Another Holiday season has come and gone – and I completed a few Knitting projects along the way…

As usual, I knit a pair of worsted weight socks for my mom – she has cold floors and likes the extra thickness for warmth. She has three pairs of handknit socks now, so this pair is the fourth. Her other pairs are in blue, green and a variegated blue/purple, so I thought I’d give her something in a neutral color this time. I have a lot of yarn left from the stash that I inherited when my Aunt Pat passed away a Couple of years ago, so I chose two skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease – which gives Mom a hint of wool but keeps in her acrylic comfort zone. One of these days I’ll convert her to wool, but figure I’ll do it a little at a time.

I used my go-to worsted weight sock pattern, which is the Winter Socks from the Magic Loop book. It’s a very easy, Quick knit – I started the socks on December 20th and finished them tonight, December 29th (and that’s with taking a day off to finish another project that I’ll post about soon). I worked on them while Mom was here over Christmas, but hadn’t quite finished them before she had to head home, so I’ll drop them in the mail this week.

Along with Mom’s socks, I knit a couple of other quick projects. Knowing that the socks wouldn’t be done on Christmas day, I still wanted to have a gift for Mom to open. And Ron’s aunt was going to be coming along with his dad on Christmas morning, to keep him company since this is the first Holiday Season since Ron’s mom passed away in September, so I wanted something for her to open as well.

I’d seen some photos and videos around about arm knitting, so I watched a couple of tutorials and decided to give it a try. I made two arm-knitted infinity scarves in two evenings – they were extremely quick to make (less than an hour each) and pretty easy too, as soon as I got the hang of it. I’ll post a description and quick tutorial of what I did soon, but I think it’s a great technique for making gifts. The scarves are thick and warm and were well-received by both recipients.

Last year I had knitted ornaments for teacher gifts – this year I wanted a little variety. I found a pattern for a ‘Spa Day Facecloth’ that I liked, so I made five of them in first couple of weeks in December. I paired each one with a bar of sandlewood soap and gave the sets to each teacher and a couple of our TravelingMom team as well.

The last holiday craft was one I did with the girls and didn’t involve knitting. I’d found this idea on Pinterest and thought it was really cute. Hannah and I picked up a package of red ornaments at Michaels, along with some tan acrylic paint and tiny red pompoms. Add in each of my girls’ thumbs (plus a black Sharpie), and we made Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer ornaments. They turned out really well, although next time I would label each thumprint so as to keep track of which came from whom. We gave these to neighbors, friends and family.

Overall, the Holiday Knitting and crafting was a success – but I’m definitely looking forward to some knitting for fun, without a strict deadline. I’ve got a couple of other pairs of socks to finish, and I’d like to make some larger projects coming up too.

Bring on 2014!