A tale of two cowls!

Merry Christmas Eve! It's a quiet one around here - the husband and I are sticking around here since air fare is redonkulous. A couple of weeks ago I made a few kinds of Christmas cookies. We ate all of those. So I whipped up a second batch of cookies yesterday morning - snickerdoodles and meringue surprises. This is the first time my meringue cookies approximated success!


And the surprise? Chocolate chips.


The subject of this post is not COOKIES! It's a tale of two cowls. For that is what I have knit lately. I needed something quick to knit up and I found the Birthday Cowl. Exactly the thing I needed. And the yarn? Some of my much hoarded Jade Sapphire Cashmere. The thing is like butter.


I increased a bit at one end to create a flare. It's soft and warm to wear, but isn't very fashion forward.



Cowl #2 has been in the works for a while. But it's been a slow knit. Churchmouse's Bias Loop Cowl. It's knit in lace weight yarn and is a simple simple pattern. But beautiful. I knit it a few needle sizes down (Size 9!) with Malabrigo lace. My neck is sensitive and can't take mohair, or even alpaca, but Malabrigo lace gives that sort of halo with amazing softness.


Instead of a kitchener graft, I did a three needle bind off. It's not invisible, but it saved me a lot of grief. And I have been and will be wearing this cowl all the time. I might be making these for gifts one year.


And those are the cowls. Both soft and warm, but one will be worn a lot more than the other.

Christmas knitting!

This year's Christmas knitting consisted of five gifts for four people. I knit four pairs of Fiber Trends Felted Clogs. My brother in law and his lovely wife each received a pair - alas, I did not take a photo of the finished felted project. My mother in law and my aunt also received a pair, but I have photographic proof of theirs!


The blue clogs are knit in Cascade 220. The blue were the first pair I knit and I knit the bumper upside down. But, as I hoped, you can't really tell once it's felted, and I even think it looks rather nicer than the bumpers done as written. The red clogs are knit in Cascade 220 and lana d'oro for the soles.

The last item is a pair of Kai-Mei socks, also for my aunt. I knit these out of elann.com Sock it to me 4 ply in rose wine. I actually really enjoyed the yarn, and the pattern is pretty neat too. I didn't do them both at the same time, so the socks are not 100% identical, but it's only by a row or two. Anyway, the recipient expressed appreciation, so it's all good.



And now the Christmas Season is officially over and I am firmly on the way to knitting in 2010. I've even finished a pair of socks already! More on those to come.

November 28th: Choosing

So I'm mostly done with First Christmas Project. Since it's a felting project, it knits up super quick and is a ton of fun to knit. Size 13 needles will do that.

I've picked out yarn for my Third Christmas Project (Second Christmas Project is the same as the First, but different colors and size). I'm really excited because I decided to use my Zauberball. This will be my first time working with a one ply sock yarn. Should be interesting! I am feeling a deep seated need to rewind it out of its fancy ball into a center pull cake. Because then I can knit from both ends of the ball and do two socks at a time - which I love to do.


The color of the Zauberball is great. So very green! I'm excited to see how it knits up with the pattern I've chosen.