Non-holiday stuff

Okay, so I will admit, it's not really "stuff", most of it's knitting.  And...well okay it all involves knitting.  And while maybe that lovely green fluffy ball is being made into a shrug to wear for the office holiday party that is happening in December.  The rest of it is totally selfish knitting or reading and knitting as the case may be,and as such, also completely deadline free.
The book is called Needles and Artifice from the lovely Ladies of Mischief   and I absolutely adore it! Steampunk and knitting! In one book! So very outstanding!
Sadly, with all the gift making I am doing, (there's a backlog at this point, sorry all),  plotting which projects to make (almost all of them) and yarn acquisition for the lovelies in the much beloved book will probably end up waiting till at least February, with April being more likely.
The striking band of blue lace is the border for the Rivendell shawl designed by the wonderful Erica of Fiddle Knits.  The pattern has been nothing short of addicting and just beautiful!  It's being worked in Dream in Color Smooshy, Nightwatch colorway, that I dug out of the yarn stash.
The heathered red ball is  Full Circle from KnitPicks, in the Robin colorway, and is being used to work up The Lonely Tree shawl,  which I am also enamored with right now.
One of the things that makes these projects perfect to work on in between gifts, they are all worked on fairly large needles, the smallest being on U.S size 8's for me to get gauge, so my hands get a bit of a rest from the much more fiddly projects worked on finer needles.

Just as an aside, I would like to point out that only one out of the three projects is green.  For those who notice that sort of thing. ;-)