Late post is better than no post

*waves* Hi! There's 5 days until Christmas! How are y'all doing? Will you be the ones sleeping peacefully with presents wrapped and ready, or will you be frantically knitting a slightly-too-short scarf while people open presents around you?

My holiday knitting? Almost done. It would be done except I decided to add a present for someone who otherwise wouldn't have received one. What can I say, he's been nice to me lately. But here's some finished gifties.

A hat for Daniel of the no-beard.

Pattern: Susan's "Live Dangerously, Don't Swatch" Hat pattern (link to the pdf there). Very fun pattern. I modified it by doing an 1.5" I-cord on top and then folding it over and tacking it down to make a cute loop on the top. I used the I-cord bind off. I also used a stitch pattern from my Reader's Digest book for the body of the hat.
Yarn: Plymoth Galway 100% Virgin Wool in Dark Olive (?). Purchased from my LYS.
Needles: Size 6 Brittany birch dpns. I didn't have a 16" circ in size 6, or I would have switched.
Gauge: 5.5 spi, I think...
Verdict: I loved the pattern, and I think I'll do many more hats like this. I was always iffy about hats, but this made it easy and un-stressful. Also, the yarn felt pretty wooly before, but after washing it got quite a bit softer. I think it would be a really good wool for general use. A bit of ick came out of it, (spinning oil, I think) but it's quite soft now. I like my mods too and the i-cord bind off is a great idea. Thanks Susan!

And..... a scarf for my sister Laura, sorry there's just blocking pics.

Pattern: My own. Made up from a stitch pattern ganked from one of Barbara Walker's Treasuries... don't remember which one and I don't remember what it was called. But I stuck 2 repeats of it together and called it good. Technical, eh? ;)
Yarn: Every inch of 2 skeins of KnitPicks Andean Treasure in "Mystery". For both this and the hat I used a felted join (thanks Laurie for giving me the courage to do it instead of just thinking it was interesting!). I was trying to save every inch of yarn I could. As it was I had to bind off twice, making it tighter the second time to make the yarn last.
Needles: Size 8 Brittany birch straights. They're pretty, I like them :)
Gauge: Noooo idea... but I blocked the hell out of it to give it some length, so I'm sure the gauge changed.
Verdict: Laura will LOVE it! It's very soft and I chose an eyelet pattern to counteract the sometimes "too-hot"ness of Alpaca (I keep typing "Aplaca"... hmmm...) since Laura tends to run hotter than most people.

Right now I'm working on socks for Luke... they're interesting to say the least. I'm past the gusset on both and just working the foot. Shouldn't be too long now. Good thing since Christmas is 5 DAYS AWAY!. I'm gonna do some baking tonight, so I'll let you all know how that goes tomorrow :) With pics.

M