let’s get organized, shall we??

omg—it’s december. i mean, i knew that, but.

christmas is creeping ever closer and i just realized i have no clear idea what my plan is. i was riding on a cloud of triumph over thanksgiving weekend because i managed to nail down what i wanted to get for my big family in texas—i even succeeded in ordering the item online (after wading through an ocean of information to educate myself about what, exactly, it is and why they might want it), which is now on its way there.

(david spent last evening blasting christmas carols and decorating the house)

everyone else is ostensibly getting handknit gifts. and therein lies the rub.
every year i avoid shopping by holing up and knitting—it works for me.
so far this year though, i have not made a list of recipients or sorted through the finished objects to see if there are matches, but i’m betting that there aren’t many. and my mom was being coy about saying what she wanted, so i don’t even know what i’m going to do about that (she’s probably tired of getting shawls and stuff, poor her . . . ).

it’s surprising how many of the items i make do not suit the christmas gift situation. for one thing, there are more guys than girls on my holiday list, and much as they love my knitting, i doubt they’d appreciate a “little nothing” or a lace neckwarmer.

socks, maybe . . if i have enough (i just gifted four pair to david for our anniversary last week—it’s a tradition we have to ring in another winter). you can see on the right of this photo that my pile of man socks is woefully low. there isn’t very much time to complete socks for christmas but i’ll have to try. i did finish the second high peaks mitten last night, so this set is now done and ready to give and it could be boy or girl.

plus, i’m running into another issue with FOs that i never really had to consider before—i need to keep some (or most) of them so that when i go to teaching gigs and such i have some samples to show around. many of the items i knit earlier in the year and thought i could give as gifts fall into this category.

therefore, i’m not ahead on christmas at all—i’m ending up right where i started, really. good thing i sort of enjoy the mad rush in december to produce lots of yummy mitts, hats, neckwarmers, and well, anything, really that is quick, but that someone would like a lot.

my secret weapon in this effort is an arsenal of heavier yarn.

normally i am a big fan of laceweights and fingering/light DK yarns. but let’s face it, personally, i need to balance my desire to give perfect gifts with a schedule that calls for slash-and-burn tactics. heavier DK and worsted weight yarns knit up fast and feel wonderful when it’s cold. besides, after working with lightweight yarns for most of the year, it’s a real nice change of pace to handle dense, smooshy, woolly ones for a while.

here are the next two i’m knitting with (besides david’s sweater), both from fearless fibers. the brown one is deb’s heavy merino worsted yarn which i’m trying out for a neckwarmer. a little heavier than the other neckwarmer but oh, sooo cozy.
the other is her alpaca/wool DK blend which has a nice weight and is incredibly soft. i have to admit that as much as i love knitting with alpaca, it often feels prickly against my skin, but this one does not. i’m going to knit a scarf from it for my nephew’s girlfriend—i swear, he picked it immediately out of a huge lineup of photos i sent. which is sort-of a bummer because i’ve developed a huge crush on it. it’s a pink with just enough of everything else to make it right.

more on those once i get them underway . . i think actually that i’ll spend today finishing up some other stuff to clear my slate.

because i have this one big, important project i need to start and i’d like to be able to focus on it. i’m all swatched

which was interesting because i assumed that the robusta yarn would be great on a size 10 or even 10.5 needle (it looked huge to me, hahaha!)—but no . . . we were amazed to see that it likes being knit on size 8 needles (i think; i’m still deciding).

i tested it on size 9 (top) and size 8 (bottom) needles after one false start on size 10s. the results are extremely close; i can hardly tell the difference. i instinctually like the tighter swatch better, but experience is talking into my other ear.
see, this yarn is the same fiber i used to knit my tartan cardigan in september, the glory days BFL. this one, robusta, is exactly the same—it just has more plies, so it’s fatter.

now, when i knit my cardigan i went with the smaller needle because i liked the slightly-smaller swatch just an eensty bit more. however, the fabric of that sweater is quite firm and my ultimate row gauge ended up being a bit off (shorter than i expected from the swatch). so i’m thinking that maybe trying the larger needle this time is a good idea. plus, the swatch on the larger needle has a little less stitch definition which makes the fabric more subtle and i think that’s better for this sweater—i want an overall field of texture rather than crisp, defined lines.

the next step is to measure david and a couple of his favorite sweaters and put those numbers into sweater wizard to get a shell of a pattern (i use that program a lot to come up with a starter set of numbers). once i have that i can add my motifs, pockets, and any other tweaks (hahaha, the teaks make up most of the job, actually).

i should be casting on by tomorrow (a little ahead of last year, i think—looks like david’s sweater was just a ball of yarn on the 11th.)

the mail that was held while we were away finally arrived. there was a bit of a mixup about the hold dates and finally our intrepid mail carrier, krystle, asked if she could just bring it. that’s going to take some time to get through, i bet.
ok, off to do that, then get some more small projects finished, and then wind some yarn for man socks.