Christmas Knitting 2013

I took 2012 off, as in I did absolutely no Christmas knitting.  It was nice.  It was stress free.  The people that usually get hand knits were warned in advance that the nursling would not allow for enough knitting time, and the pressure would be too much.  Stress does reduce that milk supply something awful.

This year, I decided I would make a couple things for Christmas and it wouldn't be too difficult.  I had a great year of sock knitting so far and thought it would not be inconceivable to work up a couple pairs of worsted weight socks for my parents.  Then, somehow my mom convinced me to make her a pair much earlier than the Holidays, and I could not protest since she is so generous in so many ways.  So, that meant that her Christmas socks would have to be fingering weight socks, with nice yarn, knit in a pretty pattern.  Vanilla socks would just not suffice.

Then, somewhere along the line, around September, I started having all these ideas of things I could knit for certain people and the list just grew and grew.  I suspect yarn fumes were involved.  The stash was also talking to me and begging to have a bit of a dent put in it.  Knitting from stash is just as satisfying as gifting knits to worthy individuals.  As September wore on, that list got greater and more of a pipe dream than a plan. 

In October I started to get a little nervous.  I still hadn't ruled anything out at this point, but I definitely had a bit of a twitch when I thought about what needed to be wound, what I hadn't even started on, what I was currently working on that hadn't been finished.  As I worked on hats and Halloween socks that did in no way go toward the goal of hand knit Christmas gifts, I started to think about the order in which I would have to approach my list to have it all started and in progress early enough to get finished.

Come November, I 'd met my goal of first annual Halloween socks and starting hats for the family members to wear when we had some cold days this year.  However, two shawls still sat in hibernation since August and September, the Gru scarf sat in time out.  And somehow I entertained the idea of joining a knit-a-long for a patterned pair of socks, no not for a present- for me, with the yarn I wanted to use for my first annual Holiday Socks (which I really did not need to start until December 1st).  Crazypants!

Not so crazy that I dismissed the idea though.  So most of the month has been spent working on these:

Not gift knitting.  Slowly eliminating recipients and the planned projects.  And somehow deciding in the middle of the night to start a sweater for myself, with yarn from stash.  Then feeling guilty about it after buying and downloading the pattern so after getting the yarn out of the stash:

I just let it sit for a few days before winding it.  To this very night, I still have not cast on the swatch.  That will change in the next couple days though.  I am past the guilt.  I have trimmed the list of recipients down from whatever unrealistic total I was at to about 2 maybe 3 family members.  Dad's knee socks will take the longest of anything I have in mind so I actually got the yarn out and wound for that already:

This week should bring the beginning of those socks and a washed, dried, blocked, and measured swatch for the Mama Vertebrae Sweater.  I will have to see if the knitting fates will allow for the completion of the planned gift projects.