every year

Every year I swear I'm not going to knit much for the holidays, to avoid the stress, and every year I get sucked in somehow anyway. If this would happen many months before Christmas, it wouldn't be a problem, but I tend to lose my resolve around December 1. This is directly weather-related, I'm sure. It seems that in my neck of the woods, winter starts for real around the beginning of December. Even if it's cold and kind of icy at Thanksgiving, that still feels like fall, but Dec. 1, things take a sharp turn. The sun rises so reluctantly that it never quite makes it to the top of the sky, the temperatures drop, and we usually have the year's first snowfall. Suddenly, we all truly need our warm socks and hats and woolly mittens, and not just one pair of each, as it turns out. Daniel's mittens are perpetually damp from playing outside in the snow so much. I need to make him a couple more pairs. Anya has enough of his hand-me-downs from years past that she's pretty well set.

All this rambling has a point, or two. And they are:

1) All the holiday knitting means I've been busy with the wool but can't show anything on the blog without ruining the surprise for a few people.

2) See the evidence below that up here, hand knits really do come in handy!

Both kids are wearing hats, mittens, socks (you can't see Daniel's, but Anya's got on her striped socks) and scarves made by me.



Anya is wearing her yellow sweater under that coat. And you see that wisp of fuzzy teal? That's my Ptarmigan, which she claimed as hers during yesterday's sledding excursion. She started complaining that her face was cold, so I - mother martyr that I am - sacrificed the warmth of my own neck so that she would be more comfortable. Now she thinks it's hers (and that's all right!)