Finished: Rainbow Christmas Socks

I used to knit a lot for Christmas, but over the years I've scaled down quite a bit and now I only regularly knit for my mum. She'd mentioned in the past wanting a pair of rainbow striped socks, and I've had this rainbow Felici in my stash for her for a while, so this Christmas seemed like the perfect opportunity to knit it up.

These were knit using my basic sock recipe with my favorite garter-edged Eye of Partridge heel flap. I never knit any other heel, if I can help it. It was easy keeping these a secret from Mum, since we don't live together, and they only took a few evenings in front of Netflix and a night caroling at the bar to be finished.

I'm hoping to squeeze out one more FO this year—I have 68 rounds left on the second sleeve of my Arachne, so barring any major catastrophes, I should be able to bang the rest of it out long before the countdown tomorrow night!

Ravelry Page: Rainbow Socks

Pattern: none, just my basic sock recipe

Yarn: Knit Picks Felici, "Rainbow" 

Getting Handsy

As you can see, I've not made very much progress on my mitten this week.

This is because I didn't cut a long enough end to kitchener the cuff, and instead of fixing it right away, I tried leaving it on my table for several days to see if it'd fix itself.

I'm just a few rounds away from starting the really fun part of the chart, and it's going swimmingly so far. Pretty much all this progress was made last night while watching Christmas at Dollywood at my mum's house, and now that I've actually made it onto the hand portion I think I'll make some good progress this week (and just in time—it felt like -14F this morning!).

This weekend was crazy busy. Yesterday was my choir's Christmas service, and we sang the Vivaldi Gloria. Saturday morning we had rehearsal for it, and then I drove up to the city to see my brother's Christmas concert. Usually I meal prep on Sundays, but hopefully I have stuff to tide me over, because yesterday all I did between finishing my concert and going to mum's for dinner and the movie was nap! 

Humble Beginnings

Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's been over a week already. Thanksgiving was great—it was quiet and cozy, just my mum and my siblings and me (and the dogs!), and we made way too much food and watched the parade. I spent the rest of my long weekend resting, catching up on reading, and working towards my NaKnitMo goal (which I met just in time on Saturday evening!). It was nice to have four days off, but now this week feels like it's dragging.

I haven't been knitting much yet this week (I did a LOT of knitting last week though, so of course I want a bit of a break), but I did start my 2019 Gift-a-long project. I'm finally knitting the Birch Bark Mittens, which have been in my queue since the 2017 GAL, and I seriously cannot wait to have these on my hands. I haven't counted the rows in a hot minute, but I'd guess I have about half of one cuff here, which is a decent enough start. Depending on how long it takes me to finish these, I may also jump into the Feet/Legs thread in the GAL group and knit up some Woodland Loafers out of a great gold wool-mohair blend I scored at a flea market last year.

I'm not doing much gift knitting—as usual, I'm knitting for my mum, and that's it. That project is started and is going really smoothly so far, and I'm already finished with the rest of my gift shopping, so I can just settle down into cozy mode and drink cocoa and eat cake to my heart's content!