Phew! I'm coming to the end of my Christmas knitting! My previous list of what-to-knit is pretty much scrapped, I'm afraid. By next weekend, everything will be washed, wrapped and despatched, so if it isn't done by then, hard luck.
That Santa's hat, which is going to a 2yo if finished, down to the pompom. I bought a pompom maker (innox) this week at Libertys, no instructions, just a pattern booklet, but Google is everyone's friend, and I found an instruction page out there on the www. MUCH easier to make the pompom in two halves and then join, something that hadn't even crossed my feeble mind.
Eskimo is attrocious to use as a pompom, it's shed all over the place, I'll have to make sure that the parents of the Santa hats don't leave the 6 week old baby alone, with the hat on and the pompom dangling dangerously close to a mouth whose primary use at the moment is to feed!
I've cheated in this photo: the pompom isn't attached, and won't be until I've washed the hat (thankfully all machine washable) as it's apt to disintegrate in the washing machine, I think.
Looks like I had a case of camera shake today!
On Friday I worked on a couple of small bags which I will fill with girly things, hair accessories, tiny soaps, and whatever else I can find that's girly and fluffy.
This one is for a 6yo, verrrry girly, blond, blue eyed, tidy tidy, and lives in pinky barby stuff.
Some All Seasons Cotton, from stash, knitted double, and the new R2 glittery yarn, knitted double. Really fiddly to sew up, and I've had to put a big press stud in the centre to stop it gaping.
The second bag is for her cousin, who's 5, not so girly (but she does like to get similar pressies, as they're rivals big time) with a wild inquisitive character, and Destruction is her middle name. If you were to meet this girl, you'd think that she'd stepped out of a victorian photograph, a very old fashioned face, long brown wild and wavy hair, and you'd be amazed at how she can turn into a little whirlwind in a matter of seconds. I doubt this bag will be in one piece by the end of Christmas day, but it will be well played with.
This is DK cotton, some purple Lurex and some purple eyelash.
I'm still working on Chris's dk Mexiko socks, one down, second to the heel now. As a birthday treat for Billy, we went out for an early meal yesterday, then to the cinema. The Nandos treat went out of the window pretty quickly, the place was packed at 6pm on a Saturday before Christmas. We went instead to a Malaysian restaurant, so he had noodles instead of Chicken and managed to eat the whole bowl with chopsticks. What's amazing is that we could have gone with set menus, as the table next to us did, but the size of the meal was enormous! Two little girls had the biggest tray of dinner that you've ever seen in your life, and managed to down most of it (except the veggies). We'll be going back soon to try this out, but much later in the day when we're starving!
Chris chose the film.
It was a 15 (Billy turned 15)
It was a film based on one of his favourite authors (Ian Banks)
Johnathon Ross loved it.
A tedious film, especially for plebs like me who prefer action, thrillers, special effects when I go to the cinema. Even Chris thought it underplayed the menace and doom and gloom that he'd expected. I managed to knit a sock leg and catch up on the zzzzzzzz anyway.
Colouroncolour kal.
I have spent hours and hours, sitting here in front of the computer screen, tabbing between different sites which have the Paterna Persian Wool shade cards, armed with the book and my J&S shadecard. About 4 pages of notes (spreadsheets with colour numbers and what I think are the equivalent J&S shades) and I have reduced the number of shades that I need down to a reasonable 15 or so.
I have a hectic day at work, and put off ordering the yarn until 4.55pm, 5 minutes before the lovely ladies of J&S close for the week. And when I phone through, I can't find my latest notes, detailing the final choice! In a panic, I pick one of the sheets up and just start reading out shade numbers, thinking as I go that I just can't order all of these, the list is enormous, so I omit the occasional shades as I go down the list. Right. I have no idea how many I've ordered, or what the colours will be, or if I've ordered duplicate colours. I may find that I have no pinks or reds, or not blues, or greens. A nice surprise this week when they turn up! A lot of people are using the actual paterna yarn, but I think it'll be much more of a challenge my way. I have no colour sense at all, just none. I might have to do the bin bag treatment, and just pull a colour out of the bag and start knitting. Can't wait though!