Opening Day

Despite a week of pouring rain, Whistler mountain is opening today (a week early) and DH is off to fulfill his lifelong dream of attempting to ski every single day of the season. I on the other hand, being a far less experienced skier, plan to wait until Blackcomb (the mountain on whose slopes we live and with whose runs I am at least moderately familiar) opens next weekend.
It's been seven years since I last strapped on skis and now that we have kids, DH and I will be skiing solo until their lessons start in mid December, so I think I'll stick to familiar terrain for starters.

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Thanks to everyone for the lovely compliments on Turkish Delight - it was a very satisfying project (and hopefully will be a welcome gift, too). Speaking of projects, I have finally reformatted the first two String Bag patterns into PDFs, and added some decent pictures to boot - the links in the sidebar now take you to their location in QuickShare. (I really must check with the webmistress to see how hard it would be to host them on my jewellery site.)

Turkish Delight

The scarf is complete, and I am tremendously pleased with the result:



Pattern: my own, composed of a variety of traditional Turkish knitting motifs. These were adapted from charted motifs documented in Anna Zilboorg's Simply Socks, as well as authentic Turkish socks in my own collection.

Yarn: fingering weight. Red: Fleece Artist Blue Faced Leicester in Sangria Green/gold: Red Bird's Romney lambswool in Lichen

Construction: knitted in the round from either end, grafted in the middle (note the half stitch misalignment on the right - an unavoidable result of the graft, but scarcely noticeable):


A row of single crochet provides a lovely crisp border:


Gauge: 7 stitches and 6 rows to the inch on 3.25 mm (US 3) 16 inch Addi circulars.

Length: Almost exactly six feet, including the tassels.

Notes: I would choose a tighter gauge for a sweater, but this worked very nicely for a scarf - the pattern definition is still crisp, and the scarf drapes fluidly despite the double thickness. Overall, I couldn't be happier with the end result.

Bear Knitted

Someone made midnight rounds of the patio and garden last weekend:



I figured initially on basic gray and white, but if you look closely:



The highlights and shadows of the snow refract the light into a cloudy day spectrum:



Just right for creating the differential shading of the pawprint's weight distribution:



For a brighter effect, you could interpret the snowy background as strictly white:



Or go with gray after all:

Forty Knitting Days Left 'Til Christmas

And the gift production centre is ticking right along, with several scarves in the final stages of completion:



First, The Magnificent Turkish Scarf, blocking by the fireside.


The blocking board consists of packing box cardboard cut to size, taped together and covered in saran wrap. Not especially elegant, but it seems to be doing the trick, and there was a dearth of six inch by six foot strips of polished hardwood lying about the house. (Anyone who has a better idea, please sing out - I have a feeling this won't be the last of its kind....)

Second, more KP Panache - this time in mistake stitch rib:

And the final KP Panache scarf, in the Little Pyramid stitch pattern:

I do like the Panache - it knits up quickly, and the cashmere blend is soft enough to please the most die-hard "wool is too scratchy" recipient. (I hope).

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I was tremendously gratified by the number of folks who downloaded the PDF for the third string bag pattern (and special thanks to Vicki for the mention in her blog!) - I hope to have the first two bags done up in nicely formatted (and rephotographed) PDFs by the end of the week.

Metal Monday

Last week I had a go at making a few things for knitting, rather than with knitting:

I dipped into my stash for some pearls:
And stones:

And put a bit of metal-working to good use:




I couldn't resist playing around with a bit of textile texture:
Which coincidentally, would happily accomodate any bobbles not being put to use in an actual textile.