And Relax

The package reached my sister's house ok, now we just have to hope that one of her dogs doesn't decide to open the presents. She's apparently locked them away in a room where the dogs don't go but her newest dog has a habit of eating whatever he can get his mouth around so she'd better not leave that shawl anywhere he can get it! Thank you all for the nice comments on the shawl. Neither the pattern or the colour are something I would knit for myself which is perhaps why it took me so long to get it done and it felt like such hard work, but hopefully they are both things that she will like!

I'm thinking about perhaps doing some Christmas baking, but I have to say that I'm not sure we'll actually eat any of it. I'm not a big sweets eater, much prefer savory snacks and DH is one of those odd folks who had no real interest in food besides it filling him up so he can carry on living. Top that with the fact that I don't very often give the Little One snacks and that we don't really want to fill him with sugar and I'm not sure there's much point. We have plenty of food and plenty of snacks for tv viewing over the holiday so perhaps I will just make 1 lot of cookies or something so I feel I've made some sort of effort!

The knitting is coming along. I am up to the cables on the second front of Claude so I've proceeded with the blocking and bought the buttons for it yesterday. I think I can get it finished off in the next week so that will be fab!

DH's hemp sweater has 1 sleeve now. It took a bit of doing to finish it, first I needed to knit the sleeve 2 inches longer than I'd measured, I think the sweater I took measurements from had drop shoulders rather than being a raglan. After that I knit the cuff and DH and I both decided that the ribbing was too loose, so I ripped it back and knit half of it on 3.5mm needles (the main sweater is on 4mm's) and decided again that it was still too loose. So I ripped a final time and decreased down a load more stitches to make the cuff smaller. According to the pattern instructions I should have actually decreased by a further 7 stitches but I think it will be ok and it looks much better. I'm now halfway down the second sleeve and have sewn in all the ends except closing the hole under the arm I'm working on. Once the sleeve is done it's just the neckline and a good old soak/wash to fluff it up a bit and it's all done! I think when I get this off the needles I will get something on for Little One as he's short of sweaters, we bought him some sweatshirts last night and a sweater the other day but that's about all he owns in that clothing department! It's a pretty sad situation considering my yarn and fabric stashes, lol.

I started the Lotus Blossom shawl the other day and took the Snowdrop Shawl off the WIP list as it's been relegated back into the stash cupboard (I didn't rip it, just put it away as was). I'm really enjoying the new shawl at the moment, I'm working it on 5mm straights and it's so fun to see it really grow, it's going to be a much more 'open' shawl than the Sheep Shawl was and should be a much quicker knit. The colours of the cotton laceweight I'm using are really pretty pastels, it's not really 'me' at all in terms of what I wear but I really like it a lot and that's what matters!

In other stuff I've got about half an inch left on the first Spine Stitch sock before I knit the toe. I'm not happy with the way the short row heel came out, I'm not sure if it was the pattern I was borrowing from or my knitting that let me down so I will try again with the second sock and see how it comes along. This sock has holes along the heel so I will be doing some darning I think to close it up. Besides that I really like the way it looks but damn the stitch pattern is hard work, it's not complicated just hard on the hands and time sucking!

This afternoon I am going to attempt to finish off Little One's pajamas that have been half made for months and hopefully that will get me back into a sewing frame of mind.

We're all ready for the holiday now, just the wrapping and the waiting to be done and then the fun of watching Little One play with new toys! Hope all your holiday plans are coming together too!