Knitting knitting knitting, and Christmas loot

G's family gives fantastic presents. I got a bunch of awesome button-down shirts, two pairs of really cute thigh-high socks, and a cute pair of gloves that fit me well enough to knit in. G and I each got a KnitPicks gift certificate, plus an Xbox 360 and three games for the two of us -- The Orange Box, Left 4 Dead 2, and Assassin's Creed 2. I'm making myself this hood (eventually) with some of the yarn I bought.

We also got ourselves some pattern books -- finger puppets, toys, a mixture of capelets, cowls and collars, and socks. Right now, I'm working on a pair of legwarmers for G's mom's birthday. The free patterns available are not even remotely designed for her dimensions, so I'm designing them myself, except for the decorative vine down the front -- that's from the Vogue Knitting book's stitch dictionary. It's written to be knit flat, and I'm knitting in the round, so when I translated it, I remembered to knit instead of purl and vice versa on the wrong-side rows, but I forgot to work them backward. It looks fine, though, and I've already completed two repetitions of the panel, so I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing.

And how cute are these gloves? I'm going to make a bright yellow pair for G -- minus the embroidery, of course. Sewing needles are scary.