It's December, somehow

So Ben and I are celebrating Christmas 3 times this year, once last weekend with his family, on Dec. 26th with my family, and by ourselves when we get home after that trip to NJ. We went up to see his family for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and I got him, modestly speaking, the coolest gift ever.

These are dice modeled on the Deathly Hallows symbol from Harry Potter printed on a 3D printer in bronze. How much more awesome could fit into a sentence?! They're from Shapeways, which is a fantastic site where you can upload 3D models of things and choose a material to have them printed in, or use other people's models.

They are probably not actually usable in a game, I didn't see the model creator say anything about trying to make them actually balanced, but the numbers are distributed correctly and they have a very satisfying *thunk* when you roll them. They're heavy and feel solid in your hand, too.

It was a good thing we decided to give each other gifts at each Christmas this year instead of waiting, I could barely stand to wait this long to give them to him, and he loves them!

The rest of our trip to NE was good, saw his family and friends and all. We went over to Iowa for Thanksgiving and saw most of his cousins and their kids, it was a good trip. For Christmas his parents gave me very warm slippers and a kit to knit a really pretty purse. And we managed to fit everything in our suitcases, yay! It was cold enough to wear my knitted sweater a few times and it got lots of compliments, it's very warm and cozy!

I saw these adorable knitting bags on Etsy and added them to my Christmas list and waited like 10 minutes, but no one bought them for me and I was afraid they'd be sold to someone else and there was only one of each and so I bought myself an early Christmas present :) How insanely cute are these?!

 

Update!

Current status of the sweater:

And of the Kitten:

Socks!

I decided these were finished even though the pattern has the "POLICE BOX" embroidered in all the white spaces at the top. But in the course of making these I have discovered 3 things:
1. My embroidery is quite wonky.
2. Related: embroidery is hard yo.
3. I don't enjoy embroidering tiny text on knitting nearly as much as actually knitting.

So they're done! They took me forever because I ran out of yarn just after the second cuff and discovered it was on backorder until August. But luckily there are a lot of awesome people on Ravelry and one incredibly gracious woman sent me more, leftover from a project she'd just finished, and refused to accept any payment or chocolate or anything, even for shipping. So nice!

They also took a while because I made a baby sweater while I was looking for more yarn for these (I figured anyone who worked at NASA had to like stars against a blue background)

And I was getting quite sick of plain knit stitches in dark blue, much as I love it.

But they're done and I got to give them to my sister in person! We went out to see them in New Orleans, it was so awesome to see her and meet Dan! We had a great time and ate lots of delicious food, yum.

And now I get to knit something that's not blue! I'm thinking hot pink, oh yeah.

Knitting

Well, I guess I have looked at my wedding pictures long enough, I can post some different ones. How about some yarn?

Pretty, no? Of course I can't knit it that way, have to wind it up into little balls. The cat finds this process fascinating.


And of course those little balls won't keep my head warm! Start with some ribbing.

Not enough to keep my head warm though, maybe some vines would help?

Or some flowers!

And end with some stripes!


Of course I look doofy in it, as I look in all hats. (Maybe it's not the hats...)


But it's pretty and I made it!

The hat is from a kit from a lovely yarn dyer named Tanis, which came with the pattern and the yarn. I learned Fair Isle knitting to do it, which is knitting with 2 colors in one row. It's gorgeous and soft and I love it and marvel that I actually made it!

I am now working on socks for Steph, which are stalled until a very nice woman from Ravelry sends me more yarn, a baby hat which is stalled until I finish another baby sweater and have enough extra yarn to finish the hat, stripey socks which are awesome but I'm mostly saving for Italy knitting, and awesome awesome purple wrist warmers which I can actually work on! And there's another 18 million things I want to cast on, including something with these gorgeous colors:

Pictures!

Us by the trees we will be married in front of in the summer:


Very romantic. I love those trees.

Also note he's wearing the scarf I knit him :)

Speaking of knitting,

It's a sock!

On four tiny needles!


A sock ready for travel:


Kitten graciously helped model the sock:


And also tried to eat the yarn, but that's understandable.


It's very pretty yarn. Here it is before I wound it, hanging with some friends:

Sock sock sock

Sockity sockerson sockityness!

I started a sock! I have almost 2 inches of sock! It has ribbing at the top, and then is smooth, and it's knit using 5 needles, which is blowing my mind.

It's possible I'm a bit overexcited about this sock. Maybe.

I've been reading the Yarn Harlot blog and books,and she writes a lot about knitting socks, and they just seem so awesome, and I love socks, always have, especially bright pretty colorful ones, so I got sock yarn and tiny tiny sock needles, and as soon as I learned how to purl more or less successfully I started one!

It is full of tiny tiny stitches on tiny tiny needles, and I'm knitting in the round, as they say, so now that I'm doing the flat part I just do knit stitches all the way around, and it makes stockinette all by itself!

I had to start it a few times, the first time I started it I was unable to count to 2 successfully, so my knit 2 purl 2 ribbing got all messed up, but as it turns out I had messed up the cast on anyway, so I ripped it back and started over.

AND! I dropped stitches twice, but I fixed them! I feel like a real knitter and all, it's awesome. I used a video on Knitting Help and picked up my dropped stitches, and one of them you can't tell at all! The other got a little fuzzy because I had messed up the row before a bit, but I think the yarn is going the right way, just sticking out a bit.

I had no idea what my gauge would turn out to be, so I pretty much just started it and figured it would fit someone. It looks like it will be too small for me, but will probably fit one of my sisters. If they're lucky it may even get a friend someday and be a pair!

Now I know perl and purl!

My knitting instructor had to go Russia this week, so I am attempting to teach myself the second knitting stitch, the purl stitch. I got yarn in a color called Rose Camo, and it looks like a rose garden all mixed up. It is also the softest yarn they had, I love it!


I started with 26 stitches, and somehow ended up with a hole (bottom, to the right of center) and 27, but it's good practice!

Ben's scarf is coming along nicely! His is made using just knit stitch, but I like the wavy pattern it gets.


His is very soft and fuzzy too. I spent most of my time this weekend trying to figure out how to purl, so haven't gotten much further on his, but I'll do more of it this week.

The Kitten, keeping with her reputation as a strange cat, pretty much ignores the yarn but is fascinated with the knitting needles.