WIP Wednesday: The Island of Unfinished Christmas Gifts

I hope all my knitting friends had a wonderful time over the winter holidays and are enjoying the new year!  Despite the lack of blogging, I kept knitting through the winter break and finished quite a few gifts.  But a funny thing happened.  Just as fast as I knit and checked things off the list, new items were added.  Remember the Yarn Harlot's theory about knitter's chronically underestimating the amount of time it takes to knit something?  Yeah.  I'm pretty sure that's what happened.

In any case, my knitting needles now hold WIPs which I started with good intentions of finishing in time to mail along with the Christmas cookies.  Well, the baked goods were shipped long ago, the tree was taken down last weekend, and I'm still knitting a few gifts!  So I thought I would write my first post of 2012 with a round up of those WIPs.

Here goes:

 #1) Just as the shoemaker's children go barefoot, this knitter put her husband's knit gift at the end of the to-do list.  Here is the current state of the Christmas stocking he requested:

This is actually the third in a row of stockings I worked on and I will share the other FOs soon.  I love the Malabrigo colors he chose:  "Apple" and "Ravelry Red".   His stocking will get finished eventually, and by the way, I did remember Yarn Harlot's advice.  Her solution to a quickly-approaching gift deadline is to remember that a book can be a really good gift.  So my DH got a couple of good books along with some other nice presents.  Now I can say I'm just getting an early start for Christmas 2012!  Meanwhile, at least someone is getting to enjoy the stocking:

 #2)  I am also almost done with yet another Citron, this time for my husband's cousin.  When we learned that she and her family would be able to visit on Christmas, I got excited and ordered enough yarn to make gifts for all 5 of them.  The kids' hats were finished on time and well received but the Citron got put aside when I decided to add an extra section to it:

The rows of ruching are so pretty in Schaefer's Audrey yarn in "Spruce", so I hope Steph will think the gift was worth the wait.

 #3)  Admittedly, this last item is still only technically a WIP in my mind.  In other words, it is not even on the needles yet, but I've had the yarn and pattern set aside for some time with my other Christmas knitting, so I'm counting it!

This Tosh Vintage in "Ink" is destined to become a Jacques Cousteau Hat for Steph's husband.  It is a nice pattern, but since I have yet to cast on I am still open to suggestions if anyone knows of a good masculine hat pattern . . .

I'll show off some of the FO goodness on Friday, and then I'm going to run in my first marathon on Sunday.  After the big day, I will have more time for knitting and blogging!  And then I look forward to getting back into the WIP Wednesday swing of things on a regular basis, where you can probably see knitter's working on items other than late Christmas presents!