I also made some for my Dad and my uncle Adam. The ones on the left are my dad's, and have a special bonus. My dad broke his hip riding his bike about 15 years ago, and his right leg is slightly shorter than his left, so he usually wears a small lift in his right shoe to compensate, and he has custom-made Birkenstocks that have one thick sole. So, I made one of the slippers with a triple sole (instead of double). I made the mistake of not tacking the soles together (as suggested in the pattern), and the middle sole, which wasn't attached to anything, just set in there, bunched up a bit in the felting, which actually turned out to be a good thing as we were able to shape it into the heel just like the shoe lifts! We felted these on Friday and as of Tuesday they were still drying! I'm going to post about them again since I have a bunch of photos and some impressions on the pattern and yarns, having made 3 pairs.

Last but not least, I made my cousin Andie a hat, which she adored, and wore all day on Christmas and even brought to bed with her. This made me SO happy - it's really great to have something you made be so loved and appreciated! Not the best photo, but you can see the hat pretty well. It's a FiberTrends pattern, knit with Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. Oh, I also made Andie's brother R.J. a hat, just a simple red ribbed job in superwash Cascade 220, but I didn't get any photos as he wasn't keen on wearing it (but I bet it'll come in handy if winter ever arrives).

So, in all I knit 9 gifts: 3 pairs of felted clogs, 2 scarves, 2 hats, 1.5 pairs of socks (one gifted back at Thanksgiving). There is another scarf on the needles that is a late gift, so I guess that makes 10 gifts. I meant to make 6. Not sure how the increase happened, but I think what happened was that I was ahead of the game back in November and got overly ambitious...