Happy New Yarn!  Um, I mean, Happy New Year!

My New Year's resolution is (as always) to finish my Christmas Knitting.  And I did finish something very lovely which I posted today — so, sorry, but no photos yet.  BUT I do have photos of my knitted gifts to Sarah — in progress (as I gave them to her Christmas Day — with the usual warning as she opened the gift bag:  Careful! It's pointy! — I can reveal them to you now).

First off is the yarn for a pair of flip-top fingerless gloves — she had hinted strongly ("You can make me a pair of those").  The pattern is from Susan Anderson-Freed's Colorwork Creations.  I plan to cast them on tonight!

The pointy part of Sarah's gift was an in-progress infinity scarf.  Sort of a last moment inspiration.  A week before Christmas, George and I drove down to Portland to visit my Mother — a day trip with great car knitting time on the way down, but the prospect of total darkness on the way home.  The Christmas Knitting I had to work on required more illumination than the "map reading" light could give me, so as we drove down I tried to reconcile myself to 3 hours in the dark car with no knitting.  But then — serendipitously — Sarah put "Infinity Scarf" on her wish list (we use an app called Addwish so everyone in the family can view — and even reserve — items on each person's wish list).  The photo showed a knit scarf!  So, I googled yarn shops in the area where my Mother lives and located one on the road between her home and the freeway!  It was literally in our path!  So, after our visit, George and I popped into Wool 'N Wares Yarn Shop (which is totally charming, by the way) and I latched on to some soft and puffy purple variegated Berroco Flicker (it has sparkles! and it will go with the gloves) and off we went northward — with me happily knitting a randomly snaking cable pattern by the soft glow of the map light.

Later, when I pointed out to Sarah that a week before Christmas was a bit short notice for a hand knit gift, she said she had figured someone would just go to Fred Meyer and buy her an infinity scarf! Well, well.  Nonetheless, she is looking forward to her puffy, purpley, sparkly scarf.

By the way, her gift to me was also pointy:  socks in progress!  Actually, a ball of beautiful green yarn and a tiny swatch, but I can wait 🙂  It reminds me of O. Henry's story "Gift of the Magi" (where the husband pawns his watch to buy his wife tortoise shell hair combs and she sells her hair to buy him a gold watch chain….).