The run-up to Christmas is always the same for me. Deciding far too late that I want to knit something far too ambitious, and then wrapping it up in such a hurry that I forget all about taking photographs. This year I did remember to take pictures of a couple of things, so here they are!
These are the Owl Wrist Warmers from issue 21 of Mollie Makes. I’m not a regular reader of Mollie Makes, but I saw this pattern on the front and knew it would make a lovely Christmas present, so I snapped it up. They’re made from one ball of Sirdar Click, and the only alteration I made was to mirror the cables on each cuff. (I’m fussy like that.) The hardest part (apart from wrestling double-pointed needles, which I still dislike) was sewing on the little buttons so that the owls didn’t look too cross-eyed!
This is Childry, from Issue 100 of Simply Knitting – well, from the booklet of extra patterns that came with it. The recommended yarn is Fyberspates Scrumptious 4-ply, which I didn’t have, so I went for 2 balls of Regia sock yarn in one of the Kaffe Fassett colourways. You can wear it either way round – with the point at the front it’s ideal for filling in the annoying little gap at the top of a coat.
This way round, it’s held together with a sparkly little hairclip from Accessorize. I must admit that I thought I was going to die of boredom while I was knitting this. Because it all garter stitch all the time, it’s wonderfully easy and the self-striping yarn does all the work of making it look pretty. But the row where you start with 250 stitches and then work k1, yo, k1 into every stitch, leaving you with a count of 750… that ruffle took some getting through. And then, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to do a picot cast off! Which looks lovely, and I’m very pleased with it, but it took three evenings to get the shawl cast off and finished.
And of course, being a sucker for punishment, I immediately cast on to make another one for myself. Mine will be made from some Mystery Colinette that I’ve tried to knit a bunch of times without success, but which I think will be perfect for this.
I also finished knitting these socks…
and these socks…
but not these socks. I’m about half way through the second one, and they’ll hopefully be a birthday gift if I can get them finished in the next ten days.
Currently on the needles are:
- The Noro socks above
- The aforementioned Mystery Colinette Childry shawl
- A black and silver sparkly cardigan
- A complicated lace jumper that I can only knit when alone in the house
- Two horrible peach shawls that I’m probably going to unravel soon
That should keep me busy for a while… until I decide I’m bored of them all and cast on something else!
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