Already??

It's that time of year - I'm starting to think about Christmas knitting. I thought I should make a little list, since it's the only way to keep straight everything I need to knit for my overly large family:

Carolyn - Green Hat
Mom - Socks
Dad - Don't know yet
Sandy - Don't know yet
Kim - Fingerless Gloves
Kevin - Fingerless Gloves
Dick - Fingerless Gloves?
Sandra - Noro Scarf
Vera - Don't know yet

Hmmm ... too many "don't know yet"s. Better start figuring it out. God bless them for all being such great appreciators of hand-knit gifts, but there are just way too many of them - and that's not even all of them. Soon I will have to start knitting for the nephews too. And then there are the stepsons and their families. And Tim.

I need to lie down now.

New Socks!

I started the first pair of socks from my self-imposed sock club (ala The Yarn Harlot). I got Tim to pick the bag for me from the shelf, so as not to in any way be able to influence the choice of what pair I am knitting.

The socks are Burning Ring of Fire, in a lovely orange/pink/crimson Koigu. I'll post pictures at some point this weekend.

Stealing a great idea.

I've been reading on The Yarn Harlot's blog about her self-imposed sock club, and it seems like such a great idea that I just had to set one up for myself. So last evening I gathered up a dozen patterns that I've had lying around all printed up, or languishing in my Ravelry queue, for ages, and I took a bunch of sock yarns that have also been lying around for ages and I put them all in a big pile. This evening I printed off a couple of the patterns and wound the few skeins that hadn't been wound months and months ago (I love winding pretty balls of yarn, so I sometime get stuck winding something and then it sits for months and months and months because I don't have a project for it). I matched yarns to the various patterns - solids for patterns that looked like they needed solids, varigated for the same, colours that seemed to roughly match my feelings about each pattern, and then put each pattern in a ziplock with it's yarn. Now I have 12 patterns with yarn in seperate ziplocks on a shelf in my office, waiting for me to randomly pick a pattern each month to knit. Very exciting.

I've been negligent in my sock knitting this year. I did so many pairs last year and this year I got a little shawl crazy. But I miss my socks and this is a great way to ensure that I always have a pair on the needles. (I'm just happily ignoring the 4 or 5 WIP hiding in the basket, that I lost interest in - or were going too slow and ended up being unsatisfying.)

I can't wait to start the first pair next month. I'm thinking that I will get Tim to pull a baggie for me each month, saving myself the temptation of playing favorites in some way.

Thanks Stephanie. What an awesome idea!!