Gift Scarves

It should probably come as no surprise to anyone that any woman who still has not taken down her Christmas tree (although her husband has unplugged the timer that turns on the lights every night, thus rendering it far less a holiday object and bringing it closer to the giant scratching post that my cats imagine it to be) is still working on a few last holiday presents.

Gift Scarves

These two scarves are gifts for my aunt (who helped bring the Beezle into our life) and my grandmother on my dad's side. My mom and dad come from Ludington, Michigan. While we were there for the funeral, I got to see my other grandma and realized that I wanted to do something nice for her.

It is a credit to my father's love for his mother and his own crafy nature that he didn't object too much when I dragged him over to Ludington's LYS and asked him to help me pick out some yarn to make into a scarf for her. (It is one of those remarkable and pleasant twists of fate that Ludington just happens to have a very well stocked and friendly yarn store, Nautical Yarn -- the selection in this store rivals most of the stores we have in Chicago and they also have an excellent assortment of books and tools). Dad selected the Diakeito Diamusee in color 41, a 100% wool yarn with color progressions like a Noro yarn but much much softer than any straight Noro wool. Like buttah this stuff is. Perfect for a scarf. A Multidirectional Scarf, on 5 mm needles, in fact. I also picked up the lovely short Brittany needles there as well. (I probably shouldn't admit this, but I do think I like straight needles a little better for scarf projects than I do my circulars... it seems like it keeps the tension more even for me).

The grey scarf for my aunt doesn't look like much, but it's quite lovely in person. The yarn is a very lovely DK weight organic Alpaca. My aunt sent along an organic dinner for the holidays for my family and I, so this organic Peruvian alpaca yarn from Cottage Industry seemed like the perfect thing.

Cottage Industry PureLuxury Organic Peruvian Alpaca

This yarn, which I purchased from Nina's, is really hard to do justice to in a photo. (As an aside, I have to say it's very nice to be a very short distance from a well stocked yarn store. Every time I go in there I find something else that I hadn't seen before anywhere else. When I was in buying the alpaca she also had a very lovely paper yarn from Habu textiles... as soon as I can think of something worthwhile to do with it, some of it will be coming home with me). It only comes in three natural alpaca colors -- white, brown and grey. It is also really hard to find a stitch that makes this yarn happy. The grey marl color makes almost every texture just disappear into the yarn. I must have swatched this stuff 5 or 6 times before opting for a mistake rib stitch on 4.5 mm needles. I chose bigger needles than I normally would have for the yarn weight in the hopes of adding some drapey-ness to the final product, which I will block out a bit so that the texture does get a little more sunshine.

Finally, thanks for all the compliments on Cerys. They are much appreciated! Chery asked what project I'll be tackling next. And to be honest I don't really have a good answer for that one. A part of me wants to tackle another sweater that I can wear a bit before it gets too warm (hard to imagine that now given the current weather in Chicago). And I'm actually getting itchy to design my own sweater from start to finish using something that's been residing in my stash for awhile. The other part of me wants to dive into a bunch of little things. After seeing Becky's nifty opera glove-length arm warmers I totally want a pair of those. And it seems like I have a thousand wonderful skeins of yarn waiting to become a thousand wonderful scarves. And a girl can never have enough socks... or maybe it's time to do some felting again...