Some Yule gifts.

I had intended this to a be a tutorial post,  with nice glossy pictures of the whole process of making beaded stitch markers.   My camera disagreed with me,  and gave me only one glossy picture.   Ah, well, so it goes.

I am making stitch marker sets for the ladies in my knitting circle.     Beaded stitch markers are fast and fun to make,  and always useful.    The ones I make are very simple – I just slid the beads I’m using onto an I pin,  then bend the end of the pin around a knitting needle into a circle and neaten it up with some small pliers.

Each set I am making will have 8 colored markers, in two different patterns, and a set of alphabet markers – A thru H,  which are useful for complicated patterns.

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Look, look!

See what my husband made me for Yule!

It’s the worlds best shawl pin.

Tra-La-La-La

It’s been a busy week or so here – we’ve been decking the halls (I now share my living room with an 8 foot pine tree),   enjoying the half foot of snow that’s fallen,  variously being sick and taking care of the sick, and generally living life if not to the fullest, at least to a solid two thirds full.

I’m nearing the toe on the first of my second pair of socks — this one I am knitting from the top down on a set of Lantern Moon dpns that I got for my birthday.   Lovely rosewood needles make working on dpns more acceptable,  but I think I’ll go back to the circ’s on my next pair.   I quite suddenly am a sock knitter, complete with a respectable sock yarn stash (thanks in large part to my dear friend Melanie, whose gift sense is exquisite).

I’m becoming quite fixated on lace recently – I’ve got one lace project on the needles right now (the forever-taking SnowDrop Shawl – perhaps I should oh, say, work on it)   and plans to knit a wedding shawl for my future sister in law.   That there is time for – the wedding will be in ’09.  But all the pattern browsing I’ve been doing to find a good pattern for her is turning up dozens of patterns that are not appropriate for her,  while so gorgeous I must perforce fall utterly in love with them.   The Frost Flower and Leaves Shawl,  the Celtic Knot Stole,  the Shetland Tea Shawl, and and and…..

For a bit of fun,  check out the DROPS advent calendar!  I love it – I wish I were a codemonkey who was actually paying for WordPress so I could make a widget that would go up in the corner and link the current day automatically.  Being a frugal non-codemonkey though, I suppose sharing the link and extolling its praises is the next best thing.