Happy 2009!

My sister graduates from high school this year, you know. She’s so clever. She’s also finished her first pair of socks, without any help at all from me except that I told her she could start the heel anywhere she wanted to. Which she was pleased with. She didn’t even need help with kitchenering the toe, which gains her extra knitter points in my book.

But yes! I know it’s already 2 weeks into January, but there’s 50 more weeks of the year! So here’s what I’m up to right now.

Baudelaire socks for the SKA Sockdown! January theme of a pattern from an online magazine. I’m knitting them in Dream in Color Smooshy in “Lunar Zazzle” from Lovelyarns, and they’re very nice. I think the first one is a little too tall, so I may rip and reknit the cuff after I finish sock number 2, but I’m very content working on these. They knit up pretty quickly.

I seem to be in a mitten phase right now, even though I don’t much care about mittens. I finished a pair of charity mittens for the Lovelyarns school charity project, whereupon the knitters are trying to knit mittens for each of the 250some kids at a local elementary school.

I knit these in a day, January 7th to the 8th, and gave them back to Sue on the 8th. I used some unidentified blue and gray/black/blue yarn, using the jogless striping technique that made it look all streamlined and sexy. They’re very cute mittens, and I hope “M.S.” enjoys them.

In my hands at this moment is the mate to a mitten that my mom knit a long (unidentified) time ago. Her birthday is in a few days, and when I found this mitten I wanted it to have a mate! The mitten fits me almost perfectly, but it fits her better except for its length. So the plan is to knit the second mitten to length, and then pick up, snip, and reknit the second mitten top to match.

The problem with the first mitten is that it was knit flat and seamed from the top to the cuff, so I can’t just take out the top and rip back and knit it up again. I actually do have to cut it off and knit up again. I can’t decide yet whether I’m going to reknit mitten #1 flat or in the round. Knitting it flat would be in keeping with the rest of the mitten, but knitting it round would be easier. I’ll see once I get there what works better.

It’s such a pretty mitten! It’s soft too: the yarn is a wool/silk blend, Schachenmayr Nomota “Saskia”. Shiny and pretty!

The last thing in the works at the moment is mom’s sweater. Remember how we knit it too large?

Well I frogged it, measured my mum, and cast on for a smaller size. Here’s hoping my sister gets in on this too, and that it fits this time.

There are a few other things that are waiting for my attention again. The Swirly Mittens from the previous post are on hold. The fabulous champer from Ravelry is sending me a full skein of Silky Wool in the black I need. I’m so grateful! She rocks. The Monkey socks are waiting until I’ve freed up a US2 again. I was going to start the second one when I’d finished the first Baudelaire sock, but I finished B when I was in a place without the yarn for the Monkeys, so I just moved on with the Baudelaires. Once they’re done, though, the Monkeys are going to be back in action. And of course the long ignored but never forgotten Sock Yarn Blanket is waiting for me at school, for when I need both simple knitting and to get rid of remnants. It’ll always be there; no hurry.

I don’t have a lot of goals for 2009. I want to knit up my sock yarn stash, to the extreme. I don’t want to buy a lot of yarn for now, so I’m going to try to only knit from the stash unless disaster strikes and I absolutely have to buy yarn. =P No but really, I want to knit up some of those socks I have planned. The Playwright wants a pair, for example, and I have just the thing. Also I have a sweater I want to design and knit, and enough laceweight for two shawls. My objective is to stash dive!

Oh and Rowan thinks he’s a person.

I’m going to miss these boys so much!