It's Christmas in August!

I got my KSKS package! Oh. My. Gosh. Eva Doggen in Luxembourg, I love you so hard!!!

Take a look....


The full package. Look at all the stuff!


She sent goodies for Owen! He loves the cars and made me open them right away. See the cute little books? I looove them! And the two little packages on top hold a set of size US 0 dpns and a set of size US 1.5 dpns.


Here we have 2 skeins of sock yarn. Regia 4-fadig Splendid Color in blue and brown and Lana Grossa Weilenweit Cotton Multiringel in blues, purple and pink. There's also candy! Two for Owen and two for me (and Bryan). Dark chocolate and lemon candy. Yum.



A cute little bag for knitting notions, a wallet for my yarn money (great idea!), pens, pencils, stitchmarkers that are small enough for the size 0 needles. See that shiny metal thing? That holds your socks while you're not knitting on them. It's kind of like this one (scroll down).



Finally, the bag! Or should I say, bags! My poor pal went through 2 sewing machines while trying to make my bag, what a trooper. So instead, I got two bags. The white one has lots of pockets and I think could still make a nice knitting bag! The black one, well, wee the sheep? Too cute! All of the sheep stuff comes from Sheepworld. (www.sheepworld.de)

Eva, Thank you so much for everything. You didn't mention if you have a blog. Please let me know because I'd love to take a look!

Hello, KSKS Pal!

I had the honor and pure joy of getting to send a KSKS package to Gina of Sleepy Eyes. This is a woman that you all should know. She is a renaissance woman, with talents in everything from knitting to spinning and from yoga to Reiki. To see her sense of humor in action, I'd direct you specifically to this post and this post for examples.

Gina, it's been wonderful being able watch you from afar, (oh man, I sound like a stalker), and email with you about life in general. Because of you I don't mind being a process knitter and I can laugh about it!

Enjoy your package!!!

Brianne

Here's the thing...

For his birthday, which is coming up shortly, hubby has requested a pair of socks that aren't 1)stretchy 2)multi-colored 3)ill-fitting. So basically, they can't be anything like the first pair I made him. Being the wonderful wife that I am, and knowing much more about socks than I did in February, I recognize that the first pair was really horrendous and have agreed that he really does need some new knitted socks. (The man, God bless him, loves me and so wears the socks I made him in February. And because I love him, I don't want to make him wear them!)

I'm using Silja yarn in this lovely navy blue color

and KnitPicks DPNs in a size US 1.

One thing that I've learned is that it is very important to make sure that the sock fits before you make a matching one. Even if it means that your husband the recipient isn't surprised when they receive their gift. I'd like to think that having a properly fitting sock outweighs the fact that they know what you're making for them. With this in mind, I fitted the sock on Bryan frequently while knitting the first sock, which makes this second sock much easier. These socks? Oh, they fit amazingly.

The other thing is that I never realized just how long my hubby's feet are. Also? He's got very wide feet. This makes for a lot of knitting. I hope he realizes what a grand gesture of love this is. (Hubby also has a large head, which means that I'm not looking forward to the Christmas hat he's requested, though a hat will go by faster than socks.)

In other knitting news, I finished a secret Christmas present for my Mom. It finished blocking and I did the seaming tonight. I shall not being showing this one off until December 25th because Mom reads my blog!

For those of you who are doing some Christmas knitting, have you started yet? If not, when do you start?

What I haven't been doing

For one thing, updating my blog, for which I apologize!

Secondly, I haven't been doing much knitting. I've made little progress on my tank top, and in fact I haven't even finished the back of it yet even though that was my goal two weekends ago.

Allow me to show you some of what has contributed to my knitting pause.

There is one large flowering bush in the front of my house. I used to think that it was a hydrangea. I'm not all convinced of that now as the flowers aren't as hydrangea-like as I remembered them to be last year when we first moved in.

I don't care at all though, because these are absolutely beautiful!

Also, I have learned to bake bread! This was my first attempt at doing anything that involved yeast. I started out on these garlic parsley rolls and they were delicious. I've since conquered my fear of yeast and have graduated to baking loaves of bread!

It is a wonderful feeling to be able to look at something and know that you used to be intimidated by it but are not any longer.