Finally able to show these FOs

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend (Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah!). I had a wonderful time with the family in Michigan, spending time with my aunt and uncle and our longtime family friends. I ate a ridiculous quantity of food (it's tradition!) and got in a lot of good solid knitting time (10 hours in the car, plus time sitting around). I finished J's sock #1 and got a few inches done on my French Market Bag. I cast on for sock #2 last night; I'll post pictures when both are done and blocked.

Now that the holidays are over/started and I've given the handmade gifts, I can finally post pictures of these FOs.

Here are a couple of shots of J's scarf before the [attempted] felting:

You may recall from this post that I had a frustrating time with the felting process. I was going to try to felt it again before giving it to J, but of course all my jeans were clean at that point (and I wasn't going to waste the money on the machine to wash clean jeans!) so I thought I'd hold off until I had some jeans to wash. But then I was gone for the weekend and the holidays rolled around, and I decided to just give it to J and see what he thought. Turns out that when he wears it his preferred, European-style way, the length (all 7 feet of it!) is good for him. Here he is modeling his new muffler:

I also gave my brother his handknit gift last night. He's going to be a freshman at the University of Michigan next year, and I know from experience that the winters are very cold there (I visited the school in the middle of January when I was looking at schools!), so I made him these:

This was my first foray into intarsia (and as you can probably tell, the wristband, the second item knit of the two, was more successful). The blue is Lion's Brand Wool Ease, and the maize (not yellow!) is Lion's Brand Micro Spun, doubled, because I could not find Wool Ease in anything close to the right color. J is modeling the items here before I wrapped them up to give to my brother last night. They were a big hit, and I think he'll actually wear them! That's a big deal, considering his usual disdain for my knitting.

Finally, I have to close with a little note about how much fun I had at the knitting meet-up last week meeting Jen, Jane, and the other ladies. I'm glad to hear that Jen's mom is feeling better -- probably because she is the lucky recipient of the beautiful pink scarf she was working on that night!