I liked the scarf I made for Kim so much that I ended up knitting another one for my mom, though I omitted the fringe this time. It's knit in 2 skeins of Malabrigo Rasta and the colorway is Zarzamora. I cast on 17 stitches and knit until I ran out of yarn but I forgot to measure it before I wrapped it. Suffice to say that it's very big.
I've also been knitting away at the holiday gifts on the list. Most recently, this has been a hat for an artist friend, Ric Haynes, and another for his lovely wife, Lorraine. Ric's hat was knit in Classic Elite Skye Tweed using the Claudiapattern written by MJ Kim and published at ExArtStudent. I made a few minor changes to the pattern as written, giving the hat a slightly longer ribbing band before the start of the lattice cable and I used a slip/knit/psso decrease in the prep row for the lattice cable and again for the first set of decreases for the crown, as I felt it made a much neater transition. The Skye Tweed was lovely to work with and I now wish I had much more of it.
I sewed a bunch of 9"x14" pillows filled with dried lavender buds and buckwheat hulls as holiday gifts and they came out very well considering 99% of my sewing skills have been gained through trial and error.
I'm particularly proud of the overlapping flap I used to keep the shells filled with the buckwheat inside the cases and yet avoid buttons and zippers. I even remembered to prewash/dry the fabric so that it can be washed and will not shrink later!
Aren't these batik fabrics beautiful? They were remnants!
For one friend I couldn't decide on a color and so I put purple velvet on one side and teal on the other and made the overlapping flap at the end instead of in the middle.
Now to wrap them all up and get them in the mail....

