Christmas Knitting...some pictures...some sock stories

So I did the whole Christmas knitting thing with only a few catastrophes. I wrote up a whole post about it, couldn't get the pictures to work, then scrapped it in favor of using the time to do more knitting.

In a nutshell:
Done On Time were - my sister's star nosed mole (yes...there is a pattern...I'll link if I can ever find it again)
my dad's coffee cup cozy (but I've promised him a version 2.0 soon since the first wasn't perfect)
my grandma's dishcloth and scrubbie

Not Finished Promptly were - my mom's felted pen holder thing (but only because I didn't have a sharp enough yarn needle. The knitting was done...it should almost count.)
David's fingerless gloves. In fact, on Christmas, his gloves consisted of pointer and thumb-pinky. Bonus points to those who caught the Scrubs reference.

So now I'm on to bigger and better things. Designing watermelon mitts for my mom's friend, a shopping bag for the sister, and (soon, very soon) a wonderful sweater for me!!!!

So I promised the saga of the first sock. I actually think I have 3 "first socks", so I'll be telling all of their stories in due time.

The very first sock ever was made at the request of a girl I went to high school with. I was a sophomore, president of knitting club, and she asked if I'd ever made a sock. I said no, and she immediately goes, "will you make me a sock for Christmas?"

I agreed to do my darndest to make her ONE sock for Christmas. I dug out the only knitting pattern book in the house (I can't find it or I'd share the title, but suffice it to say that it was bound in with instructions on crochet, needlepoint, tatting, etc. The knitting section consisted of textured stitches, a shetland shawl, and a basic sock.) I found the ugliest yarn I had in my stash (yes I already had a stash as a sophomore...yes I like parentheses...what's it to you?) so that if it was a total disaster I wouldn't have wasted something good. It so happened that the ugliest thing I had was Red Heart worsted weight tan acrylic with a gold shiny thread running through it.

I'm going to have to stop here and explain that, as an entirely self-taught, left-handed knitter, specializing in twisty stockinette and increasing by splitting the yarn, there were many things I had yet to discover about knitting. At this point, gauge was one of them.

I grabbed the only DPNs I had (US 6) and the awful yarn and set to work.

To find out what happens next to the First Sock, stay tuned. It's coming later this week. In the meantime...here are the pictures I was going to post of the half-finished Christmas knitting. I *cough* don't have any of the finished products because I was hiding ends and wrapping in the car on my way to gift them...so I've requested photos from the recipients; we'll see if I get any.