Handmade Holidays: Knitted Gifts

On to the knitting!

For a friend, mason jar cozies in pint and quart sizes.  They're knit from Paton's Classic wool in Orchid and Bird of Paradise respectively.  The pint pattern is the ribbed variation of Mason Jar Cozy 3 Ways.  I used the same basic idea for the quart size.  You can see my pattern notes on Ravelry.

I love the bottom of the quart cozy!

A quart cozy for myself is high on my to-knit list.  I drink a smoothie most mornings and blend them right in the jar.  It's so cold in the winter that I often wrap the jar in a hand towel.  Brrrr.

E got some Classic Mittens in size 2-4.  She has small hands, but I probably should have lengthened them slightly.  They're knit in Linen I Love This Yarn, which is an acrylic.  She often bites her mittens, so I didn't want to use wool and have them felt, and I didn't have any superwash in a good color in my stash.

They were a pretty quick knit.  I especially like the length of the cuffs.

When I asked my sister for ideas for her kids, she said that my 10-year-old niece still liked last year's legwarmers, but that now she wanted some that go over her knees!  I thought that was pretty funny.  She said her favorite yarn was Red Heart Earth & Sky.  When I looked it up, I realized it looked exactly like TLC Essentials Surf & Turf, which I had a skein of already.  Perfect.  I pretty much made them up as I went along, making O. try them on occasionally for reference.  In the off chance that you also need to make over-the-knee legwarmers for a tween, you can see what I did here.  They ended up fitting like I actually knew what I was doing, which was a pleasant surprise.

I had some ideas in mind for my other niece, who is 16, so I sent her a bunch of questions, some that were directly related to what I was thinking and others just to throw her off track.  I also asked if she had any requests, and she said she's like grey or red fingerless gloves to go with her black coat.

I made Fetching from Lion Brand Wool-Ease, but used the same modifications as jc9 on Ravelry, adding a thumb gusset, an extra cable repeat at the fingers, lengthening the thumb and skipping the picot bind-off.  My pics are not the best, but I really like how they turned out, other than some rolling at the tops.  She seemed to like them a lot and tested them out right away.