It was a wonderful Christmas here at Missouri Star. A little low-key after last year’s blow out, but sometimes those are nice too. As usual, my sister came up from Kirkland and we had a nice celebration. Now I can actually show some of the projects I’ve been working on. First up, Christmas socks:

These were for my sister from some Regia in my stash. Of course, I loved them so much I wanted to keep them, but I was a good girl and gave them away. I also made this tote bag for her:

I tried to take a picture of the inside, but couldn’t get a good one. I love this bag too, but since it was monogrammed, I was forced to give this to her. However, I will be making one for myself. It has all kinds of zippered and flapped pockets inside, plus places for an ID card, pen holder, key holder and more. I think she was pleased.

That was about it for the hand made Christmas gifts this year. As usual, I have made a resolution to start earlier for next Christmas, but we will see. One of my gifts this year was Cat Bordhi’s new sock book. I have just briefly skimmed it, but I am blown away by the way that woman’s mind works! I can’t wait to start trying out some of the patterns. I think I will definitely be starting a sock gift stash for next year.

During my time off from work the Garden Path shawl was allowed to come out of the time-out chair. I finished the body and started on the edging:

It only took me about four tries to get this going. It’s not the easiest edging in the world and almost impossible to memorize, so I need to keep the chart close. It will be pretty slow going. I am undecided whether or not I will start the Princess Shawl before this is finished. I had so many great plans for my time off, but the time really seems to be going way too fast.

Tomorrow I meet up with Li, blogless Marsha and blogless Daisy for a yarn crawl in Bellingham. Providing it doesn’t snow! I’ll be looking for some midweight sock yarn as several of the patterns in Cat’s book call for that weight. See you in the New Year!