On the 8th day of Christmas...

...I'm still working on my true love's (aka the FoUI's) socks. Also the vest for DSIL. Because my family has always tended to run late with things though I may yet meet the last deadline in our own familial space-time continuum. Namely the 12th Day of Christmas. I think it's an inherited trait because my brother was the same way. Actually he is really the one who codified the 12 Days thing.. So even though they only married into the family, both the FoUI and my DSIL are aware of how things go in our universe.

The FoUI is clearly wanting his socks though. A couple of days after Christmas he ordered me a cookbook I mentioned wanting and told me I had until the cookbook arrived to finish his socks. He thought it would come yesterday but it didn't so I'm going to put a huge push on and see how far I can get this evening and tomorrow before the likely delivery time. He was joking of course but I'd really love to surprise him.

The socks are currently this far along.

Unfortunately, his foot is longer than the sock is tall by more than two inches so I have further to go than I have so far knit and I still haven't done the gussets. Living as I do in denial, I see no reason why I can't have them done before bedtime tomorrow.

The analytical half of my mind keeps delaying things because it will insist on trying to figure out why one zig-zags while the other only zigs.

The gauge is identical but it is possible that I started at a different point in the color series for the second sock. Sometime I may have to try to figure it out. The FoUI thinks the spiraling is "cool" so I have managed so far to keep the analytical part from trying to figure out why it's spiraling but it's only a matter of time before it starts wondering about that as well.

The vest for my DSIL, while knit with much heavier yarn on bigger needles, is not growing quite fast enough to finish in time to arrive by the 12th Day.

This is just the back and not even half of it at that. So clearly, the rest of this week I need to do nothing but knit. If only real life would enable, rather than hinder, that goal.

I was a lucky lucky girl this holiday season and got some lovely prezzies. Of particular interest to readers of a fiber blog might be this yarn:

Blue Moon Fiber Arts - Laci in "Korppi"

A gift from my dear Mum which I intend to knit up into Anne Hanson's Irtfa'a someday. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I hope everyone has had a happy and safe New Years Eve and Day. New Years has snuck up on me this year. I'm not sure how since I have been obsessively counting the days past Christmas as I tried to finish things up. But still it has.

And so, I find myself at the last minute considering the issue of New Years Resolutions. Last year I didn't do New Years Resolutions because I never yet have managed to fulfill one. It's like pre-programmed failure and I decided I'd prefer to be surprised by failure every time.

This year, I may change my mind. I have definitely decided that I really need to try to do at least one thing differently. Probably for more than a year. I actually looked at my stash spreadsheet this winter and decided that I really have got to stop buying fingering weight sock yarn at a rate so very far above the rate at which I am knitting fingering weight socks.

You'd think that would sound like a reasonably doable resolution wouldn't you? Yet for those of us cursed with a magpie gene it might be pretty challenging. I'm hoping that by not restricting sportweight sock yarns, or fingering weight intended from the get-go for non-sock projects, or club yarns that I will manage to come close to success in the coming year. But I'm still mulling it over. Wouldn't want to be too precipitate with such a dangerous idea. How those folks who did the "knit from your stash" thing for a whole year managed it, is just beyond me.