A Handmade Christmas Part 3: for the Mummies

Every now and then I come across a really beautiful knitting pattern, crafted from what can only be Rumplestiltskin's gold, or something else luscious looking but equally unavailable, and I sigh, and cruise the internets and Ravelry to work out a substitution, or how to not eat for a month to afford the shipping.

So when it turns out that the yarn in question is in fact a nice little Rowan, available from all number of places including a shop five hundred yards from my office; well, it seems only right and proper to knit it up right away to encourage the knitting muses to foster more such synchronicity.

I saw the Drifted Pearls scarf on Pinterest in a gentle grey, and when I saw it called for Rowan Lima, I knew I had Mum's Christmas present-to-be.  It's knit as a traditional scarf with a loopy bobbly edging until you get a little over half the length you might want in an ordinary scarf, then the fabric is pleated, and the pleats securely knit into a loop.  Tuck the end through the loop and you have a gorgeous warm wide scarf, perfect for Mum who tends to wear her ordinary scarves this way.

(Photo shamelessly stolen from Mum)

The Amazon blue matches the hat that I made for her last Christmas, and I hope they are both keeping her warm in the wild winds that are currently howling at our windows as they whip around the house.

Further north, lots further north, is another cozy Mum.  We have a simple formula for H's Mum's Christmas gifts: fruit jellies (the good ones made with actual fruit juice) + handknit socks = happiness.

And when you know the recipient likes your knitting so much she wears holes in the heels on a regular basis, you can't but pick up the needles:

Edwardian Boating socks, knit from an Opal blank that I hand-dyed with Kool-Aid.  With a linen stitch heel and a sock yarn with a 25% nylon content I'm hoping not to see these in the mending pile for many years to come, and to be honest they may fall into the 'oh darn' over the bin pile as I'm not sure I could work out how to reknit linen stitch without dropping almost all of the stitches.

It's an addictive pattern though; I'd always want to knit to the next waterboatman, and the next and the next, until I had two socks sat in front of me.  I'm glad I didn't knit them for me though as the linen stitch is not very stretchy and I would never have got them over my ankles.  I know if I really wanted them for me I could change the heel flap to a simple rib, but it was nice to knit them as they were designed.

That's almost all of the Christmas craftiness out in the open; the last little bit is still wrapped up under our tree, but before I'm truly caught up I've still got to tell you about the Christmas Croquembouche and my brother-in-law's amazing ultra-slow roasted beef.  That'll have to wait for another day though as it's late, and after an evening spent chasing electricity with a hairdryer when we got home from work to discover that none of the plugs were working, I'm off to make a nest in which to hide from the storm with a couple of quilts, a knitted blanket and as much of the duvet as I can persuade H to part with.