Christmas Project Update

As of today, I have a total of one Christmas project completed. I was supposed to get FOUR done this month. Obviously, I'm a bit behind. I'm making progress, though, and I have pictures to prove it. Warning in advance of a pic heavy post.

Elephante. Legs, body, and tail are all done. I have knit the trunk and am on the increases for the head. I don't like the way the legs look, but I doubt Caitlin will care and they are on there securely. I looked up whipstitching, but must have stitched through the wrong part of the cast off edge of the legs. I will hopefully be done this little guy some time next week.A tightly knit hat. The main yarn is Peace Fleece Worsted colorway "Siberian Midnight" a heathered blend of blue and black with tweedy white bits. The white stripes are a wool, alpaca, silk blend I bought years ago. I think it looks awesome. When Bear said he wanted a tightly knit hat, I decided to use very small needles to make a dense fabric (I'm using US 2s for this). I found out half way through the damn thing that he wanted small stitches - apparently I should have been using fingering weight yarn instead. Tough. Fingering weight yarn won't keep his head warm enough, and there's no WAY I'm frogging this thing and starting again with another yarn. The hat is 110 stitches and I'm using Jared Flood's Turn a Square hat decreases to the top of it looks manly. I will have to block it out a bit as the hat is a tiny bit too small for his head, but that shouldn't be any kind of problem. I hope to have this done tonight or tomorrow night.

I've been impatient with both of these projects because I finally have yarn, pattern, and needle to start Grammie's Icarus shawl:


The yarn is Knit Picks Alpaca coud, colorway "Autumn Heather" the needle is also Knit Picks, a fixed circular size 3, 24". I am going to cast on for this as soon as I finish one of the projects above.

In other news, I've been spinning. I find that if I spin during Sunday football games, I get a ton of spinning done. The most recent spinning I've been doing is a CJ Kopec's October Spin Along fiber, a SW BFL colorway "Trust Me" - vibrant rich shades of red, burgundy, gold, orange, brown, violet and more. I spun it into a fingering weight single. I got 582 yards and am in LOVE with this yarn. I am waffling between making a cowl and fingerless mitts or a small shawl like Swallowtail or Ishbel. The colors were too pretty to ply together, and I am thrilled with the color separation I got.
How is your Christmas knitting coming?