Christmas Crafting!

I'm going to make a couple of assumptions - one, that the recipients of my crafting aren't following my blog, or two, they may have opened their gifts already . . . but if you know who they are, it's a seeecret, shhhhh!  And if you work at the school and you've got a parcel from Madam to open, close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and go, "LALALALALALALA!!!", okay?

So, Madam likes to give her teacher and classroom assistants etc Christmas gifts.  She often asks me to make specific things, which get changed around as I try to find stash yarn to suit - I don't want to be buying extra yarn, you know (ha!) - so this year there were four gifts to make.

Number one:

A granny-stripe cowl - pattern here - which I altered only in colour choice - I started with a black foundation chain and first row, and also finished with black, and inbetween I alternated yellow, burgundy and teal.

Number two:

I have a Zoom Loom, which I LOVE - it's a ?maybe 4 inch square? pin loom, which you can wind yarn onto in such a way that you only have to weave the last quarter of its length.  I raided my stash for a rainbow-ish selection of tonally dense yarns, and Zoom!  Sixteen squares, single-crocheted together, and edged with a dc, ch1, skip1 border . . . which makes it look a little like a film-strip, I've just noticed . . . hmm, maybe an idea for the future!

Number three:

A Spiral Scarf from Norah Gaugin's book Knitting Nature, which I made in DK instead of 4ply.  I reduced the starting hexagon from a 24-stitch side to a 20-stitch one, and knit till I ran out of yarn.  The hexagons are 1x1 ribbed, and I went up to a 4.5mm needle, so they are squishy and delicious.  It's a short collar-ish scarf, but will keep the chill out from your neckhole!
 

Number four:

Is a brioche stitch Faucett scarf from Knitty.com.  I love this yarn - James C Brett Marble Chunky - and I had previously made a pair of knitted slippers for this gift, which I put on just to try them out, and couldn't take off - so I needed something fast and easy, and this was just that.  It whizzed along, and is ridiculously squishy and gorgeous.  I found it hard to give this one away too, but seeing as I have the same yarn in purple, and all the time in the world, now that the Christmas gift-knitting is mostly done . . .

So there we go.  The studio is finally done - I just need to tidy up in there and get some photos to share, and I'll get writing about that soon, I promise.

Merry Christmas!  All the best of the season - I hope you all have a great holiday!