After a brief appendicitis- and holiday-induced hiatus, knit-a-palooza is finally back.  And I have so much to blog about, I’ve decided to save some of my finished projects for next week.  And I apologize in advance for the poor photo quality, but it was too rainy to take pictures outdoors today.
As you might imagine, some people here at Chez Cabin got knitted stuff for Christmas (even though I had to wrap up balls of yarn and a pattern showing what the balls would become!)…so here are CBtE and CBtY’s gifts.

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a pattern for fingerless gloves, and found this Sock Monkey Hat pattern on Knitty, which CBtE saw and just HAD to have – go figure!  

It was really quick to knit and came out really cute, even if I do say so myself:

And here’s CBtE modeling it for the ‘photoshoot’:


CBtY got yarn for his new socks.  He just wanted colorful socks, with no special cables or pattern, so I decided to try a couple of new tricks just to keep things interesting. First, I decided to take Denim Blue’s recommendation for knitting socks from the toe-up (no kitchener stitch necessary to sew up the toe at the end!).  And then, since I just thought it seemed like a cool trick to try, I decided to use 2 circular needles and knit 2 socks at the same time.  If you’re interested in how that works, here’s a little tutorial showing how to knit them from the cuff down.  

While I was waiting for my itty-bitty size 0 needles to arrive in the mail so I could knit the socks, I practiced the magic cast-on with some scrap yarn and larger needles.  Even so, it took me 3 or 4 tries to get the right number of stitches for each sock cast on.  And it took a few rounds to get used to sliding the stitches back and forth on the different needles, but now it’s a breeze:

They kind of look like a bikini top, don’t they?

A view looking into the sock toes:

And modeled by CBtY’s own toes:

I’m using the Kaffe Fassett Landscape sock yarn from Regia, which will give them stripes of varying widths.  It’s been nice to work with so far, although it is very fine to work with and the needles I’m using feel like little wires compared to what I usually use.

So what’s on your needles this week? If you got any fun yarn for Christmas, or have a link to something you’re thinking about trying, be it knitting, crocheting, or even quilting, share it in the comments below.