Green gorgeousness

Pattern: Beth by Diane Mulholland
Yarn: Angora 50 from The Little Knitting Company (50% angora/30% wool/20% nylon) 2 x 25g balls in “Sage”
Needles: 4mm Inox circs of slippery pointyness – I started out using Addi bamboo cirs, but quickly changed to the Inox. The yarn needs a slippery needle, I think.

The first of my festive knits is finished, and it’s barely November.

The pattern is brilliant. Sure, it’s just four rows repeated over and over again with an edging, but the result is so pretty and as Heather said, it looks kind of old-fashioned/antiquey and elegant, which also describes my Grandma, so it will be perfect for her. The whole scarf weighs barely 50g, which means that it’s as light as a feather. In the end, I got carried away with the rhythm of the pattern that I kept going for longer than I had intended and this is what is left over from the second ball of yarn:

Pretty close to running out again. I seem to like knitting on the edge . The finished scarf is approximately 145cm (57inches) in length, which is possibly a little long, but that means there’s more scarf to wrap around a couple of times for a very warm neck.

The yarn, as I have said before, is just beautiful. I’ll be buying much more of it in the future. Fantastic price, generous meterage, soft like a kitten, knitted up evenly, no knots, blocked easily and need I say more? Shame the colour is a PITA to photograph! The closeup of the edging is truest to “real life”, the outside pictures are too pale.

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In the meantime, I’ve also had a rethink about the other knitted gifts I was planning. I don’t want to be stressed out and knitting like a madwoman trying to get everything done this year, like I usually do. And though it seems shocking, some people would be just as happy with something that isn’t knitted (unbelievable as it sounds)! So a couple of items have been crossed off the list and the sense of relief I feel shows that it was probably the right thing to do.

However, I’m knitting for the small people’s teachers this year. Usually I buy them each a Lush gift box. But although the products are gorgeous, I am at heart a packaging strumpet, and sticking unwrapped products in a box of popcorn doesn’t scream “nice gift” to me, no matter how ethical and bunny friendly the contents are. So instead I’m planning a couple of stashbusting projects in gorgeous yarns – a pair of Fetching mitts for one teacher and a tootle of my own trumpet with a Bertie for the other. They will be beautifully giftwrapped with ribbons and tissue and all that palaver, but if I can get recycled wrapping I will, so that I don’t feel too evil.