A week in my life, knitwise

I couldn't tell you what I was knitting on the week before last... um... let's see... oh yeah mittens for my mum for Christmas.

These are the "Gifted" Kate Gilbert pattern, knit in Patons Shadow Tweed. (I LOVE this yarn. Highly recommend it. I'm definitely going to buy it again in future.) This is a great pattern in that it's clearly been designed for bulky yarn; it's not just a standard mitten pattern scaled up with maths. I especially love the crochet seaming method. I actually used it all down the mitten itself, not just the thumb. And yes, I spliced two pieces of yarn together for the seam so that the colour graduation was maintained. I know. I'm just like that. What can you do.

I made one and it was so perfect in its mitteny mittenhood that I paused to admire it. And be silly with it for dailybooth.com.

(Then I cast on for the alpaca vest I talked about in my last post. But let's pass over that for now.)

A few weeks ago my family arranged to go and see my aged aunt in Newark - uh, that's Nottingham, UK, not New Jersey, USA - because it was her birthday and my dad's, and it'd be the first time we'd all been together with her since Husband and I got married, and there would be cake. I had my Dad's gift all planned but HOLY CRAP ARGH it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't thought of anything for my aunt.

So I started this, and made pretty good progress (actually more than this but I can't photograph it properly until it's done and blocked), but I didn't have a good week health-wise last week so there was no way I was going to finish it in time. I felt really bad, but I wrote an apology in the card and promised to post it ASAP.

When we arrived at my aunt's yesterday, it turns out that I had obviously severely zoned out while my mum rambled on at me on the phone, because my aunt's birthday was in fact in June. Thank god I found out before I really embarrassed myself. Looking on the bright side, I've got loads of time to finish it before Christmas!

This morning I woke up stupidly early for no good reason and took the opportunity to work on the super secret project which is Husband's birthday present.

~tumbleweed~


When he woke up and started roaming the house, grunting, channel hopping, and foraging for food, I cast on for another pair of socks. In DK weight. Because I've had this purple yarn for almost a year and it was time it got turned into something. I started on an actual pattern but it wasn't going to fit my feet so I've done my usual trick of genetically modifying one, X Men style. I copied the toe increases but stopped with 21 stitches on each needle rather than 23, and I'm using the cable pattern from here.

I'm loving the yarn and the tight gauge; these are 3.25mm needles. This is the first time I'm properly using magic loop as well. I can't work out yet whether it's more annoying, less annoying, or just as annoying as DPNs!