Knitting Update! (Mostly Christmas presents)

 I'm so far behind on blogging, but I thought I'd take today to give an update on a bunch of mostly small knitting projects from December.  I've really been enjoying knitting a lot these past few months, and after some complicated lace knitting earlier in the year I transitioned to some mostly simpler and smaller projects more recently.

The largest of these was the Marksbury Wrap.  This was a project my good friend Trish started right before she died about a year and a half ago.  Her daughter Caitlin asked if our church knitting group would finish it for her and we agreed.  We passed it around among group members for a while each working on it a bit, and then this fall my friend Melody and I spearheaded getting it finished up.  At first I didn't care for the yarn, but I got used to it and it turned out a lovely and soft.  I'm not sure whether it's the yarn or the needles, but it's a bit narrower than the pattern makes it look, more like a scarf than a wrap, but definitely warm and cozy.  I love the rainbow colors and it was a great opportunity to think of Trish.

I also knitted up a quick washcloth as a small stocking stuffer, but concluded from the experience that I much prefer crocheting washcloths to knitting them, and somehow I don't seem to have a picture of it.  

One of the other projects I did earlier in the fall was this knit colorwork headband.  I'd never done stranded (Fair Isle) colorwork before and it was a big challenge!  I got a little better as I went along, but still not great.  I'm a continental knitter, and it was very very hard for me to tension the yarn in my right hand so that I could knit with both colors at once.  I thought the headband came out nice, and I even lined it, but I guess my gauge was way off.  It was supposed to be a present for my mom, but evidently she has a very small head, and it was so big it kept sliding off her head.  It's a little too big even for me, so I think I might find somewhere to donate it and then knit her something else.

And then in a huge coincidence, right before Christmas, mom suggested that we knit Fair Isle Christmas ornaments while I was home for the holidays.  I wasn't sure we'd have time, but since it was only the three of us (me, Mom and Dad), we actually did a fair amount of knitting.  It was fun to get to practice more stranded colorwork on small projects.  There's still room for improvement, but at least now I feel like I can successfully carry yarn in both hands, and I'm getting better (though still slow) at picking up floats.  The pink/taupe and blue/white ornaments are mine and the red/white one is moms.