Giftmas presents, round 1

Two bags down, 3 to go. I actually just finished the dog one this morning really quickly – all that was left was to stitch the corners and flip it right-side out. The inside lining needs hand sewn to finish where I turned it right-side out but I’m waiting to do that until I get them all done so I can just do it all at once. Bags 3 & 4 are in the cutting process but shouldn’t take too long to finish – the first bag is always the slowest, but once you get the process down it speeds up and, before long, you’re making them without looking at the directions anymore.

They’re too small, honestly. I thought maybe they’d be a perfect sock project bag but I tried putting in a skein of unwound sock yarn and it’s snug. A wound ball of yarn is less bad, but you have to factor in trying to get your sock WIP in the bag with the ball and then that makes it tight. So these might end up being knitting accessory bags more than project bags. Oh well. I’ll just have to remember this next time I decide to make knitting bags and upsize the pattern a few inches each direction. It’s too late, now, and it would look weird if certain knitting friends ended up with a larger bag than the others.

Now that it’s October, it’s time to start counting down to my annual cabin trip weekend with the girls. This means not only deciding on what I’m taking to knit (and, hopefully, finish since I have quite the WIP list right now), but also packing/planning yarn dyeing. This year I have a sock blank, which I’ve never tried before, and I ordered some grey Full Circle roving from Knit Picks. Most of my fiber dyeing has been on white, so I want to play with the dyeing of the grey and see how pretty that comes out once spun. As far as the knitting that weekend… Ugh. I have no idea. I have too many projects going right now. I feel like, with a solid weekend of distraction-free (well, kid-free) knitting I need to pick projects that I don’t generally get to work on at home. Things that require more focus and attention than a sock project. That pretty much means the Husband’s holiday stocking, since it’s stranded and requires a lot of focus to stay on the right pattern row.

But, for now, the focus needs to stay on holiday gifts. I have about 32 days until that trip. I think I can hammer out quite a bit in 32 days, now that I think about it. If I can get the holiday gifts done (or most of them, at least) between now and November, then I can sail smoothly into the holidays and enjoy them as I’m hoping to.