It's Monday

I'm becoming a real stick-in-the-mud lately. I've been knitting like crazy to get some Christmas presents done, and watching TV while I'm doing it.

Which means that although it's been a lot of fun for me, it's not a good idea to post photos of what I'm making because some of the people I'm making presents for read this blog. So, I can't really tell you about it.

But here's something I can tell you about.

I've ordered some yarn to make Christmas projects that I plan to sell! I'll be making a limited edition of 10 (if there's enough yarn, and I think there will be) Christmas stockings!

The main yarn for it will be Classic Worsted Tapestry yarn in Chili Pepper. It's a self patterning yarn as you can see by the knitted sample below.

There will be a cuff around the top of white Fun Fur from Lion Brand, and the toes and heels will be plain white yarn. There will also be some size E glass seed beads randomly in the leg of the stocking to add a little sparkle. The beads I'll be using have a "rainbow" finish, in other words they look like carnival glass.

Although the yarn is named Worsted, it's light enough that I can actually place the beads at random with a crochet hook if I want to rather than stringing them before I start to knit. I haven't decided which way I'd rather do it. I like the spontaneous place-as-the-mood-hits-you freedom of using a hook, but the project will be more portable if I string them first. I think I'm going to use a hook, but haven't decided absolutely.

Which reminds me that Tulip has some new crochet hooks that are just coming out, and I've read some really good things about them. They'll be distributed by Caron in the US, but they don't have any available yet, or didn't last week, anyway. There are aluminum hooks with black handles and gold hooks as well as steel hooks with blue handles.

The links show a whole set of them, but Caron will have the aluminum ones available individually. They haven't said whether they'll carry the steel hooks individually, though. Personally, I like steel hooks better, because the hook part is smaller and easier to insert, but the shaft is tapered, so you can push it through to the diameter you want for your project. It's easier for me to use and much more flexible as to effect created. Steel hooks are just too small for some projects, though.

You can find a review of the aluminum hooks here.

If you're using them for beading, like me, Tulip will (someday soon) have out a line of Sucre beading hooks, specifically intended for beading! They're color coded according to size, and you can see the sizes offered and the color coding by following the link.

While I'm on a roll with knitting content, I want to make sure you know that Vogue Knitting is having a sale on their patterns, just in case you're looking for something to knit someone for Christmas, too!

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Speaking of TV, there was a lot that was interesting on this past weekend.

The Golden Compass made it's TV premier on Saturday and Sunday, completely uncut according to the advertising. It was fairly true to the book, but suffers from the fact that the book was the first of a series of three books that comprise a whole story. They did their best to give it a good ending, but all the ending really did was promise that there would be more to the whole thing, which hasn't happened so far.

ABC Family put on as much of the Harry Potter movies as they could over the weekend, too. I recorded them on my TiVo, but haven't watched them yet. Of course I've seen them all, but this time they're showing tons of trailers for the next movie, which is the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I want to go see the movie, but it will be a cliffhanger, so I'm a little less sure.

There's a new episode of Chuck on tonight! It wasn't on last week, and I really missed it! It'll be followed by a new episode of The Event, which continues to be top-notch in the exciting, science fiction, action and adventure departments! There will also be new episodes of Castle and Hawaii Five-O. Obviously, Hawaii Five-O isn't science fiction, but it has Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight) and Grace Park (Battlestar Galactica) in it, and it's really a good show.

I'm going to get back to my knitting now, and make some great Christmas presents. You'll hear more about it later.

Got to go! Chuck is coming on!

Have a wonderful evening!