Fall is Finally Here!!!

Yes, fall is definitely here... and it has inspired me to knit. Well, the inspiration came partly because of the cool weather and partly because of the fact that I just realized that Christmas is approaching. Quickly.

The Garter Shawl is coming along, slowly as usual. The problem I'm having is that I can't really tell how big it is, so I don't know if it's done. I don't know how much stretch I'm going to get from blocking, and my needles are too short to see how wide it is. Which begs the question: Can a shawl be too big?

I've been working on other Christmas-gift knits as well. First up, I dyed some yarn! I haven't used the Kool-Aid to dye yarn before. It was surprisingly easy! I had some left over from a visit with H a couple of years ago. I needed some green yarn for a gift, but didn't have any in my stash. So, I bought 8 packets of lemon lime Kool-Aid & pulled out the big pot.


With the very electric green color of the lemon lime mix, I decided to do a variagated yarn. I wrapped it around a wooden spoon, balanced across the pot-o-green. I let more yarn out every 10 minutes.
Here's the end product: It's still got some white spots in it, which is exactly what I wanted. I'm anxious to knit this up to see how the colors will look.
But I can't start the gamma-green socks yet. I was so antsy to start another pair of socks while the gamma-green was drying that I had to start a different X-mas knit.
These will be for my step mom. I'm using some really rich concord-grape purple yarn. I just cast on this sock last Tuesday, and I'm already just a few inches from binding off. We're going camping this weekend, which means that this could actually be my quickest pair of socks yet!

I'll leave you with a question. Look at this picture, and then tell me this:

Am I the only one who believes this is the most ridiculous strategy for "washing" the floor? In case you're wondering, the idea of skating around on cleaning rags was NOT the four year old's idea. It was the THIRTY-four year old's. (And for the record, they left streaks and dirt all over the floor. It actually looked worse than when they started, so dear old *pregnant* mom had to come back later & give it a real scrubbing... um... yeah. Thanks for the "help," boys.)

Have a great weekend!!!!