My Christmas knitting is coming along very well - tomorrow is set aside for some serious knitting on the Einstein jacket - it's hanging over my head and I've got to get it done! A few concentrated hours should do the trick. In the meantime I finished Laura's hat - she doesn't know anything about it so I hope she will like it and be surprised. 
Her coat is dark brown with baby blue and yellow.Here's gauntlets for my mother-in-law. They are made from Noro Cash Island, the pattern is out of the Noro Mini Knits. They whipped up in about 2 hours. She wasn't supposed to get any knitting because I bought her a set of Montreal Canadiens DVDs instead but I felt bad - I thought she might be upset with no knitting for her. 
Now I'm on to another pair of Thrum mittens for a friend who I am going to see on Monday or Tuesday. They are made from some left over River from Fleece Artist in the Paris colorway with some white thrum that I had in my stash.
And on a totally different note altogether - just to show that Christmas spirit really does exist I have a little story. My daughter, Laura was at Shopper's Drug Mart on Thursday and the clerk who usually takes care of her was standing there crying with an ice pack held to her face. Laura recognized immediately that she had tooth ache - because she's had many which have resulted in her and I waiting in the hospital emergency late at night while she's crying and I feel helpless - and asked her why she didn't go to the dentist. In between sobs, the young girl told her she didn't have the money and didn't have any insurance so my daughter marched her down to her dentist (who happened to be in the same plaza). She told her dentist - this girl needs help and if you can't do it for free then call me and I will pay for it. Now the thing is Laura doesn't have any money either. She's a young mother, with 2 small kids, her husband works two jobs and she is trying to run a business to earn some extra money. There's no way she should be paying for something like this - turns out the dentist did do it for free but I am extremely proud of my daughter. She's kind and generous and gives even when she shouldn't. Some days you just feel like you did a great job raising your kids and Thursday was one of those days! To me, this is what Christmas is all about - helping those in need because even when you don't think you have enough, you always have more than someone else and you almost always have enough to give just a little.
Here's Grandpa's socks - all done and drying - I had about 2 inches of yarn left over. Phew! 
Today I drove myself and therefore ended up arriving with my knitting. Here's the Clapotis under construction. I've made some adjustments to the pattern because Casbah is more of a sock weight than what was originally called for - so I did 14 repeats of Section 1, will do 18 repeats of Section 2, work Section 4 and 5 as written.
Also - instead of using markers which really get in my way and slow down the progress, I purl the stitch which will be dropped. So in between the stitches that are knit in the back there's a purl stitch hiding. Sorry for the blurry photo ;)
And this arrived today - a new dyer that's producing a wonderful, springy, gorgeous Aran weight. I love this yarn just as much as I love her sock yarn! Just ordered 8 colors - 10 skeins of each. Better start looking for a good Aran pattern because I will want to cast on as soon as it arrives. Any suggestions? 
Have you tried Flat Feet? The arrival of this box caused lots of commotion in here - I ordered 66 sets and every single one was different - that meant 66 photos, 66 resizes and 66 new entries on the website - phew!