In what may be a knitting speed record for me, I already have an FO from the new winter VK. I give you the Trapper Hat:

The new Vogue came to my mailbox on Thursday evening. I bought the yarn on Friday, popped in a couple of episodes of the Forsyte Saga, wound up a few center-pull balls, and I was off to the races. I took Jaywalker #2 out to Brooklyn for my day with Lisa on Saturday, so I didn’t work on the hat, but I finished it up Sunday morning, just in time for the perfect test-run weather. It was a chilly winter day, made violently cold by wind gusts up to 50 mph. So I bundled up and went to the park to try out both the hat and the spiffy new camera, an Olympus E500 SLR that’s our belated wedding and Christmas present to each other. It’s hardly at its best when you’re taking pictures of yourself wearing woolen mittens, but I’m still impressed with the improvement over our trusty little point-and-shoot.

The hat performed pretty well, too. For really arctic conditions, especially with high winds, you’d want a fine-gauge underlayer. The bulky Blue Sky Alpaca does leave holes for the wind to come through. But it’s very cozy inside this enormous hat. With the back flap down, it reminds me of some of the helmets in the Asian section of the Hall of Armor at the Met (Adam’s favorite wing). I think it will be just the thing for our big trip to Torino next month! Yes, we’re on our way to France and Italy to visit friends and relations and to catch the winter Olympics. Next up: a nice fluffy scarf. Oh, and some more socks:

I was no longer able to resist the siren song of Sweet Georgia’s beautiful hand dyes. Once I saw Steph’s pretty blue lace leaf socks and squeeeeeezed that luscious ball of sock yarn, I had to have some of my own. The colorways you see here are Firefly (Jaaaaaaaaaayne…the man they call Jaaaaaaaayne…) and Willow. Of course I intend to finish the Topless Jaywalkers first. There’s been another glitch, and half of sock #2 had to go to the frog pond. I could have sworn I decreased down to 64 stitches…but apparently not. It solves the mystery of the stripes not coming out the same, anyway.

There hasn’t been much to see Chez Blue Garter, save the frantic blurs of pencil on graph paper and madly swatching needles on Jaeger Luxury Tweed. Yes, we are in the throes of holiday knitting. It’s not looking good for some of the secondary projects (certain people may be getting IOUs for socks, scarves, etc.), but the gansey may just come in under the wire, barring disaster. No pictures, but I’m sure you can imagine grafted shoulders and six inches of the left arm, picked up at the shoulder and worked on two 32″* #6 Addi circs (thanks, Lisa!). So nothing to see…until the mail arrived today:

Y’all, I may just have a new favorite online store. When I ordered sock yarn from Earthfaire, I was hardly expecting it to come wrapped in color-coordinated tissue paper, several packets of beautiful beads, a special little beading tool, and a page of instructions with a hand-written note. I know you can’t see all that in the photo, because I took this crappy picture on the ironing board under the fluorescent light in the living room. But I did get some fairly decent shots of the contents:

The first picture is Nature’s Palette merino sock yarn in colorway “Odd Duck 4”, a happy accident of the dye process for their green colors. It’s going to be those pretty leaf socks in the winter IK. I was planning to make nearly identical socks using Barbara Walker’s notes, but I’m not sure I would have thought to make the last leaf curl up the toe so beautifully. The second picture is Shelridge Farms Soft Touch Ultra in “Deep Blue Sea”, for these. A sock pattern so tricky it looks like it could make you cry? Sign me up, baby. I can’t resist. Who wants to make me a button that reads “Sock-Knitting Fool”?

And now, to bed. We’re not quite at the crisis stage of the holiday knits where we have to burn the midnight oil. A girl needs her rest and her wits to stay on top of Twisted Tree and Twist Stitch Diamond Patterns, you know.

*oddly enough, the needles are not actually the same length. Lisa’s is about seventh eighths of an inch longer than mine. Hardly the rigid German quality control I would have expected, but of little import for this project.

When I promised pictures of my father’s sweater this weekend, little did I know I’d be taking them in two and a half inches of new snow. I’ve given up trying to photograph this yarn indoors, and this was all the natural light that was on offer today. But you can see I’ve completed the back. And I’m happy to report I’m more than halfway up the tree motif on the front now, too. Here’s a closer shot that better shows the design:

The goal is to finish the body and start on the sleeves before the week is out. Of course, that means I have to dream up and chart the sleeve pattern.

So, a quiet day of knitting and watching Horatio Hornblower. I hope it snows again tomorrow. The weather people can grouse about “nuisance snow” as much as they please, but new-fallen snow will always hold a sense of magic for me. It gives me a shiver of delight when I wake up to see the landscape…um, cityscape…transformed.

There was certainly no sign of snow last night when I stumbled in late after the Spiders holiday extravaganza, lavishly hosted by Amanda and Katie. Those girls know how to lay out a spread, let me tell you. They made filo samosas, sweet potato puffs, baked brie with mushrooms, spanikopita, umpteen dips, and let’s not gloss over the truffles and the fudge, nor the signature Spiders cocktail. I foolishly failed to photograph any of ones I drank, but here’s a screwdriver with a spidey twist:

And the gifts we exchanged:

The Spider version of a gift exchange is pretty polite compared to some I’ve attended. I was only robbed twice. Lisa took some yummy Christmas-colored Manos, and Veronique boosted my seafoam Lobster Pot. But I went home happy with a nice score of Australian handpainted laceweight in purples, blues, and teals, and some snazzy stitch markers from Zephyr Knit. (Amanda, you’ll have to tell me the website again – I googled it and couldn’t find it!) A merry time was had by all, including the significant others, who found plenty of common ground in discussing our depravities and founding the Fraternal Order of International Non-Knitters (FOINK), or to be more PC since not all the members are gentlemen, OINK.

20 days and counting. Happy Frenzied Holiday Knitting, everyone!

Ah, nothing better on a Saturday night than a shindig with your knitting girl buddies. Stephanie has a sweet pad, a godlike cooking husband, and a mean hand with a martini shaker:

And a pomegranate-blueberry martini looks mighty nice with a ball of Socks That Rock in “Jewel of the Nile”, we all agreed. Here’s a peek at a few of the attending Spidies:

Veronique showed off her beautiful Mystery Shawl. We were duly impressed…

…some of us so much so that we pounced on her Merino Oro leftovers during the subsequent yarn swap:

There’s a fir cone lace shawl in Wrap Style that’ll be perfect for this lovely stuff. And can you identify the background in the photo above? Yes, it’s one fifth of Cozy – one ball of interesting nubbly School Products cashmere down, four to go!

Apologies, again, for the delay in the posts. I’m pestering the host guys about it. I have learned the following: my server is named Grizabella. I find this rather adorable. Let’s all send Grizabella some chicken soup and alpaca yarn (knitters’ penicillin?), since she’s obviously a little under the weather. While I wait for her to recover, I’ve reduced the number of posts on the front page to six in the hopes that it will help the site load faster. Check the archives in the sidebar for older content.