I hope those of you who celebrate it have had a Merry Christmas and a happy Boxing Day! I am back from my holiday travels and am very happy to be home. My trip involved drinks and debauchery with some very lovely friends in Brooklyn, a visit to a yarn store (of course), copious amounts of cookie decorating with my nephews, and plenty of gift-giving and receiving. It always feels like it goes by in a blink and all you’re left with is an aftermath of boxes to unpack and things to put away, doesn’t it?

New spinning and knitting books!

Peace Fleece Merino/Mohair yarn

Undyed Romney wool

Three Waters Farm Falkland wool in Greens at Dusk

Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted in Grimm Green

Barking Dog Opposites Attract in Arthur and Guinevere

I received some lovely knitting and spinning books, skeins of yarn, and piles of fiber so I’m pretty sure my hobbies are all set for a while! I found the Peace Fleece yarn at a yarn store in Brooklyn, it’s a nice sheep-y yarn with gorgeous tweed flecks in the blue. The giant balls of undyed Romney (29 oz combined!) were a gift from the Fiasco’s uncle that he purchased at a local farm. I love that he goes there every year to buy me roving, although I need to find a way to let him know that 29 oz is quite a lot of wool to work through, before my fiber stash takes over! Then Santa brought me the remaining goodies: a braid of Falkland wool from Three Waters Farm, 3 skeins of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Twisted which will be perfect for a sweater, and some very cool Opposites Attract sock yarn that was dyed to make two coordinating-but-not-matching socks.

Adding all of the above to my stash has reminded me how few of the skeins that I received last year have been knit up. (Hint: zero.) I’ve nearly finished spinning the braid of fiber I received, I’m working up the gradients into a shawl, and I’ve wound up the Yaksi… but yeah. I need to get moving. My goal for the weekend is to start some socks with my new sock yarn AND finally begin a shawl with my delightful Yaksi yarn (which they don’t even offer anymore in DK weight, only fingering).

Speaking of socks, check these beauties out:

Gorgeous socks NOT knit by me!

Megan (a.k.a. wahoo10 on Ravelry) knits so many socks that she just can’t make use of them all, so she sells some of them for a very reasonable price. Even though I have a million pairs of socks in progress, I’ve had a really hard time finishing any lately and all the ones I own have blown holes. So, even though it felt a little like cheating, I purchased the Waffle Creams knit with Eidos yarn (left) and the Marlene socks knit with Sundara sock yarn (right) and I do not regret it one little bit. The socks are gorgeous, fit well, and are made from patterns that I like the look of but would probably never finish knitting (so many twisted stitches!), so cheating be damned–I’m glad to have them!

Alchemy socks for the Fiasco.

Lest my dear Fiasco think he’s forgotten, I also plan to put some serious work this weekend into the socks show above. They were intended to be a Christmas gift, I even started them way back in October, but, alas, is is difficult to find time for sneaky sock knitting in my busy schedule. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I hope to finish these sooner than later. The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Heavyweight in Tea & Alchemy and the pattern is out of my head. I hope to write it up at some point, also sooner than later.

Mom, a.k.a. cookine nazi

My nephew, Liam

My other nephew, Logan

A reluctant photo subject

My cousins and mom

Lovely hat model

For those of you still merry-making, enjoy it! There is knitting and a movie with my name on it while the Fiasco geeks it up on a new computer game. #home