Knit-Nerd-Rant

So I had to quickly think up some gifts for some of the in-laws-to-be. We went down to visit them for Thanksgiving, and will be up with my family for Christmas this year. So we decided we would bring down everyone's Christmas gifts while we were in town. Sister-in-law-to-be and her fiance are tough to buy for, so we got them a couple gift cards.  I felt really guilty about it, since it's not the first time and it always just feels like a cop-out.  So I decided to use some scrap yarn lying around to make something to put the card in - a gift card cozy. Shout out to my friends at Hudson Trail Outfitters , regional chain in the DC area, and their promotional gift card rebate deal that gave me one to use for demonstration purposes!  It's cute, takes very little time to knit up, and makes it feel less like a cop-out to give someone a gift card.  I made 2 of them on the 2 hour flight there, so definitely very quick! I used these supplies: Scrap yar...

This is a very simple blanket, and pretty mindless to do.  I had a bunch of donated yarn from a friend - a collection of inexpensive craft store yarn - some boucle and some fleece.  I wanted to get rid of it, and thought this would be a great gift for someone who needed something warm and fuzzy. Supplies: I used a size 8 long circular (and also a size 6 circular, details below) I used up 2 very large skeins of the purple boucle, 2 skeins of pink fleece yarn, and 1.5 skeins of the acid green 4 stitch markers to mark the corners Cast on 80 stitches on a size 8 circular (or straight, depending on preference). I used long-tail/slingshot cast-on. Work 6 rows in stockinette Row A: Knit 5, [yo, k2tog], repeat [] until 5 stitches remaining, knit 5 Row B: Purl 6, [turn stitch around and purl, purl], repeat [] until 5 stitches remaining, purl 5 Repeat Rows A and B until the piece is nearly square Work 6 rows in stockinette Keep 80 stitches on needle - don't bind off...