Wednesday, October 26, 2011

It's Deja Vu All Over Again & 2011 FO# 11

There is one more thing I should have mentioned in this post that I do every year without fail.  No matter how many times I repeatedly tell myself that this year I won't do it, this year will be different, this year will be all about me, on the 1st of October I start making Christmas presents for my nearest and dearest.

I think it's an illness...




This year I am Keeping It Real or, at least as realistic as I can be once the wool fumes go to my head. From top to bottom clockwise in the picture above, there's a pair of socks for my friend Seona, a Daybreak for my sister, a Baby Surprise Jacket for my friend Jess and another pair of socks for Sam's brother.  That is eminently doable, especially when you consider I just borrowed four Hitchcock movies and Season 1 of Dowton Abbey from the library.  Completely doable. See, I've almost convinced myself!

It's pretty sad that I had almost all of the yarn for all of those presents already neatly bagged up in various bins in my house.  I may not have shared this, because I am a really crap blogger, but this year one of my  major goals was to use up my stash.  I don't want a lot of stash - I want to be the kind of person who buys wool only for immediate use.  My (too extensive for me) stash guilts me every time I think of it.  I don't want to die with unused wool or unrealised yarn dreams!  I have bought yarn this year, but all of it was cast on immediately and not added to the stash. The wool I bought today was the black Patonyle in the back, and it's one of those ironic instances where buying more yarn decreases the overall stash.  The grey Patonyle I've had for about three/four years - it's just a nothing colour that I never got excited about.  However, when paired with the black it has the potential to become a modern, classy, classic scarf.  It was hard to be in a yarn store and only buy one thing, but I knew I was doing the right thing.


The Christmas Knitathon 2011 is also contributing to my Growth As A Knitter (a very useful phrase I saw on a blog a few days ago.  I wish I could remember who's blog it was...).  I love the striping of the Opal and I didn't want the heel to screw it up, so I'm doing an afterthought heel for the first time.  Wish me luck!  Although, if it doesn't look very good, these can be Sam's Christmas socks.

How's for impressive though - one pair of socks are already done!  They're Opal Magic colourway 1043, and they're my friend Lisa's Christmas present.  It's my standard 64-stitch top-down heel-flap-and-gusset sock recipe, and the colours are those of her football team.  It's my first completed Christmas present of the year, and I am so excited to be one present down with just under two months to go! Yay me! (too many exclamation points? I suspect so.)


This is what they'll look like wrapped up in their pretty paper.   I hope she likes them!


 Wish me luck with Christmas Knitathon 2012.  I think I'll need it...

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