Knitting in a Holidaze

My dad noted that I hadn't been posting a lot lately. And this is true. I have been busy with work and I have also been working on Christmas knitting gifts so I haven't wanted to spill the beans (not that any of the recipients read my blog). Now I can tell a little bit because I have given one knitted gift already, to my friend Stacey. She runs, and I thought this would be nice on cold days:

I used the Braided Ear Warmer pattern in Rowan Lima and it knitted up pretty fast on the metro and home after work. It is super soft and feels like it will keep her ears nice and toasty. I was worried that the cables wouldn't show up but they ended up much more defined than I thought.

Another gift I just finished and can share here is the Zelda Cloche from the most recent KnitScene magazine which I made for my husband's aunt using Karabella Soft Tweed. I loved the colors used for the hat in the magazine and the model totally worked it! I felt like my aunt-in-law would like something a bit more neutral, however, so I used a brown color for the contrast stripes. I absolutely love this yarn. I have several skeins of it hanging about and I want to make a Turn a Square hat in it for my husband, but the way my holiday knitting is going, I think this is going to be a 2012 project.

So here is the cloche. I will be replacing the button for a toggle button because I don't like the way this button looks. I was just curious to see how the loop worked.

Everything but the Buttons

I have finished sewing up the underarms of my stripey baby sweater and have woven in all the ends. Now I just need to find the right buttons. How cute is this?! I can't believe how much simpler and more fun it was to knit this compared to my first one which I had to seam together and was a nightmare. I hadn't much knitting under my belt at that time (hard to believe that was only four months ago) and the sleeves took a while to get to the same size, I couldn't make the hood right, but it did work out eventually and was happy with it and I know the recipient is going to look adorable in it- but he'd look pretty adorable in anything. I think I am going to make him another sweater with the same pattern as this one but in a bigger size so he can enjoy it later this year or early next.