Christmas Crafting, Part the Second: Nativitatis Dona Familiae

Phew! My goodness am I having a hard time re-integrating back into my regular ol', non-holiday-related life. Neill and spent 9 days (10 if you count the travel day out there) in North Carolina with his family and just got back over the weekend. There was some driving around (Tennessee and South Carolina are now checked off my list of unvisited states), quite a bit of quality family time, a lot of sleeping, a WHOLE lot of eating, and it was great. Computer/internet access was limited (I didn't want to overstay my welcome on the in-laws' computer and my phone didn't get great service out there), but then it's nice to take a digital break every now and then (aside from the twitching withdrawals that is). Now that we're back, all this waking up early and going to work and eating things outside the candy food group is just...bleh. Though having the internets back is kind of nice.

So the following is what I did with 3 skeins of KnitPicks Swish DK in terms of some gifts for the fam:



Pattern: Spiral Cowl, by Keri McKiernan
Yarn: KnitPicks Swish DK, 1.5 skeins of Hollyberry (fitting for the season, eh?)
Needles: US6 circs
Start to Finish: October 31-November 2, 2009

The button is from a big bag of awesome vintage buttons received from Thea of BabyCocktails in exchange for some discontinued yarn I had in my stash.

This was slightly addictive, fun and fast, and my mother-in-law loved it.



And with the rest of the yarn:



Pattern: Porom, by Jared Flood
Yarn: KnitPicks Swish DK, 1.5 skeins of Hollyberry
Needles: US6 and US7 circs and dpns
Start to Finish: November 11-13, 2009

Beautiful pattern, and quicker than I thought it would be. The Swish DK grew a bit and got much drapier after its washing, which I think suited the hat well. As expected, my sister-in-law (who, really, looks good in anything) totally rocks this beret:



Happy New Year, all!