Christmas is a'comin'

Somehow, while I wasn't paying attention, the Christmas season hit. Yesterday, I realized that I hadn't done a lick of shopping yet. Yeesh. Not good!

I've been frantically remedying the situation with good ol' fashioned online shopping, and local bargain hunting in my "spare time" (read: lunch break).

Happily, my immediate female family members have taken a sudden (and glorious) turn to knitting. I like to think I'm inspirational. Anywho, this gave me an excuse to browse super fun knitting stuff!

And then the winter Knitty came out yesterday! Without giving too much away, let's just say that it gave me some wonderful gifting inspiration!

I'm also happy to report that I haven't gotten myself in too deep with the Christmas gift knitting, for the most part. There was a minute or two in, oh, about August, where I was sure I could knit everyone in my extended family a fantastic hand knit gift, but the sanity set in quickly.

I am doing one rush order, which might be completely impossible/insane:

The Yarn Harlot's One Row Handspun scarf, for my "associate buddy" at work, who is pretty much wonderful. The idea was to finish this up in time for her Christmas party on Saturday, but seeing as I started on Tuesday, that maaaay have been a teensy bit optimistic. If I knit like a mad woman, I might just make it. We shall see... For the record, that's Manos in the wildflowers colorway on US #10 needles.

The only other Christmas Knitting I have on my plate is a hat for TD's mom. I wanted to do something kind of crazy, but I just don't think it's in the cards... so, I think another Odessa is on the way (is it weird to knit his mom the same hat that I knit for my own mother? am I going to evoke some sort of weirdo curse by doing this? thoughts?)

I just need to hunt down some fabulous beads to match the yarn that she picked out (a periwinkle Jo Sharp Silkroad DK tweed) over Thanksgiving. If there's time, I've probably got enough yarn for mittens to match!

In other news, TD looks REALLY good in a tux!