Socks for mom...

Have you ever had one of those projects where you're grabbed by it and it just doesn't let you go. I've been working on one of those recently.

It's my mom's birthday in a little over a week and I've had this idea that I'd like to spin some yarn, then knit some socks out of it for her. I've been working on that for the past couple weeks whenever I could find some spare time.It's a merino/tencel blend that I bought at Rhinebeck last year. The colors are perfect for mom. I overspun the singles quite a bit because I wanted a tighter plied yarn.
Plying multi-colored singles like this is always so much fun because you never know which color is going to end up next to another color. It was interesting to see that, quite often, similar colors ended up next to each other. This is easy to see once it's been knit...
One sock down, one more to go. I know she's going to love these!

I also finished up a little something awhile ago. I haven't posted about it because I still don't have any modeled shots of it, but here it is blocking on my bed...
You can see I wasn't 100% accurate in how straight I made the edges... perhaps I should invest in some blocking wires!

A good start to 2008

This is more than a little late but, Happy New Year!

So far 2008 has been rather nice. The time spent down in Virginia was exactly what I needed. I feel refreshed now. All of my knitted gifts went over well, especially the ones I made for the boy. Until this warm snap came, he didn't take off the scarf or handwarmers I made for him except to shower and sleep. I hate to see what would happen to them if he showered with them! Here's a good picture demonstrating the boy and his scarf.
I gave my roommate/best friend, Jill, a WillowTree figurine among other things.I also made her a lace shawl, but it just wasn't quite finished in time. I really tried, but it just wasn't happening see how I spent a good deal of my time with her! It's finished now and waiting to be blocked.

It's a known fact around these parts how much I love tea. I may not have mentioned it on the blog much, but I'm a tea fanatic. I love everything about it. I love the process of tea, of love tea paraphernalia, I love the huge variety, I love the way it warms you up. There's very little about tea that I don't love. Well, it appears my love of tea did not go unnoticed by both my best friend and my boy. The boy bought me something called a T Buddy. It's a pretty nifty little thing that I can take with me camping to make my tea.

Also, Jill bought me this gorgeous tea set. Even though I didn't have anyone to share my tea with, I still made a whole pot.The angle of this picture really makes the cup look huge, but I assure you, after three cups of tea from that pot, there were still many cups left!

I mentioned in my last post that I received two gift certificates from my family to my LYS. This particular yarn shop is closing soon for about three months for renovations and the owner is trying to get rid of her inventory.... that meant 50% off all the yarn. In a way, that made my gift certificates worth twice as much! I ended up buying enough yarn for three sweaters, a scarf and a hat. All but one of the purchases I have plans for.

In fact, I started one of the projects already. I'm making the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits. I bought the yarn it calls for in a speckled gray color. I'm actually pretty far on it. This picture was taken several days ago and I'm well past it now.
There's nothing like beginning a new sweater project to start the year off right, huh?