Lots of socks
January didn’t shape up as I expected. I did knit quite a bit…just not on the things I had intended. Somehow, though, you can either roll with it, or allow yourself to be steamrolled.
Socks! Pair #1 is done.
My knitting output has slowed down a bit in the past month. I’m blaming it on three things…finally having some time to relax, catching a cold, and video gaming.
The first one is easy…the big Yule rush is over, so I can take my time. No hurry, right?
The second and third? Well, when I catch a cold, I don’t necessarily want to be sneezing into my knitting. I’m making handknits, not plague blankets. Last thing I need to do is to spread my winter cold to some poor, unsuspecting person who just happened to receive an item from my knitting basket. It just happened this year that I caught some tummy bug that manifested on the night of Christmas Day – and then just as I was recovering from that, I caught yet another cold that knocked me flat on my arse.
That said, there has been some knitting.
I’m only doing this because a web app won’t let me “claim” my own blog otherwise. Bastards.
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Chili Day
The Husbeast and I are trying to clean up our diet. Which means less sugar, and more of what you’d call “natural whole-foods”. Essentially, we get rid of the “fillers” that have the highest calorie and carbohydrate load. It evens out our blood sugar (thankfully neither of us is diabetic), which means our moods are definitely more stable. Other side benefits include less headaches/migraine, less joint pain, and less muddled thinking.
And the way I look at it, it starts with chili.
Knit Mittens!
Writers have NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Knitters….well, they just pick a month and knit the heck out of things. I’ve heard of NaKniSweMo (Sweaters), and October usually is dubbed “Socktoberfest”. January is apparently NaKniMitMo, which translates into mittens.
Big feet!
It started out so innocently. I thought I would knit my Mum a pair of socks for Yule. Keep her feet toasty warm. Then, when my proficiency with knitting socks became apparent, the hints started dropping. I now knit a minimum of four pairs of socks per Yule. One for each of our parents. I put a pair of socks in a decorative tin with their name on it. The deal is that if they want socks next year, the tin comes back to me. Without fail, the tin comes back. The request is fulfilled. I have some family members with very happy feet.
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The first socks, of course, were seen on Tuesday. These were my Mum-in-Law’s socks, and as mentioned, the Husbeast picked out the colours. What you didn’t see on Tuesday were everyone else’s socks. These weren’t even the first ones finished.
Cold hands, warm heart
If there is one thing that Granny Martin tried to impress upon me as a youngster, it was that you should always have warm feet and warm hands. As I’ve learned since, you can cover the rest of yourself in as much wool as you like, but without those extremities taken care of, you’re still going to be a chilly, chilly body on a cold day.
I love mittens and handwarmers. I think they’re a great accent to wrap up your winter outfit. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can see! Having lived North of 60, I’m well aware of how to bury yourself in your jacket, hopefully with hood (and plenty of layers beneath). The only thing with whimsy is the hands.
My brother’s family is still in the Yellowknife area, so I like to make the kids fun things that they can wear over the long winter. For my niece, I love mittens. She loves being fashionable, so I figured she’d love a pair of traditional, lined, Latvian (stranded) mitts.
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Nope. The pattern really wasn’t working out. Sure, I got the lining right (yay!), but the pattern was getting lost in the colours of yarn. Time to take it back to the basics.
The things I wanted to show off but didn’t…
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m horrible at self-editing and not posting current projects as they wind up becoming gifts for family and friends and I never want to either get hopes up or ruin a surprise. I’m hoping to stop that practice come the New Year, as I’m going to try spacing my knits out […]
The Cat’s Pyjamas
The problem with knitting so many things that you eventually give away, is that you wind up not blogging about things until months have gone by and you’ve finally tracked down the person you’re gifting it to. I never want to spoil the surprise. I’m thinking I’m going to take a leaf from the Yarn […]
Happy Halloween!
Happy Halloween!