New year.

Oh dear. It's been quite some time since my last post, hasn't it? I'm still alive and knitting merrily away, but the holidays this year just took it out of me. I knitted several presents, and failed to photograph most of them, but it was all stash yarn so I feel like I ended the year on a high note.

2013 is a big year for me in several ways. First, I turn 30 in the fall (I am not yet okay with this; check back in six months) and then in November, I have my TEN YEAR knittiversary -- knitting anniversary? knitting birthday? Regardless, it's the 10-year anniversary of the day I learned to knit, a rainy afternoon when the rest of the house was at a football game and I was learning the finer points of knits and purls from my sorority house mother.

I'm hoping to continue the stash-down momentum from holiday knitting into the new year. I've already knocked out a pair of fingerless mitts, and I'm quite taken with them.

The pattern is Wanderlust, from the most recent Knitty. I had a single skein of Berroco Flicker in color 3310 (Odette) and used up almost every last scrap of yarn. Of course I altered the pattern -- I made 3 cable repeats instead of 4, cast on provisionally and instead of seaming, made a three-needle bind off leaving a 6-stitch gap in the bind off for my thumb. I used a sewn bind off to secure those stitches. The yarn is 87% alpaca, so these are super warm, and the metallic ply isn't itchy at all.

I know I've made promises before, but this time I mean it -- I'm going to blog more frequently. I can blog from my phone, so I've no excuse not to do it.

I'll leave you with a Knits: Where are they now?

That's Miss Lydia Joy, my sweet niece, wearing a pair of mittens I made for her mother as woolly socks. They went to Tahoe and the kids were soaked after playing in the snow, and poor Liddy's feet were cold. Solution: mittens-as-socks!