On My Needles

Holiday Knitting. I said I wasn't going to do this. I said I was only going to do a teeny tiny bit of gift knitting this year and that I was going to get it done early. Things started off well. I finished a (single) sock, a teddy bear, a bath cloth set, a scarf. I was on a roll. Then a couple of hats fell into my lap. And another pair of socks (plus the second one for the pair I mentioned above). And of course I keep knitting along on my sweater, ignorant to the fact that Christmas is drawing ever closer. This weekend it hit me. Its December. And I am going on vacation the week before Christmas and can't depend on being able to do any serious knitting during that time. So that means I have TWO weeks to finish everything. So this weekend I finished up a little bag I was working on (I HAD to finish it-- I needed the needles!) and cast on for the first of the hats. After realizing that doing it on size 5 needles would take too long (and be a bit thin) I doubled the yarn (Super Wool) and switched to size 8s. Much better. The first one I'm making is in the colorway "Blue Jeans" (soon to be added to the website) and is for my mailman. At the shop we decided to make hats for all of our delivery guys- the two UPS men, the FedEx guy and the US mail man. We divided them up and I took on Tim, the mailman. Realizing that Tim is not the only mailman in my life, I decided to also make one for Stan, the mailman who comes to my house. I've been sending and receiving a LOT of packages for the Unique Sheep lately and he deserves a thank you. Plus hes been my mailman for almost ten years and I've never done anything special for him. The third hat on my list is going to be in the color "Evergreen" and is for another special man in my life who's name can't be named until after presents are opened on Christmas ;-). By the way, the pattern for these hats will be for sale on the website once I've written it up and had it tested. Its just your basic, ribbed toboggan. Warm, simple and perfect for a man or a woman.

Aside from the hats, Chris cast on for a pair of socks for himself, also using Super Wool. I think this is my new favorite yarn. Its just so practical and SOFT. There is nothing fancy about it, its just a good yarn. He requested the colorway "Traditions" and its working up beautifully but with a surprise-- its striping! I didn't mean for it to stripe, but the gauge hes getting over the number of stitches is adding up to perfect stripes. Hes actually knit more now than when I took this photo and the stripes are continuing.

And one last bit of knitting for this weekend was a swatch for that second pair of socks I mentioned. This pair will be for a man so I wanted something masculine, warm and washable! I had been wanting to try socks holding two strands of fingering weight yarn in different colors together, so I decided this was my chance. I am using Verve in Sinful and Spiced Apple. Held together I am getting 6sts per inch on size 4 needles, so they should knit up pretty quickly in a basic ribbed pattern. (sorry for the bad photo of the swatch, I'm still trying to figure out this new camera)

Other than this little bit of knitting, I spent most of the weekend setting up a new account on Ravelry just for the Unique Sheep. I uploaded zillions of photos of yarn and projects and tried to get as much information filled in as I could. There is still more to be done, but I got a good chunk taken care of. Next on my computer-to-do-list is updating the website and adding some new colors and photos...

I'll leave you with one last photo of me pretending to drive Chris' motorcycle. Really, I just ride on the back. But Saturday he let me sit on it in the parking lot and roll it back and forth (supposedly I was feeling for some sort of "zone"....)