I don’t know where I’ve been this month.  Working, I suppose, and Christmas shopping, and in the past few weeks a number of family gatherings on all sides of our families.  There was also a fair amount of knitting, so in lieu of anything else to write about I’ll chronicle it here.

First, we got a Christmas tree and after decorating it with some store-bought ornaments I thought it was missing something.  We never did get around to finding a star for the top of the tree, but I did cement my insane cat lady status by knitting some cat ornaments:

The insanity was perpetuated by the VEB, who insisted that I knit additional ones to resemble our cats.  And then I perpetuated the insanity further by rummaging through my yarn stash to find some variegated brown yarn that sort of resembled our part-calico cat, and then searching three yarn stores to find some gray/black yarn that sort of resembled the gray tiger cat.  Happily the third cat is black, so I had her covered.  (Pattern here.)

***

For the “every time I turn around someone has a baby” box, which is running low at the moment, I also finished a “Mignon” baby sweater (pattern here); it looks a little odd in the proportions because it’s meant to be cropped.  It was a pretty easy knit though I do so wish I could figure out how to do cables without a cable needle.

I found a ridiculously cute sheep button for it:

***

For the third Christmas in a row I knit the VEB a hat, which I don’t have a picture of because he wore it to work.  It has little Cthulu’s on it and it was a pain in the arse to knit but he likes it, that’s what counts.  (Pattern here.)

***

Finally, it got cold enough around here to haul out the box of woolens.  Much to my chagrin I found five different hand-knit mittens, all missing their match.  I have no idea how I managed to lose five different mittens over the summer and fall, but alas I did.  This necessitated whipping up a fast pair of mittens for myself, which I finished this morning.  Happily I was able to use some chunky blue Malabrigo yarn that I’d already mad a hat out of a few years ago.  (Pattern reference here.)  It’s such an old Mainer thing to do – using up what you have, and also making something you need rather than buying it.  (In general I am not a very thrifty person, so I like making note of it when I am!)

***

There are other projects I started and put aside, like the gray Campside shawl that will probably be the death of me, not because it is hard but because I can’t stand looking at it any more.  Meanwhile, I’m thinking about what I want to knit next year.  After a decade or so of knitting I’m finally feeling like I’ve finally become an “intermediate” knitter, and I’m looking at patterns that are a bit more challenging to knit.  There’s also a purple sweater in a bag, just waiting for a second sleeve to be finished, and several socks that need mates.  In the meantime, I think I need to whip up another pair of mittens just to be on the safe side.  Here’s to happy knitting in 2015!