Productive

I've been productive!  Now that I'm not taking classes, I have more time to knit.  And I'm finishing stuff!  These are Capitola socks, which I meant to knit two years ago and finally got done in November.  The yarn is Sunshine Yarns sock yarn, which is lovely.  The colors are beautiful, and it's soft.  Capitola may be my new go-to sock pattern, the fit is excellent.

Here they are on my feet.  I'm coming to the conclusion that ribbed patterns are the only thing that stays up on my legs.  Everything else slouches down, no matter how much negative ease.

The other thing I'd been meaning to do for a while is practice my colorwork.  These are Crystal Socklets from knitty, made out of bunches of leftovers.  They're still wet.  Action shot to follow.   Comment on the Crystal Heel: if you have a very slender, short heel, you may need more than .5" of negative ease.  My heel doesn't quite fill out the Crystal heel.  Or, as an alternative, you could leave out a couple of rows between decreases.

On the whole, these were fun.  I know they're all socks, but... I'm also knitting sweaters!  I know, me, sweaters.  They're not socks, but I'm enjoying the experience anyway.

Knitting, More Knitting, and BATS!

 I've been knitting leftover socks.  When you have small feet like me, there are tons of leftovers.  I've wanted to work on my colorwork, so I picked out the Crystal Socks pattern from knitty, dug up my bag of leftovers, and got started.  Here's the sock so far.  Notice the little yarn balls below?  That's a set of stitch markers I unwrapped from a yarn ball full of little packages, courtesy of my partner in a ravelry swap.  The green thing is a container you can squeeze together and use to store the markers.

I also finished another shawl.  For some reason, I was scared of shawls, and then, I wasn't.  Now, I can't stop cranking them out.  This is Birch Dreaming Deep by Janel Laidman, knit in Dream in Color Starry.  I wish you could see the sparkles.  This yarn is seriously pretty.

The whole shawl:

 

BATS!

Christmas Bats, with sprinkles.  They are a tradition at our house, and they were very yummy.

Happy New Year!

This year, I did not post any resolutions.  This year, I want to focus less on must-dos and need-to-dos and do-by-whens.  I am not a sponataneous person, and I do not expect to start living a completely unscheduled life.  But schedules get in the way of doing things because we want to be doing them, because it's what makes us happy at that moment.  I'm hoping to create more space for such moments.

In that sense, I hope you find 2013 to be full of joyful moments.  I hope it treats you kindly and brings you more happiness than pain.  Happy New Year!