Lizzardie Knits

A Little MIA But Still Knitting....

I know I've taken a little bit of a break (oops), but that's mostly because I've been keeping busy (and that includes with a lot of knitting!). The unfortunate part of that is there are a lot of things I want to blog about and now have to work through a backlog! This one will be short and sweet, though, because I want to keep my eyes on the Pats game as much as possible. :-)

I decided this year that I wouldn't be doing a lot of Christmas knitting. Last year was way too stressful, and I started my Christmas knitting in August (or thereabouts). Birthdays are spread out, though, so I can do knit gifts then (I hope my friends and family love receiving handmade gifts as much as I like making them!). So there's one Christmas gift I'm knitting because it was originally going to be a November birthday present, but I had to switch things around. And then I decided to pick up one more - while it's taking quite a bit of time (and yarn), I think it's totally worth it!

I have my grandfather in the annual family Christmas gift exchange, and he is notoriously hard to shop for. I will be picking up a few things (we're supposed to keep it to around $100), but I wanted to see if I could get a scarf done to go along with the gift. My grandmother is a knitter, after all, so hopefully he'll like it (even though I have a feeling he's not a scarf person, like my dad).



This is the Phyllotaxis Scarf from Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature. I love this book, even though this is the first thing I've knit from it (and while there are other things I do like from the book, of course, I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to them!). It's knit in the round, which means twice as much yarn as you'd expect to need for a 6-foot, 8 1/2-inch wide scarf (which is pretty big as it is). So, I decided to go with a behemoth... Cascade Ecological Wool! I recently finished my dad's Irish Hiking Scarf in this yarn, and loved it more than I thought I would (even if I didn't love the pattern). So I picked up two skeins last weekend at Mind's Eye Yarns in Porter Square, and I'm already through the first skein!

I'm loving the pattern, and am still in love with the wool. I'd really like to make a sweater out of it, because while it's not merino soft, it's much softer than expected, and very hearty, plus has the amazing yardage (and at an affordable cost!). Here's a picture of one of the yarn cakes next to a skein of Dream in Color Smooshy (450 yards, fingering weight):



I need to not put too many skeins of this on my ballwinder, because I think I'll end up breaking it!

posted by Lizzardie @ 4:18:00 PM