rockin’ the gift

Posted on Posted in designing, projects

whoa, you guys rock!
thank you, thank you for your generous response to our scholarship building venture—after three days, we are just a little more than two-thirds of the way to our goal, with an even 240 sales of the fall line scarf or cowl pattern. you really do know how to get a project off the ground; you’re awesome!

we need approximately 358 scarf pattern sales reach the finish line, so please tell friends and family about this opportunity. a small purchase goes a long way when we all work together; community effort is a powerful thing.

i don’t know about all of you, but i’ve had my hands full with all manner of secret knitting this week, so i only have a few things i can actually show here on the blog. but the good news is that several patterns have been finalized all at once, so we have several new designs to release over the next week or so, yay. more about those in a bit . . .

on monday, we had our annual monday knitting class holiday party, which always takes place at someone else’s house for a change of pace. this year it was at debby’s and i said i would bring cobbler and cornbread.

for the cobbler, i took out a couple of bags of cherries i’d been hoarding in the freezer, gifted to me by barb over the summer. i thought these would make a festive christmas dessert. my cobbler recipe makes a huge pan, so i divided everything into two smaller ones—that way i’d have one for each class party.

mmm, it tasted even better than it looks.

when i arrived at debby’s, a couple of deer were just crossing the lane that leads through the woods to the house. they did not seem in a hurry, so i stopped the car to take a few photos

i slowly lowered the passenger window and extended my camera towards them and zoomed in; they were actually too curious to be scared and the one on the left even came a bit closer to the car.

but eventually realized i was of no special interested and scampered away.

inside the house, a fifteen foot tree was lit (they have a really tall living room). debby an i knit by ourselves for a little bit while we waited for the others to arrive

soon enough they were piling in with presents and yummy foods—we SO enjoy this get together; even though we see each other every week, we never grow tired of making the holidays special in this way.

our gifts to each other are the highlight of the evening; it’s always so much fun to give and receive within this group. anne C surprised us all with gifts of handmade shawlettes, one for each of us. they are stunning and so personal; we were incredulous.

and of course, there was lots of knitting too. i worked on my creel hat, which i’m designing in new hue handspuns baa baa huey yarn.

here’s a better photo of the hat (top) with the cowl i finished a couple of weeks ago. this is the pine colorway. the cowl kit is a shaded yarn handspun in one color, while the hat and mitt kits are a two-tone shaded colorway; one strand of the yarn is natural and the other is a color.

the two-tone yarn shades much more gradually, so the effect is more subtle, but it still coordinates nicely with the cowl. i do think the single color yarn is a bit more effective in the textured pieces, but i will wait til they are all done before making a final judgment.

knitting with the handspun yarn is always a treat; it’s so incredibly cushy.

i have a pile of finished cowls suddenly, haha. i bound off on the infinity version of the squeeze me cowl on saturday night and we did a photo shoot with helena on sunday, so this pattern is ready for release—look for it tomorrow.

there are three sizes; this is the medium, for which i used about one and a half skeins of spirit trail holda in colorway sorbet (ooops, looks like that’s sold out at the moment, but there are many more luscious choices).

the shorter green one is knit in shalimar haven, but not to the pattern gauge; i went off road with this one, sorry. but feel free to do the same; just make sure you have plenty of yarn to cover any variation in yardage. you’ll likely have to fiddle with needle size as well . . . but that’s all part of the adventure, right? i know you all love to swatch so it won’t be any problem . . .

this pattern has three sizes and it’s reversible—a great gift for non-knitters, who never seem to notice that an accessory is inside out. also a good piece to knit up just cuz you feel like it, then decide later who it will stay go home with.

i’ll be back tomorrow with lovely photos and a pattern—see you then.

One thought on “rockin’ the gift

  1. Can’t wait to see what you’ve been dreaming up! We often have deer in our community. The last one I saw was wandering around the street at noon, immediately after my visit to the eye doctor! It was like one more check of the eyes. (ha, ha)

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