January thus far...

I've been working on a pair of socks that I'm making for a trade. The socks are made from Handmaiden Casbah (not Casbah Sock) in colorway Midnight and the pattern is Yarnissima's Firestarter.

Progress pic modeled on my hand. You can see the colorway beautifully here.


And the FO. There really are two but I can only find one of my blockers :lol:


Also, I found these at my local thrift store. Pretty much an entire set was included (missing one letter and one square) and the kids are getting a kick out of it.


But the real reason I purchased them was so I could use them for things like this:


Yup... mama got herself some blocking mats. I think my next investment is going to be blocking wires :blush:

BTW: the shawlette is hand spun and knit. Spun from chasing rainbows merino/bombyx in colorway Opal and knit with the Argus Shawlette pattern by Wendy D. Johnson

Simple Pleasure #5

A PB&J sandwich with extra peanut butter and extra jelly.



I'd forgotten how good these can taste. After having 100 too many throughout my grade school life, I denounced PB&J sandwiches for what I thought to be forever. Then the kids came and PB&J was back on the menu. Though I usually did not partake in their sandwich lunches (I would make myself a salad or something) they seemed to enjoy it so much. So one day I caved and had myself my first PB&J in probably 5 years... and it was glorious! Absence truly made my mouth grow fonder :)

My Christmas Knitting

The Christmas Knitting

During the loooong break, I was able to get a good amount of crafting done. As a tradition I started a couple years back, I make one knitted-ish item for each of the kids that goes in their stocking. This year, I asked the older two what they wanted.

My oldest told me she wanted a long pair of socks that kept her feet warm. That surprised me because she is so much like me in that her shoes and socks are the first things to come off where ever she goes. In fact, we were sitting in church today and about 5 minutes into it she asked if she could take her shoes off. Anyway, I happened to have this very loud yarn in my stash and though I didn't have a specific project in mind when I received it, it turned out perfect for my daughter who's top three favorite colors are pink, orange, and purple. The yarn is Happy Feet in colorway #9 and the pattern is the Mother's Day Trio Socks by Phyll Lagerman (who so so graciously gifted the pattern to me). Here's a linky to my Ravelry project page for more info.



turned into these:


Next up was a pair of mitts for Bubba. Bub has loved mitts since he learned how to put them on so I knew what project I wanted to work on for him. I had asked him what superhero he wanted on his mitts and he went off and drew me this picture:



He told me it is the symbol for Licorice Man, a superhero that he and my mother had invented a couple months ago. So from the picture came these. The yarn is mainly cascade 220 and the pattern came from the Basic Top Down Mittens by Patti Pierce Stone. Here's the project page for the mitts.



And lastly comes Loo's longies. She's been needing a nice thick pair of longies because it's starting to get cooler over here (if you count 50's as cooler :lol:). So, made from Araucania Nature Wool Chunky and the hand spun from my previous andean plying experiment came Loo's Christmas longies. Here's the Ravelry page for the longies.



Done up in my own Tunisian crochet pattern: