Balls (and a December giveaway) (and I'm not trying to be puerile, it just comes out that way sometimes)

I should probably stop pretending that these actually happen on the first of the month. I do have a giveaway for you all for December. This time it's courtesy of Sarah at Creature Comforts Craftworks.

Isn't it pretty?

What you would be getting is 50g (half a skein) of her lovely merino/nylon/stellina (for that extra sparkle!) sock yarn in the colorway "Decadent". That's a little over 200yds of soft, glittery goodness. 75% superwash merino, 20% nylon, and 5% stellina.

I hope you'll go take a look at Sarah's shop to see all the other lovely things she makes as well. Her fiber is lovely, too.

To enter this giveaway I'd like everyone to take inspiration from the colorway and tell me what they do in December that's just a little decadent. Something you do to treat yourself, take a little break, get away from it all. December is stressful in a lot of ways, whether it's holidays, family, the end of the academic year, finishing projects for this year and preparing for the next, etc etc etc. In the northern hemisphere the days are getting shorter and seasonal affective disorder can start setting in. So, tell me, what's something you like to do that helps you take a little break from whatever is getting you down? And if nothing is getting you down, how do you celebrate feeling good?

To take a break from all my worries, I like to watch a fun movie and knit something easy. To celebrate feeling good, I like cranking up some music from my heedless youth and dance around like a loon... until I run out of breath in 30sec because I am ridiculously sedentary, and then I sit down again, but it's fun while it lasts!

I'll let this run through Saturday, Dec 17th and have the randomizer pick a winner on the 18th (and the group if you'd like to double your chances). So tell me, what do you do?


Meanwhile, I have been knitting some ornaments and I figured it's a timely topic for this blog. I've admired knit ornaments for a while, the kind that cover a plastic or glass ball, and so I experimented a little with some sock mini-skeins and came up with 2 super simple patterns.



One useful thing is that sometimes ornaments age in storage and look awful once they're brought out again. The white ball I covered with the Happy New Year colorway is starting to shed its frosting like the uncovered one in the picture above. It has strange discolorations and some of the finish is flaking off. Covering up makes that a non-issue.

Follow the jump for more pics and the patterns.

Knitting up the raveled sleeve of care

I've been knitting a lot recently, it's gotten brisk out and my office is the coldest room in the house. Finishing a project as the days get shorter and the nights get colder is a very specific kind of satisfaction, and one I really love.

One of the things I've done recently is work up a variation of the Wizarding Incognito Hat that is a standard Muggle toque.  It's really very simple and works for any stitch count as long as it's evenly divisible by 8.


hat (with gauntlets), 104st, wool.

A general hat recipe after the jump.

The yarn mines

So many things to update, so little time. It is a basic conundrum that the more things there are to blog the less time one has to do so.

Friday and Saturday were spent in the yarn mines. My family doesn't do Easter, but I have some colorful "eggs" nonetheless. I put each batch of yarn in a bag and steam it for half an hour before rinsing. This way I can be certain that everything gets hot enough to set the dye since crockpots can be a little uneven. I reuse the bags until they spring a leak.

I realized upon looking at the first set that my personal preference for green really came out with a vengeance. I tried to subvert it into other colors on Saturday but, well, it didn't work. I went blue, but even the blue is rather green.