Lots of holiday cheer in the last few days! Now I must pay the piper and finish grading papers this afternoon and evening. Some highlights:
- knitting holiday gifts
Yarn: Orange Flower Superwash Merino Worsted, in "Cadet" (3/4 skein)
Needles: US 5 and 7 bamboo circs + US 7 dpns
Notes:
Wonderful squishy yarn in beautiful blues! The pattern is very well-written, and seeing the acorns emerge is delightful. I still need to block this, but the next few days are going to be hectic, so I'd better document it now.
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Yarn: Malabrigo Chunky in "Mariposa," 1 skein
Needles: Clover US 10.5 bamboo 16" circs
Notes:
This truly was a quick knit, and the thick cables are super cozy. The Russian lace bind-off that Stacey suggests is easy and very effective. The slightly flared shape is perfect -- it keeps the top (cast-on edge) from being saggy, and allows the bottom to flare out a bit where your neck meets your body.
My first time using Malabrigo Chunky! Wonderful stuff -- very soft and cozy, and less fragile and prone to pilliness than the worsted since it has more plies. I love this colorway in the skein, but I was afraid that it would look horrible knit up. As it turns out, it's still lovely!
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I'm knitting a cozy cabled hat with earflaps to match! These cables are more complicated, but they're fun to work. The pattern's another freebie --
Snowboarder Hat that Rocks by Irishgirlieknits. So cute! I was halfway through the fourth repeat of the cable pattern when I noticed that it was looking awfully tall; I ripped back a bit to do just three repeats before starting the decreases. I'll definitely knit this pattern again!
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- listening
Low's
Christmas EP, a (post)modern classic. Low hails from Duluth, by the way.
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- watching
Paul watched
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas many times when he was a kid, but it was all-new to me this year! In a word, awesome. It's a Jim Henson piece, with plenty of Appalachian folksiness, mixed with a battle-of-the-bands with some super-psychedelic rockers. Very sweet, plus you can see forerunners of many Muppet Show characters.
We also watched
The Holiday, which is a mixture of treacle and charm, with bad acting by Cameron Diaz in particular. That said, the set designers are geniuses I want to move into Kate Winslet's darling cottage in Surrey posthaste. Plus all the meta bits about movie-making were fun. I rather think that if casting had been done differently (Diaz and Jack Black), this could have been a great guilty-pleasure romantic comedy.
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- decking the halls
We decorated the tree while sipping fresh grapefruit juice & gin cocktails concocted by Paul and listening to the Magnetic Fields. A very hipster Christmas, I suppose.
P.S. Have you read Neil Gaiman's piece on persuading his parents to get
a Christmas tree yet?
