Finally, some knitting!

So I hope you all had a great Christmas!! We had a wonderfully relaxing holiday. I got many wonderful gifts, I'll just share with you the knitting ones :)

The Knitters Book of Yarn and the scale and knitting counter are from Jake. I am SO excited and have been busily weighing all my leftovers to see what I can make with them. The Arctic Lace book and the Qiviut kit are from Anna in Alaska. I was very, very excited to get this (and I hear Anna was very excited to find it for me!). The yarn in the kit is bulky, which is very interesting, as I've only seen Qiviut in lace weight. It will certainly make a darn toasty hat!! Finally, the stitch markers are from my friend Karen. They are both glass and fimo beads from Zecca.

I have some other knitting gifts coming down from NY and MI, but not for a bit yet :) I do know one of them, though, is a subscription to Interweave Knits! Yay!

So, aside from Christmas gifts and cooking, I finally got to knitting. I finished Tricia's scarf. I like the thinner version better than the one I knit for me. I haven't talked to her yet, though, to see if she liked it. I also finished Deb's socks, but had to wrap the box and it was too cloudy to get a photo. I totally love both the Felici yarn and the pattern. I kinda want to knit a pair for me :) The last gift project is my mom's bag, which I have about 6 of 9 inches knit. I will head to the fabric store this weekend to pick out the lining and hopefully will be done with the knitting to sew it in next weekend. Finally, I 'surprised' Jake with his hat for Christmas. He knew he was getting a hat. . . eventually (the first one went to David because it was too big for Jake). I cast it on and finished it the same day. .. gotta love super chunky yarn. I love how it turned out and he seems happy with it and is glad to have it before heading up to cold and snowy New York tomorrow!

So, not long before I can start projects for me again! I'm horribly indecisive and am unsure what to do next, which probably means I'll cast on for like 6 projects all in one week. I need to restart Lelah, I want to get started on Sizzle, I am dying to try the BSJ, and I do need to knit that before Addi outgrows it :) I also really want to do something lace. And I ordered some chunky Malabrigo today to make myself a hat for going back to Michigan. And Jake wants a pair of slippers, but I don't have any felting wool I want to use, so I'll have to make a trip to get some. I see a busy January ahead :)

I've also been doing a bit of sewing (gasp - do you believe it!!) I made some Christmas gift bags to hold the knitted dishcloths I made for some family. The fabric was originally intended for making a tree skirt, but then I found some really obnoxious fabric for that,
so I was left with 6 yards of Christmas fabric with no use. I like how the bags turned out. I wish I could have figured out how to embed the tie inside it, but I was also in a hurry to finish them, so. . . .maybe next time :) I got a new iron for Christmas so now I really am all set for getting going on the sewing (and I have some awesome fabric for making a few new couch pillows!).

On a 'what were they thinking?' note. . . I have a self cleaning oven (it's quite old). I have built in wall ovens. I had a monkey bread issue in my oven that resulted in lots of brown sugar on the bottom, so I dug out the owners manual to figure out how to clean. Only to learn the 'self cleaning' oven is only the top oven. The bottom oven must be cleaned by hand. . . but not with any of the Easy oven cleaners. . . because those can't be used in a self clean oven. . . I'm so not into the work it is going to take to clean it, so I have my oven on 500 degrees right now, hoping if I leave it on all day it will clean just like a self cleaner :) On a knitting 'what were they thinking', if you own the Winter 2004/05 Vogue Knitting International, please turn to page 78. Seriously?!?! Mitre Square Pants??!?! Possibly the worst knitted item I've ever seen. Of course, I had to go look on Ravelry to see if anyone knit it, but no FOs to chuckle at :) (I got a slew of old knitting magazines from a girl in my knitting group and have been looking through them for some inspiration!)

So I think that's all I've been up to! I hope you have a safe and happy New Year (in case I don't post again before January!!)

ps- Apologies for the blurry pictures. Something funky is going on getting my pix off Flickr because these aren't compressed, so I have no idea why they come fuzzy on blogger but are not on Flickr. .