It’s been so long, too long, and I’m dreadfully sorry for being away for such a time! First, it was getting caught up in holiday mayhem and rushing to finish Christmas presents (I finished all, but the last half of a sock for my dad, which is better than last year) that took me away from writing and keeping up with everyone.

These first are my mom’s socks. The pattern is Chouwa from the book “Knitted Socks East and West”  by Judy Sumner,which I adore. The pattern wasn’t too difficult, but engaging and relaxing to knit. I highly recommend the book; the sock patterns are so pretty and well-written.

This next was a hat for my brother. What drew me to it was how the decreases made wide bands between the ssk and k2tog, which you can’t see too well in the first photo, but is very visible in the second. Since I’ve been having so much fun working with two colors and stranding, I wanted to see if it would turn out in this project. The hat is knit stranded, with the purl stitches being in the grey and the knit in blue. The floats were long when I first started, so I ripped back and caught them every third stitch, which pulled the blue section a little bit, and almost made it look as if the blue had two columns for each section. This didn’t effect the elasticity of the hat too much though, and my brother loved it and after a few days of wear told me that it was good and warm, and warm was what I was going for. The pattern can be found here.

Vortex is a pattern I can’t stop making; it’s just so fun to knit and the result is so cool! Zigzaggy, swirly stripes! Created by very simple short-rows. The worst part is the grafting at the end, which I loathe. But! The technitter has a very awesome post about how to graft without using a sewing needle, but using a knitting needle instead, which made the grafting so much better (I still need practice, as you can see from the seam in the first photo, but I’m getting better, as the first toe I ever grafted together had massive holes in it). This Zigzaggy Vortex hat was for my brother’s roommate. He wore it to work, and one of his coworkers wanted to know where he bought it so he could buy one for himself!

And my brother’s dog, Buddy, wearing a cowl I tunisian crocheted. Aww. He’s so cute!

In the midst of the holiday mayhem, I was also spinning in a whirlwind of job interviews and apartment hunting. And guess what? It paid off! This week I began my new job, and also began the process of moving my belongings into my new apartment. All this has left me little free time, and in that free time, all I’ve wanted to do is sleep, and not write, but have needed to pack and go over training materials instead. When this whirlwind slows down, and once the internet is up in the new apartment, I’ll be getting back to posting regularly, at the least once a week, but hopefully twice. I have a few ideas and topics that I want to write about in the near future, just no time to properly sit down with them.

Please forgive me my far-too long absence! How was everyone’s holiday and new year? What are you working on now, or excited to soon begin? Let me know!

Happy yarning!