Woolfish Meal and Swap

It had been a while since I had been to my old knitting group. I now live almost an hour and a half away so it now needs more planning.

Anyway - before Christmas we had decided we would meet up and have lunch together one Saturday. We also pulled names out of a hat and we were to make something for someone else using no more than one ball of wool.

Over Christmas and New Year I had a lot of time for knitting so I made the gorgeous Crest of the Wave Scarf by Judy Jacobs. It's a very simple pattern with just 12 rows to repeat - perfect for my little brain ;-)

I made it using a ball of Posh Lei in mermaid so it was a lovely mix of blues and greens.

The .pdf is available here.

I had a fun time choosing the beads - it took me so long to decide - so in the end I used two colours. A bronze to contrast with the yarn and a green to add a bit of sparkle.

I think Irene was pleased with it.

(Sorry - the colours are a bit off)

I received this unusual scarf/neck warmer. It is made from the softest cashmere in a lovely olive green with a flowery wooden button to hold it together. It's great isn't it? Perfect for keeping my neck warm.

I think everyone was delighted with their presents and the meal was fantastic too.

There are more pictures of some of the other creations over on Louise's Blog.

Stuffed and Sent

Thought I'd show you pictures of the stocking I made for my swap. I based it on the Mason Dixon Christmas Stocking.

Here it is just before I sent it - all stuffed and ready to go.

Close up of the name (and yes that is how you spell her name) and I chose to do the corrugated rib as I love the effect.

Do you like the snowflake? You can see my tension is much tighter here and the stocking pulls in. Maybe next time I will go up a needle size for the fair-isle.

I put the year on the back - I like that idea. The foot just kept going though - and that toe is super-pointy!!!

Christmas Stocking Swap

I've been having a really bad, stressful time recently - won't bore you with the details here. But in the middle of all the doom and gloom something lovely arrived.

My Christmas Stocking *grin*

My lovely knitter made me this stocking:

It came full of goodies too:

There was a book, two balls of sock yarn, some Christmas pencils (which my son will love) and some fun Chinese-looking straws. The stocking is *huge* - does that mean I'll get more presents at Christmas?

Thank you so much - it really cheered me up!

Wunderknauel

A Wunderknauel is a ball of yarn full of gifts.

How does that work you may well ask - well you get some gifts together and a skein of wool and you wrap the presents up in the wool. The idea is that the intended then knits from the ball and gradually reveals the secrets hidden within. Such a fabulous idea don't you think.

I was involved in a swap with Ravelry and I was the luckiest person to receive mine first. So while others are still fretting about sending theirs, never mind receiving I had the luxury of my gift arriving super-early.

Here is what it looked like when it arrived...





Intreaguing huh?

The yarn is hand-dyed silk and a great shade of purple. Included were four suggested patterns - all lovely scarves and shawls. I decided to try one but it really did not suit the yarn so frogged back and settled on the gorgeous Cobweb Shawl. It really is a nice knit. As I am not a purl-lover I am making all the purl rows garter stitch - I'm still loving it though.





Now as you will have also seen from the picture above there is some weird stuff going on. I started to knit thinking I would be able to leave all the presents wrapped in the wool but as I progressed it was becoming harder and harder to do that - the yarn was getting caught on some of the objects inside. So I decided to unravel it. But - I was already knitting and didn't want to frog back - so I started to just go for it. Of course I got in a complete mess and at the moment have three mini sections of yarn that all need winding back into one ball before I can continue. Such a numpty. Oh well - you live and learn.

It does mean, however that I have released the presents. Here they are:






Lots of lovely things - tea, coffee and jewellery. No wonder the yarn kept getting snagged - all that lovely bling!

And finally.... here is a little sneak preview of the one I am sending - a small hint - it's a very Posh parcel....

Christmas Stocking Swap - Part 1

I have been involved in a Christmas Stocking swap through my favourite site of all time Ravelry.

Basically you had to knit a Christmas Stocking for someone and someone else was doing the honours for you.  I was knitting for a lovely lady in the US - and as I know how much the Americans love us Scots I thought I would do a Scottish theme.  So here I give you the fruits of my hard work.

First up the stocking itself - I used Cascade 220 - which I am loving to knit with.  So easy and the colours are fantastic.  I based the pattern on the Cascade Christmas Stocking pattern and just adapted away.

Here it is just near the beginning, from the top, you can see how the fair isle is working with the threads being carried around on the inside.

I kept the colours to just the two -blue and white.  I used simple patterns on the majority of the stocking with saltires going round the top:

The heel was interesting to knit - you put the stitches onto waste yarn and carry on down the foot working in the round - so you end up with a long

 tube with a hole in it held together with waste yarn.  Kind of cool.  You then finish the toe and go back to the heel and finish that off too.  I just did the heel and toe in the plain cream.  I need to work on my sock finishing methods as they weren't very neat.

Finally I went back up to the top and used i-cord to give an edge and a loop at the top.  I didn't realise until I had finished that the loop was in the wrong place - and was on the side, not the back.  It's a feature!!!  Honest.

Then all that was left to do was to stuff the stocking with goodies.  I put in some handmade stitch markers - made by the lovely Vicki at Wild Fire Fibres.  They were so cute - I bought a set for me too - and some Christmas Tree ones too.

I added in some mulled wine sachets, a macaroon, some oatcakes and 2 skeins of Jamieson's yarn.  I hope everything is loved!