A heel!

Well, the start of a heel, anyway. I decided on a 4 1/2" leg for my Jaywalkers and am now several rows into the heel! The purl rows are giving me a hand cramp, so I'm taking breaks. The yarn striping is doing interesting things, so I can't wait to see the finished sock. Pics to follow soon.

Midnight update: heel is turned and gusset is picked up!!

Technically...

OK, so technically, I'm finished with the Christmas knitting. I have all of the gifts that need to be given over Christmas finished. My sister's orange wrap and my aunt's scarf are still technically Christmas gifts, but they both know they will be mailed sometime after Christmas.

So now the push is on for the post-holiday knitting. (sigh) I need to finish the second blanket that will go to Mexico and then finish Marcia's scarf - then I can send the blankets and scarf together and be done with it. I think Karen's orange wrap will be an ongoing project. I also need to get yarn for a scarf for my mom, but that will have to wait until after Christmas.

In the meantime, I've made some progress on my Jaywalker sock! Cedric is now 3 1/2" tall and is coming along quite nicely for a first sock. I think I'm going to do this pair at 5" instead of the 6 3/4" or whatever it is in the pattern. The stripes are slowly starting to work into the giant mass of taupe pooling, so I'm very curious to see how the rest of the sock unfolds.

A little something

Here is what I've been working on yesterday and today. You'd think it would have only taken a few hours, but no. I had to try 4 or 5 different patterns before I made up my mind. So here it is, a dishcloth for my mother-in-law. It's the Bee Stitch pattern, worked with Peaches & Creme cotton (from WalMart).



Now on to the next dishcloth while I continue my gift knitting...

Jaywalking

In my quest to copy Rosemary, I have started the Jaywalker sock. OK, in reality it isn't so much that I yearn to copy Rose - it just happens to be a really cool sock pattern. I'm using Cascade Fixation SprayDyed. While I really like the colorway, it's hard on my hands. It's kinda rope-like. Not soft. It probably doesn't help that I'm knitting as tight as I possibly can to compensate for the elastic in the yarn AND using bigger needles than the pattern calls for. But all in all, I'm pleased with my sock progress so far. This is my first "real" sock. My only experience sock-wise has been a basic sock pattern using double stranded worsted on size 8 dpns. But...so far, so good. Oh, and I've also joined the Jaywalker Knitalong, which makes me feel a bit more like a real knitter.



In other news, this past week, I made another hat (gift) and finished FIL's scarf! I also decided to switch plans for SIL's scarf and finish one I've already started (that was going to be for someone else). So this week's push is that scarf and the orange wrap. I'll work on my sock when I need a break from gift knitting.

One step forward, two steps back

On the knitting front...

Will finish gift hat tonight. Thought I was going to finish my 2nd sock tonight, but made a very sad discovery. I didn't switch to bigger needles after doing the cuff, so the whole sock is 2 needle-sizes smaller than the first sock. RATS!!! Got into the gusset before I realized it. The really sad part is that I used one whole afternoon/early evening on the sock instead of gift knitting. Rats again. Good news is that the socks aren't a gift, so there's no deadline there.

Back to my knitting...

Getting Closer

Current handknit gift tally: 11 of 15 are now finished.

Sadly, I ripped out everything I'd done on the cabled scarf I was doing. It just wasn't perfect and while the mistakes weren't all that noticeable, they were to me. Plus, it was kind of time consuming (the pattern). So now I'm doing a much simpler and faster pattern. Nice enough, but kind of boring.

I joined this knit-along this week and I'm quite happy that I did.

I'd really like to finish my second sock so I can use my size 8 dpns for the hat I need to make...perhaps I'll work on that today (the socks, I mean).