a hundred visions and revisions

It's Christmastime, which means it's gift-knitting season again. This year I'm planning six projects. We'll see whether or not I get them all done!

I'm the most excited, I think, about the scarf that I'm making for my aunt Teresa. This is the scarf I'm making - it's my first large-scale attempt at cabling! So far I've gotten through four of the pattern repeats, and I'm wondering why I was so afraid of cable knitting. It turns out it's really, almost unbelievably easy. It looks a LOT more complicated than it is, which is nice, because you can enjoy people's amazed compliments on your knitting ability without having to put the effort in. Anyway, for most of my projects I'm using up yarn that I already had, but for this one I went out and bought a gorgeous yarn - Patons SWS. It's 70% wool, 30% soy silk, feels really nice and soft to knit with, and comes in really nice colorways. I'm doing mine in Natural Plum. I wish I could post a picture of the scarf in progress, but apparently my digital camera is broken, so no such luck. Just believe me when I say that the scarf is beautiful and I am a knitting goddess.

For my mom and my sister, I'm knitting two wavy rib scarves in really nice soft alpaca that I picked up on major discount at the yarn shop in Fort Wayne. I'm really starting to be spoiled by natural fiber yarn. I wish it weren't all so expensive! As it is, all my knits that I do in really nice, more costly yarn end up being gifts. Someday I'll knit myself something that's not acrylic. Anyway, I liked this pattern a lot, and I think Mom and Amy will appreciate it. For Amy, I'm also making a simple hat, because she'd mentioned a while ago that she didn't have a hat she liked.

For my brand-new cousin Grant, I'm hoping to get a pair of baby booties and a hat done. This is probably the project that I'll have to let slide if I run out of time. I doubt a one-month-old baby is going to care too much about hand-knit booties. I really want to get to this, though. Hopefully once all my projects for the semester are all wrapped up next week, I'll have lots more time to sit around and knit. In the time I've managed to set aside so far, it's been really nice, just relaxing, knitting, and listening to music. When I realized a couple of weeks ago that I didn't own any Christmas music, I decided to splurge and buy the new Sufjan Stevens Christmas box set. It's turned out to be perfect knitting music. Ah, Sufjan.

So that's what I've been up to lately. Oh yeah, and I've got to finish my take-home final for Collection Development, write the last section of my paper for Management, and get my pathfinder website up and running for my reference class. So, you know, I've been knitting instead. Good use of time, I think!