Thanks Mom!

Here is a shot of my beautiful new knitting bag. It was a gift from my Mom for Christmas. Thanks Mom! See that top pocket? It's completely full of needles now. Needles of almost all the sizes that I could use. Only a couple of sets of needles in there are old. The rest were also gifts =) I'm ecstatic. Here is a shot of the inside:

It's already full of many of my WIPs and some other skeins of yarn waiting to be attacked. See all the pockets? I loves pockets. As you can see, some of them have things in them already. Those things are below!:







Look at all those needles! I'm so excited. The dpns you see are size 1 and 2. I hope to get my first pair of socks knit in the New Year. I know this sounds crazy, but I really love knitting tiny yarn on tiny needles. I think it's because I can do it forever, and my hands and wrists don't ever hurt from it. I also got Last Minute Knitted Gifts and Yarn Harlot. Oh! and a wool winder. As you can see I got very lucky this year!
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And so onto the WIPs. I want to first say that the Mystery project is off the needles! I'm am sooo ecstatic. I worked my booty off on Friday, and set my Turbos free. It still needs some finishing (weaving in ends. ugh! Don't look at me like that, you don't like to do it either! Plus it's intarsia. Intarsia is a whole different breed of weaving. Think barber poll gone psycho.), it needs a bath, and it needs some extra prettiness. Then wrap it and we're all set. You should see a long in-progress and FO post all in one some time in the first week after New Years. I've also been diligently working on the last of the Christmas knitting. It's after Christmas, you say? Nonsense! Christmas won't hit my Grandmother's house until sometime in January - when their kitchen is done. We'll probably be stopping by there on Monday to give them cookies and a tiny sweater, but they won't get their gifts until we have our "official" dinner. Or until theiy're done. Whichever comes first. Having said that, I am making some progress. Here is the the Irish Hiking scarf. This is the entirety of one ball of slighty chewed Cascade 220. It is in the Heather's Lavender color. It's at about three feet which is good for me. I bought two skeins, so that should make a nice 60" scarf. It's only about 6" wide, which is a little narrow to me, but I still like it. Now for the opposite of this scarf we have Midwest Moonlight. She is knit on size US 6 in worsted weight yarn and is supposed to produce a 9" wide scarf. Do we see a problem here? Maybe not so obvious at first, but let me say that those are 9" long US 6 needles. Now, what do you think? See how scrunched up it is on the end of the needle? See how it has yarn overs and will stretch during blocking? Ruh roh. This isn't turning out to be a scarf so much as a stole. I mean, I like a slightly wider scarf, but sheesh! What's the deal? I'm sure I could put it on longer or circular needles and figure out what the damage is, but I refuse. I love my crystal palace needles and hate using anything longer than 9" unless completely necessary. I may not be able to make many decisions, but when I do, boy do I stick to it! I am in love with these needles and don't want to use any others.
Anyhow, that is 2 out of the 25 repeats that the pattern calls for. I'm going to figure how much one ball of yarn yields and go from there. Whatever that gives me is what I'm going to do, unless it's looking like it would be a ridiculously long scarf. Especially since I'm going to endeavor to block in longer in an attempt to thin it out a bit. I pulled it this way and that last night, and I like the look of the longer pull anyhow, so let's hope it works.