Not the cakey kind, more’s the pity, but a shawl I’ve been knitting since I bought the yarn in May.
The pattern is Childry, from the Simply Knitting Handknit Christmas supplement 2012. I knitted one for my sister last year, and liked it so much that I wanted one for myself. This one’s a bit smaller than I would have liked, but the yarn’s a bit thicker, so there wasn’t quite as much yardage (just over 300 metres, rather than 460) in the 100 grams.
The yarn is Jillybean‘s “Knot Another Granny Yarn”, in the Raspberry Muffin colourway. It’s handspun from Dorset Poll, Hebridean and Suffolk Mix, and then hand dyed, resulting in a totally unique skein of yarn each time. It’s a teensy bit itchy for my liking, so this will definitely be a scarf for wearing over the top of a jumper rather than next to the skin. It’s really warm though, so it’ll be perfect for keeping out the chill in winter.
I’d have liked the ruffle to be a bit longer, but even the little one here took up a third of the yarn. Knitting the row that triples the number of stitches is soul-destroying, so knowing that I still had, say half, of the shawl to knit from that point on… urgh. My hands hurt just thinking about it. A third was quite enough.
As it turned out, I could probably have squeezed just one more row onto the ruffle (making ooh, a whole 3mm difference!), but having run out of yarn whilst casting off my sister’s, I decided to err on the side of caution this time. When I tried the shawl on it was clear that it needed a fastening of some description, so I knitted a bit of icord with all of the remaining yarn. I thought it might look a bit twee with a little bow in front, but actually I quite like it. If it does look twee, please don’t tell me. I prefer to remain blissfully ignorant about these things!