Holiday Frenzy
-20° windchill, 8 inches of snow, cats on the radiators, and another knitting holi-daze in the books.
Perhaps it’s just the nature of time, but it seems like every year I am excitedly awaiting the first snowfall and marveling in the coldness Minnesota can bring and all of a sudden it’s the week of Thanksgiving. And blink again and it’s time to drive down for Christmas.
At the same time, Christmas had been at the back of my mind since September or October, or rather, the knitting frenzy I would undertake for the second time was at the back of my mind. And if I can be honest for a second here, between you and me, I just didn’t have the energy or the motivation to go (yarn) balls to the wall this year. It was complicated… on the one hand, knitting a gift for someone is so rewarding. I still really like knitting! And for some of the gifts, I could use yarn I already had; deplete yarn stash + free gift that is extremely thoughtful = gifting two birds with one stone?
On the other hand, I was yearning to do some more challenging knitting, the kind of knitting that takes time and demonstrates some of the craftsmanship I have tried to develop over the past year. Bulky socks and hats are relatively fast and easy to finish, but for me it became equivalent to eating the same food for every meal. It’s technically knitting/providing nourishment, but it can get boring as hell. And it could mean just phoning it in.
So this time around, there’s less output but I think each piece is maybe a bit more special? At least in the sense that I got to try some new, complicated things and it felt less like checking things off of a to-do list and more like remembering why knitting became so special to me in the first place. Below is a selection of the pieces I made for this year’s Holiday Frenzy.
Project Info: A hat for a baby
Pattern: Heavily modified Trapper Aviator Winter Hat by Fox & Pine Stitches
Yarn: Impressions Yarn by Loops and Threads, basil colorway, 100% acrylic, bulky weight
Needles: US 8
The first second-gen member of Yarned and Dangerous was celebrating her 1st birthday, so I obviously had to make something to mark that occasion. What is better than a baby in a cute hat? A baby in a hat with ear flaps. It’s so silly. The hat was mostly based on the pattern by Fox & Pine Stitches but I went down several needle sizes and decided to forego some of the flair to keep it simple. I also had to google the average head circumference of a 1-year old baby to know how many stitches to cast on since I had made several changes to the pattern.
Baby A (blurred for privacy) showing off her new swag
Project Info: Socks and hat for Cole
Pattern:
Yarn:
- [socks] Lore by The Fiber Co., ambitious colorway, 100% Kent lambswool, DK weight
- [hat] Sunday Morning DK by Sonder Yarn Co., MC Dirty Weekend, CC Offline, 75% Bluefaced Leicester, 25% Masham, DK weight
Needles:
- [socks] US 2
- [hat] US 4
Now about these projects… remember Socks v2.0? Well those were meant to be an improvement upon the first pair I made. Specifically, I wanted to create a heel that looked more like machine knit socks and I learned how to do German Short Rows to accomplish that. But as with any skill, practice makes perfect and hindsight is 20/20, though even immediately after finishing those socks, I was not super satisfied with how they came out. They look more like Christmas stockings for a fireplace mantel and they did not fit as snug as I would’ve hoped. Cole of course was courteous upon receiving them but I knew I could do better… it just took a while to get that project into my queue.
And this pair is so close to perfect I’m almost mad I spent most of the summer of 2025 not knitting. I went with the Slow Morning DK pattern because I figured the ribbing would make for a snug fit (socks should be knitted with negative ease so that the stretch of the stitches can keep the sock snug). I made 0 changes to the pattern and only had to rip stitches out once when the foot was not long enough for the heel to sit properly. I even got the grafting stitch nearly invisible!!! So yeah, 2x2 ribbing on US 2 needles could be tedious but the result made it so worth it.
Socks v3.0, this time with convincing sock shape and snug fit.
Similarly, the hat was an exercise in addressing the mistakes of the past, though more directly even than the socks. Cole gifted me the Arctic Knits book for Valentines Day 2025 and the first project I wanted to knit from that book was a really intricate color-work hat. For some unknown reason, though the pattern called for DK yarn, I bought worsted weight. No problem (foreshadowing), I would just gauge swatch and adjust the number of stitches accordingly. Well boredom and carelessness must’ve set in because the hat ended up being waaaaay too small for Cole’s (normal and not at all watermelon sized) head. Again, he was courteous and wore that hat but I (and later he) knew I could do better.
So this time I didn’t mess around and I coughed up to money to buy the actual yarn from the pattern, which (unfortunately for my wallet) was really really worth it. The yarn is soft even to my touch and makes the colorwork pattern pop even more than the higher contrast black/white colorway of the first hat. Even better, it finally fits (thanks to sizing up from the largest size in the pattern).
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Left: First try - short brim, too tight, conehead effect :( knitted sometime around March 2025 ?
Right: Second try - comfortable brim, good fit albeit with some residual stiffness at the top from blocking
Project Info: Mittens for Alan
Pattern: Mittens with a Flap by PJ Allen via PrettyKnittyJewelry Designs
Yarn: Classic Wool Worsted by Patons, black, 100% wool, worsted weight
Needles: US 4
Around September, my friend Alan mentioned he had a stash of wool that had been sitting around waiting for him to send it to a friend back in Florida who was going to knit a hat. And as chance would have it, I also know how to knit and was conveniently local. So I knitted a simple beanie using the Mütze pattern I had done before. Once finished, I still had 2.5 skiens left of the yarn so I offered to make something else, and thus my first pair of mittens with a flap were born. Style + functionality.
Mittens, as captured by Alan’s impressive photog skills. To be added: vintage buttons to secure flaps when not in use.
This was a super fun pattern to follow. The only change I made is to make the cuffs 1x1 ribbing instead of 2x2 just to make them more snug and a bit thicker. It knitted up quick and looked very clean. Even more helpful is that Alan’s hands are basically the same size as mine so there was no guess work in getting them to fit snug. The yarn itself is very interesting to me: it’s labeled as “new wool”, not super wash or merino or anything specific, so I’m not quite sure exactly what type of wool is used, but the yarn is quite plush and not at all itchy to me.