Christmas gifts

I decided to make scarves to give out as Christmas gifts this year. Nothing too difficult. Rainbow scarves for my sister and her girlfriend Katie and something soft and green for my grandma.

I debated long and hard on how to go about the rainbow ones. Either buy solid yarns in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet for stripes or find some kind of variegated yarn in those colors. I couldn't find any single type of yarn that had all 6 true crayola colors at the LYS but I DID stumble across some pretty good variegated stuff at Woolworths. Bonus: it was soft and cheap! The only downside is this stuff is about dk weight. But I had 4 months to go, so I brought some home.

The first result is a simple garter stitch scarf. Easy as cake, yes. But it did show off the colors quite well. I tried out swatches of a few different patterns and nothing was working as well as good old garter stitch. Plus I doubt my sister or Katie would know the difference between it and something more complicated.



For my grandma all I knew was it had to be green. Green green green! It's her favorite color. And soft! Because she has sensitive skin. And warm of course! Cincinnati winters can be COLD. I wanted something a little nicer than just plain garter stitch since, afterall, my grandma used to knit too when she was younger! She'll know quality ;-)

I walked into the LYS one day and lo and behold! A sale! Sales make me happy. :-D Especially when I find some really soft and thick acrylic. I snagged 6 x 50 g. balls of the store's Chile brand. It's a very losely plied bulky weight yarn that I think I'm in love with for 1.75 Euro each! When I got home I started looking around for patterns. A quick Google search didn't find me any cool cable patterns for bulky weight yarn. I did find one pattern I went nuts for though. The Irish Hiking Scarf! I worked a swatch and quite dejectedly decided the bulky yarn just wasn't going to work. It would make the whole thing much too big and the cables looked strained.

So I picked up the copy of the Harmony Guide to Knit Stitches that I've had out on constant loan from the library for the past few months and thumbed through it to find another cable pattern I liked. Voila! The claw cable! A bit more challenging than a straightforward cable. But it looked much more difficult than it was. VERY important for my first cable project. So I threw some st. stitch and garter stitch around the edges and presto! My own custom scarf that *crossingfingers* I hope grandma will love!

I'm over halfway done with it now. Then I have to figure out another pattern for the next rainbow scarf! These need to be mailed out at the beginning of December. And it might just take me that long the way I've been knitting lately. :-P

Until next time.... xoxo