Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Christmas Knitting is Knit...

Mint Chocolate Chip Hoody
Last night I finished up the sweater I was knitting for my sister... Just in time for her first Christmas in TEXAS. You'd think that someone who knits as fast as I do would be able to get this stuff knocked out in a timely manner, but no. I still finish a disappointingly large percentage of projects just in time for them to be mostly useless. Then again, with the current cold snap, and some of the overzealous air-conditioning I've experienced in the south, it's possible that the sweater might still come in handy. I'll text her and ask, but it'll ruin the surprise.

Look! Cables!
I'd give the sweater to my youngest sister who lives in Pittsburgh, but I picked out the colors for the sweater with my middle sister in mind, and the color choice would be a dead give-away as to what I did. (Youngest Sister is GAWTH, so things I pick out for her are primarily black-based, whereas Middle Sister is a vegetarian and dang-near a hippy, so I tend to pick out more earth-tony things for her.) I hate getting busted on re-purposing hand-made-procrastinated gifts, so I may as well just own up to it now. (Middle Sister has just sent back a txt stating rather emphatically that she can still use a sweater... So, Yay. Now I just have to finish up a gift for Moodles' cousin, Li'l G.)

All that aside, I'm still fairly pleased with how well this sweater knit up. It is (as usual) of my own design, and it seems to fit pretty well. The thing that I am the most pleased with is that I knit that thing top down (starting at the top of the hood) and managed to make it entirely seamless. I know how to do blanket stitching and kitchenering, but I hate it enough to spend hours designing my own patterns so that I never ever have to do it. The other thing I really hate is casting on, so I also do a fair amount of work making sure that I cast on the smallest number of stitches I possibly can for a given project. (Thus, the top down construction on all of my sweaters... you cast on far fewer stitches for a neck hole than you do a waist-line...)

Mint Sekanjabin
For all my student-minions, here at the office, I have whipped up and bottled a batch of mint sekanjabin syrup. Not being something that one typically encounters in modern America, I figured it might be something interesting for them to try. I mixed up a pitcher yesterday and left it in the office to see how it would be received, and they sucked it down like it had booze in it, so I imagine that the gift will be well received and a little different from the typical cakes, fudge, cookies, and candy one seems to accumulate in bulk during the holiday season. Plus, being mint flavored, it still seems to fit into the holiday theme without reminding me at all of drinking mouth-wash.

1 comment:

  1. @CRHSP-28

    I always keep it around the house for myself to drink... It's a little more "on demand" than an entire pitcher of koolaid (Which I would then have to drink myself, since Husband won't touch the stuff...), and all the sugar maintains sufficient osmotic pressure that NOTHING will grow in it. So it keeps forever. I'll bring you in a bottle tomorrow if I remember... I lived on the ginger sekanjabin when I was pregnant, what with the extra high water-drinking demands required by the activity...

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