It's a Gift

I know it's been a while. I have several items I can share now that the holidays are over. Most of these were gifted to family members, so I had to wait until after the holidays.

This is a shawl I made for The Mother. It was from Victorian Lace Today and is called Ruby Scarf. I used 1 skein (about 440 yrds) of Handmaiden's Sea Silk in Mermaid and used all but about 5 yards of the stuff. It was a really lovely and drapey shawl look. The final blocked measurements were 13.5" x 75". It was one big scarf....more like a stole, really. Despite the apparent details of the pattern, it was actually a rather easy knit. The 'problem', if you want to call it that, was the yarn. It's very 'slippery', and I spent a lot of time keeping the yarn from sliding off the bamboo needles.

Next items are the hat, scarf and fingerless gloves I made for the sister. I found a pattern for a Hurry Up Scarf on Spindle and Wheel, and I incorporated the lace pattern into the hat and gloves. The yarn is my favorite, Blue Sky Alpaca Silk, in black. I think the three items took a total of 3.5 skeins (about 500 yrds).

The last item today is the Noro Hat I made for The Sister's boyfriend. I didn't follow the pattern, exactly. I sort of saw one and figured out the design before I knew there was a genuine pattern. So, I'm linking to the pattern, but it's not exactly the same as how I knit the hat. It took a little over a skein of Noro, and I can't remember at the moment which colorway it was. Noro has all those numbers anyway, and I bought several at one time.

The new item on the needles for me at the moment is a group knit I'm doing with some folks on Ravelry. I'm designing and leading a group knitting a mandala. It's a circular knit, and right now, all I've completed (and completed designing) is the center, but it's a start. It's been a tricky balance, as I didn't want the knit to be too boring, but it needed to be simple enough to practice mindfulness or meditation while knitting (the purpose of the group and the group knit). I've gotten a lot of positive remarks from the group, and that's been very reassuring that I'm going in the right direction. Now, to implement the second phase, which is the outer spiral.