Many of my readers who stop by the blog who don’t know me personally come for the knitting. Judging from the paucity of knitting-related posts thus far in 2007, readers might be justified in thinking that my needles are stuck in a bag somewhere.

Not so, my friends, not so.

I’ve merely been negligent in recording the knitting that’s going on…

So let’s rectify that, shall we?

First, a couple of knits from the end of ’06:

My River Rapids socks that I finished way back in November instead of working on my NaNoWriMo manuscript. In fact, I wove in the ends as Karen was loading her story into the system for verification. These would be the most recent pair of socks I knit.

This is the scarf I gave Mum for Christmas. It’s knit from baby alpaca yarn in a deep green color (the detailed shot is closer to the actual color) and is my first project that I designed myself. This project refused to cooperate with my vision in the original yarn (a sport-weight alpaca in baby blue), but was remarkably compliant after I picked up this yarn at Springwater Fiber Workshop in Alexandria. If anyone is interested in the pattern, I’m happy to write it up.

The cross-over project for 2006-2007 was originally envisioned as a Christmas present for Rudi, but instead lasted all the way to Valentine’s Day. They’re Knucks (without the writing, as of yet) knit from Rowan Felted Tweed. Rudi picked out the color when we went to Webs earlier this fall, although at the time he didn’t know he was picking the color for this project. The pattern was one that I’d seen and thought might be a good present for Rudi. He then found it separately and asked me to make him a pair — and, in fact, bought some Solitude wool one weekend from our farmers’ market for me to use for them. Oops. I guess that will either be a second pair for him or a different project of his choosing. Luckily, he’s both supportive and excited about hand-knitted clothing.

And this is my most recent project: the Santa Cruz hat from the February issue of MagKnits, which I knit up this weekend. I made a few alterations — using a worsted weight yarn with the sport-weight pattern and increasing the pattern repeat to 2 1/2. (In retrospect, I ought to have done 3, as you can see from mousing over the shot on the right that the hat is a bit short to fit my gigantic head.) The yarn is Karabella Marble, a wool-alpaca blend, in a lovely sea-colored combination of blue, green, and white.

And, yes, that is Papa Smurf you see there on the left. He oversaw the project and is quite pleased with how Smurfily the hat turned out. (Want your own set of Smurfy stitch markers? Visit Creative Muffin at etsy to buy some.)

Unfortunately, not everyone was so pleased with how the hat turned out. Della thought that Oscar the Grouch would have been a better mascot for the project.

Hey, not everyone can be happy, right?

ETA: Rudi asked Posey to try the hat on last night and she happily obliged. Like me, she looks good in hats. Della would prefer you not bother to check out how laid back Posey looks in her shot.