January 5, 2012

winter knitting

As much as I love Christmas/Solstice knitting, and I really do love making something for all the members of our little family, I also love, perhaps even more, after-Christmas knitting. When the weather is cold (and it is! Yesterday it was 12 degrees when I took Evie to school) and the swirl of tree decorating, gift making, shopping, baking and visiting is done, well, then it's time to curl up on the couch and loll away the evening hours with projects that are just plain fun. And with no deadline.

I've had quite the knitty Christmas. I cant decide if Will is exasperated that most of what I wanted involved knitting or if he is relieved at how easy it makes shopping for me. Probably the latter. I'm now two knitting books richer - this one and this one - and am also the possessor of a ticket to one class at Vogue Knitting Live, the knitting conference that starts next weekend in New York. Thank goodness my husband understands what a knitting dork I am.
I also continued with my new tradition of buying some yarn whenever I go somewhere. This way, whatever I knit from it will remind me of the place I visited. Or, maybe it's just an excuse to buy yarn when I really don't need to buy yarn. Either way, I picked up this pretty and very soft locally spun angora at True Blue Fiber Friends in Columbia. I'm thinking fingerless gloves. Or one of those earwarmer headbands, because the wind off the Hudson river is no joke, let me tell you.
I'm also about 3/4 of the way done with my sweater, it just needs sleeves and a collar now and I can't wait to finish it, the yarn seems to get softer the more I work with it.

Will's sweater is coming along but I've paused momentarily because the class I'm taking at Vogue Knitting Live is on the pattern I'm using for it, so I decided to wait to knit further in case I learn something that means I need to backtrack. Because I didn't have his sweater finished for Christmas, I knit one of Mason Dixon's Last Minute Schmattas, shortened to make it more guy-like. I think I knit the whole thing in 30 minutes, and that was with me tucking it under a pillow every time Will walked in the door. I'd like to make one for myself as well but am waiting to see what yarn I can find at the conference (because that's kind of like visiting, right? So I should get some yarn to commemorate it)
This hat, which is very soft and pretty to look at, is painfully slow. I can't seem to get the hang of holding both yarns in one hand so each time I change colors I have to put one down and pick up the other. It's interesting, but I can only do a round or two before I loose focus, or someone needs me, or something interesting happens on TV and realize that this I cannot knit and watch simultaneously. It may not be finished before the cold weather is, but someday I'll have a very fancy looking stranded hat. I hope.
And that about sums up my workbasket at the moment. No sewing projects in the queue, not a lot of homey type things, although I've been doing a lot of daydreaming and pinterest pinning about what our next house might look like, just knitting. And more knitting. And movie watching and book reading. Mostly things that involve the couch. Because that's what cold winter days are built for.

What about you? What projects are you working on?