Christmas Big and Small

So it was the usual knitting Christmas scramble because I just cannot seem to get it together early enough. Knitting my brother's socks came down to the wire, as usual, partly because I chose a deceptively challenging pattern, called John Huston, the Tarnished Hero, and partly because the yarn I used, the usually reliable Trekking XXL (which I special ordered, because I love it so much for men's socks) was frustratingly splitty -- not good if you're knitting at a small gauge and want to work cables without a cable needle.

Here are the socks:

At the same time, I was knitting my annual Christmas ornaments. This year I chose a snowflake, a great pattern, and I knit up a bunch of them. And then gave them all away. Before I took pictures.

And then, at the same time, I took on a last-minute project making an infinity scarf for David's mom. She was nice enough to bring me back some crazy cabled yarn from Germany, OnLine Linie 313 -- a really interesting color palate and construction, but a huge gauge. It's not even on Ravelry. I polled the S&B-ers about what I should do with it, and ended up knitting a garter stitch infinity scarf, which I gave back to David's mom for Christmas. By all accounts she loved it, so I consider that a success.

Here it is:

The crazy thing about knitting the socks and the scarf at the same time was just how different they were in gauge. Socks: 8 stitches/inch. Scarf: 3 stitches/inch. I even had to go to Ack Moore to get needles big enough to accommodate this wild German yarn. Size 19.

It was funny knitting things with size 1.5's and 19's at the same time. To give you an idea, here are the needles I used: