are you ready?

i just love this slow dog noodle wrap—light and airy, it’s great as a huge scarf over a heavy sweater or atop a wide open jacket. but it’s also a wonderfully cozy wrap to throw on while knitting or watching TV—long enough to cover my legs, but light enough to allow my arms to work. love!

and with the mild weather we’ve been having, i can even wear it instead of a winter coat, a la mister knitspot. with such versatility—now it’s a scarf; now it’s a blanket!—this kind of wrap is wonderful to wear traveling.

the fabric drapes beautifully and at the same time, has the deeply textured appearance of a much heavier bulky knit—without all that weight, yay.

this is a great piece to add to our wardrobe (yes, this is one i think we can share, haha).

i could not resist casting on the scarf version with a few odd-ball skeins of the festivus 2.0 red gradients—i am adding rows here and there whenever i need a mindless project (like during a meeting or when i’m too tired to do something challenging).

we are doing very well in our scholarship fundraising—thanks to you all! last tuesday, our scholarship number was over $1800 and tomorrow i will get an update from doug. we are hoping to meet and perhaps pass last year’s final number of $4000.00; let’s make it happen!

now that the pattern numbers are final and it’s available to everyone, including LYS sales, please let friends and family know that they can help a lot by purchasing a copy (if you purchased early, please re-download an updated copy with final photos, sizes, and yardage requirements before casting on).

i finished up the coordinating cowl last tuesday, a little late to include in last week’s post. that night i soaked it, reshaped it and set it up for drying with anne marie’s handy-dandy roller method.

two oatmeal boxes, a couple of paper towel rolls, or the tube from a roll of wrapping paper will set you up for a lifetime of ease in cowl blocking (a couple of pieces of PVC tubing will also work a treat and won’t succumb to dampness). just insert a length of tubing at each side of the cowl and roll every hour or so until dry—it speeds up drying like nobody’s business and creasing will be a thing of the past.

don’t the gradients look nice knitted up? in real life, the color shift are so subtle that you can hardly locate them in the three lighter shades. but then obviously when the darkest shade bumps up against the brightest one, it’s there.

you could arrange the shades differently of course—make an ombré by working from light to dark and back or go random and mix them up continually (that’s a great strategy if you have an uneven amount of leftover yardage from a scarf or wrap project)

this is the medium size (there is one smaller size and then a long size that you can double wrap); it weighs just 2.1 ounces—a little under 200 yards total. it took almost no time to knit.

i’m hoping we’ll have the pattern ready on tuesday evening in case you need a very last minute gift! and of course, the proceeds from this one through december 31 will also be added to the scholarship fund.

the gradient sets were shipped out last thursday evening—they are landing everywhere as we speak. erica does have a very small quantity of extra skeins to offer as sets or individually; if interested, please contact her (jeevesATknitspotDOTcom).

i’m not making a lot of christmas gifts this year, but i did try a new crafty project that is working out well so far—lotion bars. i use a lot of these; my hands really suffer from dryness both winter (from the indoor heat) and summer (working hands syndrome from gardening and sink work).

buying them has been a bit hit or miss—sometimes they are so hard as to be unusable, sometimes the scent ends up being too perfumey for me. and the ones i especially love are expensive (natch) and too big to be portable.

my experiments with making my own wool soap made me curious about other DIY products and over the summer i poked around on the internet to see if lotion bars would be equally easy to make at home. and they are—for the price of a few bars of my favorites brands, i was able to buy supplies—including a few splurges for luxurious butters—to make several batches and in the smaller size i prefer. the recipe is ridiculously easy and the results are luscious; definitely a keeper.

so i’m making several batches to add to christmas gift packages—and learning to use scent judiciously, haha (i love scented hand lotion; it’s easy to go crazy, but i want these to be appealing). my only hangup is that i can’t find an inexpensive solution for containers; my favorite options require me to buy a case of like a thousand—a few more than i really need. i’m working on it, trying to think outside the box about boxes . . .

i spent saturday in my kitchen to prepare some nice dishes to serve on sunday, when we hosted carrie and robbie from our ohio mill, spinners of our better breakfast, chebris and cabecou, ginny, and hempshaugh yarns.

it was nice to spend the afternoon chopping and cooking some of the last garden produce into a huge pot of black bean chile, mmm. it made enough to put several buckets in the freezer for meals later on, too.

but i didn’t stop there—i felt like having a special dessert for once; we don’t really “do” desserts unless we’re having company, so this was my chance, haha.

chocolate pecan pie is one of david’s favorites and we hadn’t had it in a long, long time. i use a recipe from one of those old 1970s product-related cookbooks. thanks to the wonder of the internet, i found it easily to share with you—click here to view.

and while my pie crust came out a little overly done this time (drat!), the overall result was really good. this recipe can be made into dessert bars as well; the filling is gooey, but not runny.

remember my rather pathetic looking lace shawl project? i don’t blame you one iota if you’ve been thinking it is very much less than inspiring—it’s hard to love something so homely isn’t it?

well. . .

how do you like it now? yep, it’s all done; can you believe that this came out of that??

i couldn’t be happier or more surprised—it’s bigger, lacier, and prettier than i expected.

oh, the magic of blocking—how can anyone disagree?

i can’t remember now what day i finished it up, but i blocked it pretty much right away because i was dying to see what i had inside that crumpled pile of stringy yarn.

speaking of the yarn—if i may say so, our cabécou brillant lace in the champagne shade, is nothing short of spectacular for lace; i love it so much.

it can fool you at first, seemingly dull and lifeless, but hidden inside are sparkling threads of light, just waiting for our hands to work their sorcery.

i really enjoyed knitting this too—it may have seemed to take a lot of time, but that’s because it was a prototype and i had to rip back and re-do a couple of times. i am all set to knit another, perhaps in the chebris lace this time (i’ve been dying to get that truffe shade on my needles since it first came in). i’ll most likely use a bigger needle with the heavier lace yarn . . .

what i love about this shawl is how papery the textures make the yarn look, though it is soft as wisps of cloud. this piece weighs in at just 49 grams—less than half of a full-sized skein.

it could be a gorgeous wedding shawl and then be worn every day to the office and worked into a rag-and-bone club outfit, too; all that fine stitching will never just sit in a drawer.

this piece is another that we will be including in our january ENSEMBLE collection—to be released mid-january. we are stocking up on lace yarns especially for projects like this—are you excited?

and with that, i think i will leave you till later this week; we’ll have the cowl pattern to offer  in the next day or two, plus i have a few wonderful book releases to let you know about and probably some VERY last minute knitting; happy holiday prep!

don’t forget to share about the fundraiser patterns!!