Happy New Year!

I hope you had a happy holiday season and I wish you all the best for the new year.

I was lucky enough to have nine days off from work and I can't believe how quickly they went by. As is my usual practice on my return to the office after the Christmas holidays, I have been easing myself back into work mode by contemplating my 2008 calendar and pondering the allocation of my days off for the year - that always cheers me up.

Here is the knitting round-up for the end of 2007:

Christmas socks for my friend Claire who lives in Montreal - I haven't seen her since I moved to Vancouver 18 years ago, but we email and talk on the phone. Claire always wore high heels and I remember that she particularly favoured red ones - so I picked this lovely red yarn (Schaefer - Anne) for her socks.



While I was knitting them up, I kept thinking about The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy's ruby slippers. In the card accompanying the socks, I told Claire that these were soft ruby slippers for us "older gals" who need to keep our feet warm at night.

I got this picture from her in an email ... she was wearing these the day the socks came, so she plunked them on the scanner! I guess I had her number right :)



About a week before Christmas I decided that I needed something more for my son's girlfriend and started to whip up a blanket for her. When she took away the baby blanket I had knit for her new godson, she commented that she was tempted to keep it to snuggle up with while watching TV, so I knew she'd like this. I had 10 balls of Austermann Inverno and went with a plain garter stitch, corner-to-corner construction using 6.5mm needles. I finished this at 8:30pm on Christmas Eve. It blocked out at five feet by five feet - it probably could have blocked out larger than that, but my carpet is five feet wide and that is the only space I have for blocking.



I was afraid it wouldn't be dry in time for her arrival at 11:00am on Christmas morning, but I kept a fan going all night and I was able to wrap it up. She was very happy with it.



My last bit of stash improvement for 2007. I received a generous gift certificate to my LYS (Urban Yarns) and I wasted no time redeeming it! Two lovely skeins of Handmaiden laceweight cashmere!



I think this cashmere will have to jump to the front of the knitting queue - I just can't keep my hands off it.