And the countdown begins

That's right kids, we're just one month shy of Christmas. So, the crafters out there are either smiling smugly or panicking right now. I'm oddly in between. Between my own projects and the elves I've employed, the only panic that set in for a moment this morning was the fact that I almost forgot a short person in my life. Its not Christmas crushing as I picked out the gift my mom is getting her (that and she's not yet two so she wouldn't remember or hold it against me) but still, I forgot. Not good.

Moving on...


Here is my first complete gift, safely posted here on the interwebs as the recipient feels the internets is a waste of time and if she were to log on it would suck her into the great Matrix and never let her out. (I exaggerate, only mildly.)

Yup, my first pair of completed socks. Now, this isn't the first pair I've attempted or the first pair on needles, but the first pair done. Woo!

These are from the worst book ever named but the best for fabulous basic men's patterns. Seriously. The pattern is called Plain Old Rag Socks (link here for the Ravelers out there.) For anyone afraid of socks because a) they don't want to knit with needles the size of toothpicks, b) they don't want to work with yarn the width of dental floss, and c) don't want to spend 2 weeks on a project that will be destroyed by the recipient, these are the socks for you. They're on size 7 needles using a worsted weight yarn. The first one took me a bit to figure out the heel turn and all of that but the second one took me the flight home from Minneapolis to L.A. and that was after my flight from London....we're not talking about full brain power.

I only ran into one snag. You see those fabulous green toes? Super cute right? Well, yeah. The pattern might just underestimate how much yarn you need. Unless you want to stash bust using a different yarn for the heel and toe, do not try to use one skein of gorgeous hand-dyed yarn that you dyed yourself and were super proud to use on this project only to see you're 10 rows short. yeah. Not good. You're going to need 1.2 skeins of yarn.

Woo!