If anyone in my family is viewing this post before opening your Christmas presents (highly unlikely), please CLOSE YOUR BROWSER NOW. After you’ve opened them, you can come back.

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[spoilers below]

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[I mean it, don’t look yet]

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[Okay, it’s not that big a deal, it’s not like you’re getting Shetland lace shawls or Dale sweaters or anything, but you can just see them in person first, okay?]

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Well, if that didn’t do it, tough tooties. Below the results of some marathon knitting and spinning, upon which I embarked last week when the realization suddenly hit me that I had zero presents ready.

Actually, I did have two things ready, but I didn’t realize they were going to be Christmas presents. I did make them for the final recipients, not for me, I just wasn’t thinking of Christmas when I made them. Two pairs of socks, both in quickie worsted weight. The first, for Mom, similar to some red ones I gave her, my very first ever pair that were too small for me but fit her just right. Both that first pair and this pair were made from Brown Sheep Superwash worsted weight.

This pair for my youngest sister Liz, who asked for really thick boot socks. These are from some old Knitaly I had in my stash:

That still left Val (next sister down), Aunt Barb, Geordie & his wife Sheryl, niece Melissa (Geordie & Sheryl’s daughter, 4, 5 in February) and nephew James (Liz’s son, 16, 17 in March).

Aunt Barb is easy: A Gone With The Wind calendar. And in a conversation with Val, I learned that she wanted a Sunbeam Hotshot, which Aunt Barb, tea aficionado, turned us all onto. So those two presents were ordered online (I got the Hotshot at Office Max, though, cheaper than the above link but not as good a picture) and sent directly to Aunt Barb and Val.

So then I started a scarf for Geordie. Here’s some handspun that I thought I’d posted a photo of before, but I can’t find it in previous entries now:

Well, most of that is now this:

That’s a simple 1×1 rib (so it’s reversible) on size US8 needles. The yarn is 4 singles plied together to make a kind of bulky-weight. In stockinette stitch I’d have used size 10s.

Now. Sheryl. Well she likes bright colors, and I had this lying around from my spinning guild’s Dyefest last June:

It’s “Snow Beast,” a blended, natural off-white wool top that I can’t find a link for. I had just dumped handfuls of it into various dyepots with no plan whatsoever. So I divied up the colors and spun it up, and about 5 or 6 hours later I had this:

Taking a cue from Crazy Aunt Purl, but going about it slightly differently (I did my multiple-wrap-around-the-needle as part of each stitch, not after each stitch, and didn’t do loops), I made a scarf for Sheryl. All the while I was wondering what I was going to do for the baby, and when I was finished with Sheryl’s scarf (about 4 hours altogether, with breaks), it hit me: a smaller version of this very thing. Alors, voilà, “Mommy & Me” scarves:

That left just James. It was now about 10am Wednesday morning. This stuff had to get shipped to Port Washington, NY. If I’d realized the nice folks at my local post office were going to tell me that Priority Mail wasn’t going to get to NY by Saturday and that I’d have to use Express Mail, I’d have relaxed a little and sent it out yesterday, but at this point I thought I still might be able to save a few bucks going with Priority Mail, which had to go out that day. With some stash KnitUSA, which is like Knitaly only bulky, I knitted at breakneck speed, on no sleep, and finished this 2×2 rib cap at 1:30pm:

Whew! So now, being somewhat knitted out, I’m spinning frog hair from the soy silk I got at the FiberFest in August. I’m sure I’ll get sick of that soon. In fact, I’m eyeing the little bit of undyed Snow Beast I have and thinking about dyeing that up and spinning some more of the fun stuff I got out of my Dyefest wares. I also have a bunch of undyed superwash…and about 5lbs. of a cornflower blue superwash that could be overdyed with purples and greens…I need to order some citric acid crystals. Otherwise, I’ll be going through gallons and gallons of vinegar.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa and whatever else you celebrate.

Okay, I figured out what keeps me from blogging regularly. It’s processing the photos. I don’t know, I just seem to spend a lot of time deciding which ones to use and fixing the color and resizing and adding comments and all that. So when I think about posting, it seems like a long, drawn-out affair and I have something else more pressing to do that wouldn’t get done if I spend 6 hours on the blog.

So I have to find a way to do my pix more quickly.

I have gobs of them, really, but you wont’ be seeing most of them.

I think I’ll make a rule: Keep it to 3 pix a day maximum. That might work, right? Except maybe for the next few posts, where I’ll be playing catchup. Maybe.

So I’m going to get my little SD card out of my camera now and see what to post. Later.