Happy Boxing Day! Finally, a holiday we can all agree on! I hope all of you had a lovely celebration, whether you exchanged gifts and had a feast with family or whether you sacked out with Battlestar Galactica and a bottle of peppermint schnapps. Huzzah!
I myself had a really delightful holiday week. To kick things off, my best friend Padu came to visit for a couple of days and ended up modelling some of my keen knitwear! And then Katr's brother Drtr came to visit and did our bidding endlessly! And then we took the ferry over to Victoria and I finally got to see my parents' condo! And my cute and hilarious grandparents were there and my brother and my cousin and his girlfriend came over and she brought a pie and DAMN, it was good! And we had Christmas nachos on Christmas Eve and opened all our gifts and even though we all promised to go easy on presents this year, we all made out like bandits! Just like Jesus! And my parents kicked off all the fun by making an unexpected and very sweet and generous donation to the Creampuff Gay Wedding Fund! Sweet Lavendar Lord! Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Seriously. It was a whirlwind of deliciousness and exclamation points and it's taken us nearly two days to recover. And then Katr's mom is coming tomorrow night and the fun starts all over again! Which reminds me, we have to go shopping tomorrow - we're almost out of eggnog.
Anyway, on to real reason for this post: the knitting!
I learned to knit one year ago yesterday and this year, many people were recipients of my occasionally lumpy but always well-meant knitting. In my beginner's zeal, I tended not to notice when the giftees did not appreciate or even acknowledge the hours and expense their knitted gift cost. Katr noticed, though, and she has a running list of people I am no longer allowed to knit for. Thanks, baby!
Of course, all of the holiday knitting recipients were so gleeful that they will all be getting knitted goods for years to come. Whether they want them or not.
Mom's Scarf
I tried a bunch of different patterns with this super-soft, cream-coloured, crinkly acrylic yarn (Mom's allergic to wool) but the thing just looked like ten kinds of ass. I eventually settled on this basket-weave-y look. Mom thought it was a winner. Score!
Katr's Shawl
This summer, my mom took me to a yarn store in Edmonton where she had spotted a stole/wrap/shawl that she thought would look great on Katr. She and I put a bunch of different colours and textures together and she commissioned me to knit it! We figured I earned about $0.50/hr. Not my usual rate.
Here's Padu as "The Virgin Mary, If She Was a Dude Wearing Katr's Shawl". He looks so coy. What is he hiding? The Son of God? Or a pack of smokes? History will decide.
Drtr's Brave's Fan Scarf
Katr's brother Drtr, my soon-to-be brother-in-law, is a huge fan of the Atlanta Braves. And I'm a huge fan of his! And he's been pretty excited about the knitting. So I made him a scarf in the Atlanta Braves colours. Jealous?
Padu sure was.
Mom's Dishcloths
Again, when I was home in the summer, my mom handed me a ball of lime green cotton that she thought would make nice dishcloths. She thought that perhaps I could teach her to knit them! And then she thought that maybe . . . I could just knit them myself. So I used them to experiment. The seed stitch was disastrous, but the other two turned out okay.
Let's take another look at that fine fishtail technique:
Katr's Subtle Hint Scarf
Katr saw me knitting this scarf earlier in the fall and fell in love with it. She kept mentioning it, you know, whenever she saw me knitting, or whenever she saw scarves, or whenever she saw things that were blue. And so I gave it to her! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah! And then I gave her the scarf too.
New Yarn
The best thing about holiday gift giving is that sometimes you RECEIVE things that are knitting related. Like this luscious baby alpaca silk and 6.5mm bamboo needles from my brother. Nice eye, young man. Nice eye.
And then my mom got me this pile of blue Shetland Chunky Tweed and a pattern for a very fetching shawl. For ME!! I have been touching it lovingly all the afternoon. Don't judge me.
I was so pleased with myself over the sheer amount of holiday gift knitting accomplished that I failed to notice that all my knitted holiday gifts were either scarves or scarf-like. Since this is my first year at it, I feel that this is allowed. However, next year, I will have to knit it up a notch (See? See what I did there?) Next year, look for more hats and mittens and yes, that's right - SOCKS. This year will be the Year of Socks!! And perhaps learning to drive. Huzzah!
