And so it ends...

Well, my friends, Christmas has officially come to a close in our household.

I, for one, am quite sad. Christmas never really felt like it happened this year. Ah, well. There's always next Christmas to start preparing for.

On Saturday, we had a bunch of of our friends over for what we've officially deemed Frindermas. Rather than us trying to buy something for every single one of our friends (limited income here, people) we decided to do a secret santa exchange with everyone. It ended up being a rousing success.

My darling Vi had me and gave me some fantasy themed (dragons, not dicks, you filthy minded people) paper craft dolls and a really frickin' cool dragon skull trinket box.

Some of my friends bought us gifts, too, though it was unexpected. Bethany bought me a d20 mug, which is so supremely awesome. I don't have pictures of the dolls or the mug because it would require a trip upstairs. And I am much too cozy for that, thank you very much!

I do, however, have pictures of all the glorious yarn that Caitlin, Taylor and Ellie got me.

Those, my friends, would be four skeins of Madeline Tosh.

Plus she brought down the Malabrigo Rios I had her put back for me forever ago.

It's the Jupiter colorway, the same one I used in my mom's cowl. I have plans for this, don't you worry.

Seeing as a bunch of my friends are knitters, we decided to have The Great Destash. Everyone brought out what they no longer wanted and we traded everything out.

I was good and only grabbed these two hanks.

Both are a beautiful chunky weight. The creamy alpaca at the bottom is amazing. I can't stop feeling it up. And Gwen Erin is a dyer and spinner from the area, I believe.

On Sunday, we had our Christmas lunch with my adoptive family. I made Kevin, Sydney, Sheyanne, and John each a quilt, and Renee received one of my pillowcase dolls. They all went over quite well, especially John's. I had planned on making him one for Christmas morning here, but ran out of time. Once he got it, though, he didn't take it off.

I was spoiled rotten once again. Kevin made me a book press and Renee picked me up some awesome new dice for D&D. The deck of cards will also probably be incorporated if my party ever stumbles across a deck of many things.

Sydney and Sheyanne got us an Applebee's gift card and a pair of earrings that Sydney had made. They look like a yarn ball with knitting needles sticking out of them. It's absolutely adorable. They're currently drying because the one needle likes to keep popping out, so I had to glue it.

John, the darling man, got me a new hardcover copy of Sorcerer's Stone. My original is... not quite intact.

I also got to see Kevin's first attempt at a bowl.

Isn't it just gorgeous?! It's finished with beeswax, which gives it such a beautiful glow. He's going to be making yarn bowls soon and I can't even tell you how excited I am about it.

On Monday, Vi and I had a lunch date, followed by a little trip up north to my other home. You see, Vi's caught this horrendous disease. The only known cure involves a couple of needles and some nice merino. Yep, yet ANOTHER one of my friends has joined the ranks. (We're still working on Bethany, but there's hope!)

We sent Vi home with 4 bags of destash yarn the other night, but like yours truly, she had a need for some yarn shop time.

Sadly, my darling Sarah had caught the plague and wasn't there to hang out.

I was going to be good and only get another skein of Rios so I could make matching fingerless gloves for my hat.

Oh! Yeah! My hat! I got that done!

Please excuse my dorky-ass expression. I was trying to take a picture while balancing my new bae (isn't that the term the younglings are using these days?) on my hand.

She's not a new pet, but she recently lost her mate (remember the bird blood thing from last week? yeah...) and has decided that I'm a suitable replacement.

The hat didn't quite come out like I'd envisioned, but I'm happy that I figured out how to do non-spiral decreases.

So, back to my outing. I picked up the Malabrigo that I wanted. It's the same shade, but the colors are quite a bit different from the original.

Then, I ended up seeing this. And I could NOT walk away from it.

Tell me that won't look bloody fantastic on my Dragonscale Shawl?

I also changed my mind about what shawl I wanted to do for Vi for the vow renewal. She's wearing a TARDIS dress, so why wouldn't I make a TARDIS shawl?

So, I picked up some Dream Smooshy in Romeo Blue.

Speaking of the vow renewal, I gave up on trying to take on everything myself. My darling Caitilin has agreed to do two of the shawls for me. And if worse comes to wear, Bethany has agreed to wear a shawl I had previously made for her.

I was also talked into (willingly, I might add) into doing a brooch bouquet. I've already started my hunt for the brooches and I'm quite excited.

I've got a good start on Caitlin's Sonetto shawl for the renewal.

The pattern calls for fingering weight. I'm using a DK, so it should go faster. I have grand ambitions of getting done by the end of January...

You can stop laughing now.

Beans, Beans, Beans

I just survived one hell of a week, people. Colds, ulcer flare-ups, insomnia, finding out I no longer have a doctor, Star Wars being spoiled before I could see it, being covered in a pet's blood not once, but twice in as many days...

Yeah.

Suffice to say, not a heck of a lot of crafty stuff got done last week. 

I did go to the Harp's & Thistles PJ party and got to hang out with two of my favorite people (hello, Sarah and Mikayla!). I also picked up a skein of Malabrigo Rios as a "woe-is-me" pity present.

It's an absolutely terrible photo that doesn't do this yarn justice, but I currently have a rather adorable dog sleeping on my lap. So I'm not likely to get up and take another picture.

Isn't she sweet?

The stuff I did get done, I can't show off yet. It's the last of my Christmas presents, which will be distributed Sunday.

I also made Sarah a tote bag, but I completely forgot to take pictures of it. Just use your imagination. It was pretty awesome.

I've also managed to knit a few rows on Celestarium, but not nearly enough. I really need to get my ass in gear and get these shawls done, since I also have to MAKE LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE FOR THIS VOW RENEWAL!

May seems like it's a long way off, but it's really not. Unfortunately, my brain can't accept that and keeps telling me that we have plenty of time. 

Speaking of Celestarium, currently on Instagram (@ageeksgirl08, if you'd like to follow me) there's a trend of knitters posting videos showing how they knit. Check out the hashtags #loop2loop and #howIknit 

I bullied John in to recording for me and added mine to the list. Here it is, for those of you without Instagram.

This is hard to do with your husband holding a phone right in your line of sight. This is my Celestarium Shawl, so just plain ol' knit stitch. #loop2loop #howiknit #knit #knitting #knitter #yarnaddict

A video posted by Ashtan Albright (@ageeksgirl08) on Jan 11, 2016 at 7:41pm PST

I also, my dear friends, have come to the conclusion that a traveling shawl is just not going to work for me. I'm an instant gratification sort of person. Knitting the same shawl for a year is going to cause me to stab myself in the eyeballs with my rosewoods. And nobody wants me to do that.

Instead, I'm going to start dragging him around everywhere...

This is Beans. He's a Baby Alpacasso plush from the Amuse company and quite possibly the most adorable thing ever. He's pocket sized and perfect for tossing in my knitting bag before going on an adventure.

He looks a little cold, though...

Much better!

Beans will make regular appearances here on the blog, so keep an eye out for him!

Don't look at me like I'm crazy. Do you honestly believe I wouldn't knit a tiny hat and scarf for a tiny stuffed animal? An alpaca at that? C'mon now. You know me better than that.

We won't talk about the fact that I already have a whole wardrobe planned out in my head...

As much as I'd love to prattle on, I want to dive back into Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's (THE Yarn Harlot) book, Knitting Rules. I highly recommend picking yourself up a copy. It will have you smiling and nodding along, saying, "Yep. That's totally happened to me!"

Reading a knitting book still counts as knitting, right?

*looks at the giant pile of yarn-that-needs-to-be-turned-into-shawls-soon*

Sigh...

Renew, Return, Reimagine

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you all received all of the yarn your little woolen hearts could handle. 

As for me, I made out quite nicely.

John and Alex got me quite a few skeins of yarn, including some Three Irish Girls (black an rainbow). The other three are Shepherd's Wool, which I actually ended up exchanging for some other skeins you'll see a bit further down. And did you see those beautiful things in the back?

Mama got her Rosewoods! Yes, I wept a bit with happiness when I opened them up.

This came a few days later at my grandma's, also from John. Sweet Georgia worsted.

All in all, a pretty good Christmas haul for me, even though I knew almost all of the yarn I was getting. I happened to go to Harps and Thistles before Christmas and had a pretty good idea of what I was getting just from noticing what was missing from the shelves. Sorry, dear....

Now that the holidays are over, I can show off the secret stuff that I couldn't post before!

Deathflake hat for my mama. Made with Berroco Ultra Alpaca. Yes, I decide that when I was already stressed out from a looming deadline, I needed to re-learn how to do stranded knitting.

Flannel quilts for my grandfathers. Made with shirt flannel and quilted by simply knotting the corners. I really like how these turned out.

Can't forget to include my signature and the year!

This is the layout for grandpa Pat's I don't have pictures of the finished quilt, though.

A pillowcase doll for my mother-in-law. The pillowcase was embriodered by John's late grandmother.

I could not, for the life of me, find a pattern online to make these things. So I ended up buying a pre-made doll and just making the dress and bonnet.

Grandma Pat and I had a hell of a time figuring this thing out, but in the end, it came out pretty awesome. 

Let's be honest, though. Grandma Albright's embroidery is the real centerpiece.

Speaking of grandma's, here's an extremely crappy picture of my grandma Pat's Christmas present, with bonus Oscar tail. The colors are way off in the picture.

This thing gave me so much trouble. Like, I don't even want to talk about it. All you need to know is that the yarn is Three Irish Girls Felicity in Terra Firma.

John and I also decided to make a couple of changes to the dining room. It's slowly being converted to the game room. And here, there be dragons.

A forest dragon from Isabella Bunny Bennet of Steam Powered Giraffe.

Three dragon hoards from Iguana Mouth. Planning on buying three more for the other side of the windows.

And our commission from Lar DeSouza,a steampunk dragon with a d20, hanging above my bitchin' bar. Yes, I made the bar. It's a repurposed sewing machine cabinet. Lined the inside with midnight blue felt and put mirrors on the back. Replaced the knobs with glass ones from World Market and used a stencil to add the paint. The mirrored tray that the bottles are on also came from World Market. It's probably one of my favorite things I've ever done, despite the fact that we pretty much never drink.

I took a break from knitting to make my own contribution to the dragon room.

Made entirely out of scrapbooking paper.

Each of the scales was hand cut and layered. This thing took me forever! And by forever, I mean about 6 hours, give or take. It's currently also hanging above the bar.

But I know that you guys don't really care about all that. It's a new year, so all we care about are resolutions! Right?

Well, let's be honest, my work ethic leaves little room for actual improvement. Instead, I'd like to list some general "things-that-may-happen-and-if-they-do-I'll-be-happy."

• Get back into yoga. 
• Work on keeping up with the picking up.
• Cook more meals at home.
• Try to write and publish at least one blog post a week.

But that's boring stuff. How about we talk about my knitting goals?

My plan is to knit at least 12 shawls in the coming year. This includes some WIP's I already had. No, I don't consider that to be cheating.

Did I mention that six of these shawls have to be done by May 21st.

I'm also trying to go cold-ish sheep. So, less yarn buying. Which is terrifying.

In case you're wondering...

...this is what almost a year's worth of shawls looks like. I still have an extra skein coming in for Celestarium and the yarn I need to do for one more shawl.

Shawl we see what's in the basket? (heh...)

This is the Flower Market shawl in Malabrigo Sock, Botichelli Red. I started this right after Christmas as a "OH MY GOD! NO MORE HATS! GIVE ME SOMETHING DELICATE AND LACY PLEEEASSSEEEE!!!!" project.

The Voodoo MKAL by Boo Knits. This was supposed to be a Halloween KAL, but I ended up getting behind. This pretty thing is begging to be done, but only when I feel the need to not do anything else but be frustrated with 50 million beads in one sitting.

The Lonely Tree Shawl for my mother-in-law. It was supposed to be a birthday present for her last year. Hoping that it will be her present this year.

This is also Malabrigo. Don't remember which base, but it's the butter colorway.

Passe Partout for grandma Pat. Intended to be a Christmas present, but I ran out of time. Three Irish Girls Springvale DK in one of the exclusive colors.

The next batch of yarn will have no patterns associated with them. Can't let my girls know exactly what they're getting!

Malabrigo Silky Merino.

Madeline Tosh Merino Light in WInter Wheat and Three Irish Girls in their special gradient yarn, Harps and Thistles colorway.

Even more Malabrigo Silky Merino in Peidra.

Like I said, there's some more yarn on it's way for one more shawl.

What are these for? Well, John and I are going to be celebrating five years of marriage and a decade of being together this year. So, we figured why not have a vow renewal! My wifekateers are each having a shawl knit just for them as a thank you gift and to wear during the ceremony.

You realize this also means that I have to make myself a shawl, right?

Enter Celestarium.

I'm already on chart E, but at 288 stitches a round, it's going to take a while. I'm hoping to have it done early, though, because the dye in this yarn hasn't been set properly. My hands turn blue if I work with it for too long, so I have to find someone to help me out with that.

Not sure what shawl this is going to be yet. It's the Dragonfly Pixie that I picked up during the Tour paired with some more Three Irish Girls.

Remember clear back at the beginning of this post when I said I traded in my Shepherd's Wool? Well, this is what I picked up instead. It's a DK weight alpaca blend that is so ridiculously soft! I had planned on making Dream Stripes with this, but I hate how the pattern is written. So, this will definitely be a later in the year project.

But this, my dear friends, is what I'm most excited about. My year-long project of learning, growing, and traveling. 

You know how Yarn Harlot has traveling socks? Well, this gal is going to have a traveling shawl. 

I've picked the Pretty as a Peacock pattern, but have chosen to make mine in phoenix colors. (See how the post title ties in? I'm so clever...) 

Any and all important events and the like, I'll be bringing this shawl along and taking pictures. The plan is to be able to wear this at whatever New Year celebration we attend at the end of 2016.

It'll be a year's worth of memories all wrapped up in lacy wool. 

Here's to a new year, chaps. Let's make it a wooly good one, eh?