{The Christmas Haul}

Hi folks!  I hope your breaks are all going just lovely.  Did you have a good Christmas?  Mine was really wonderful over here. We had snow on christmas eve and then a little more on christmas day, which was just beautiful.  Not very much... just a couple of inches, but I'll take it. :)

I had a very fibery Christmas, too!  My mom bought me some GORGEOUS hand spun undyed alpaca from a little farm back home.  The alpacas name is Hamlet. hehe Any suggestions on what to knit from this?  I really don't know the yardage, and it varies from bulky in some spots to more like dk in others.  Maybe a cowl of some kind? Where on Ravelry would I search for patterns that are good for hand spun yarn?

The Mr. Pie bought me some yarn I've had my eye on for a long time now!  It's 100% cotton Color Changing Yarn from Wolle's Yarn Creations on Etsy.

It's really neat yarn and I LOVE the colours.  It's made up of 4 very small threads and the colour changes happen by changing one thread at a time to the new colour.  Pretty cool.  What I'm not a huge fan of is that the yarn isn't plied, which is kind of strange, and they just kinda tie in the new colour so you end up knitting with 6 threads for a little bit and you have ends to snip off.   I'm super excited about this one and knew immediately what I would cast on - the Lace Christmas Rose scarf by Susann Hajjar.   

What I love about this pattern is how there are so many different lace patterns, but they all blend so beautifully in to one another.  It's very fluid.  You can see I chose to knit green on the ends and it'll be the light tan colour in the middle.  I love waiting to see when the changes will come!  It's exciting knitting.  Also, I never get bored of the lace pattern, which is my typical problem with these long lace scarves.  I just finished the first of 6 sections! 15% done!

The first pictures of well received Christmas gifts are trickling in, too.  Here's one of my baby niece and god-daughter Alora in her new sweater (the baby body armor) and the tutu her Great-Grandpa bought her. Oh my goodness it's WAY too cute!

The sweater fits nice! The arms were a tad long, but my sister just rolled them up for her.  I suppose they could be rolled down if her hands are cold.  And the cables look great!  At first my sister didn't think it would fit but it's way way stretchy!  I'm calling this one a success.  I hope I get other photos of my knitting being worn and loved!  The pictures mean so much to me because I spend so long wondering how my creations will fit and if the recipient will love it and wear it.

I also finished a project over Christmas!  Mr. Pie's socks that I was knitting out of a great dark green Araucania wool yarn.

This was a another pattern out of the Toe Up Socks book that I got for Christmas last year. I think it's my third or fourth one!  I'm thinking the other books might be coming my way soon!  I had a TON Of this yarn left over because after my last incident where I ran out of yarn, I was wary of it happening again.  Mr. Pie bought me my very own yarn scale though, so never again! YAY!

Did you guys get as spoiled as I did this Christmas?  Do you have snow where you are?  I have one week of vacation left, and I intend to knit my heart out! :D