Indeed it’s true. My Christmas knitting (that needs to be finished by 12/25…) is done, and so I’ve been finishing up some things for myself. Nothing feels better than finishing something I’ve been working for a long time after a whole run of knits that I’ll have to give away.



This is the tapestry cowl from pepperknit. This was an immensely challenging knit, but I seriously enjoyed every minute of it. No bullshitting – I swear to God. I learned to freaking double knit for this cowl, and I even liked it. So yes it’s double knit, and as you’ll see if you check over on Minty’s site there, you’ll learn that because of the double knitting it’s also reversible. But it also takes a lot longer than your standard cowl pattern. The result is some beautifully patterned double-knit warmth. I could really use that, living in Chicago and all, and I could especially use it now that I’ve finished it in the middle of the Pacific Northwest blizzard of ought eight.



HOLY GOD is it snowy in Portland. I’m here visiting my family again for Christmas, and I’m glad I made it in before all of this business really got started!

So the details are all on rav, but I’ll re-post a few of them here:
I used koigu and US5 circular needle. I magic-looped it, which was a little tight with the needle I was working with, but not a huge deal.



If anyone is curious, I do knit continental and that technique is pretty indispensable for knitting this cowl. I did run out of yarn in the end and cut the plain border after the charted colorwork short (which you can just barely see in the foreground of the shot right above here of the mostly white side of the cowl), which is not a big deal. The only thing I’m not so thrilled with is the quality of my kitchener – what gives, kitchener? I used to be so good, and I don’t even mind doing it. In any case, that end is definitely going on the bottom since the cast-on end is so much more attractive.

In the meantime, I wish you all some happy holidays, and I’ll be back soon with millions more gifted FOs!

Through some sort of miracle I have managed to write my first knitting pattern! This one originated through a small swap I participated in. The charge was to knit a cowl for my dear friend Meg, who I met through the 365 Days project on flickr. I started about 50,000 different things before I finally came up with the herringbone cowl, and I think we’re both pretty pleased with the results!



The stitch pattern consists of zig-zagging slipped stitches. If you can read your knitting well, you’ll only need the pattern for the first few rounds, then you should be able to take off on your own!



So to you, dear readers, I offer the pattern. Please keep in mind that it’s free, and something I did on my spare time, so there may be errors, and things may be unclear.

Download the Herringbone Cowl pattern. (PDF!)

Feel free to email me about any errors you happen to notice!

So yeah, I may have been off the blog bandwagon for a while. I used to be soooo into reading knitblogs, and at a certain point I just stopped caring about the words and just wanted pictures, and maybe a few words here and there. So predictably, flickr has taken over pretty much all of my internet time. But on a serious note, it’s been a rough year, and there have been a lot of changes. I’m tired of explaining the bad changes to people, so let’s talk about some of the good ones, shall we?



These little guys came into our lives a few weeks ago. We started out with a feral mother cat and her 5 sick kittens who had lived outside for 5 weeks or so before getting caught, and ended up with three of the kittens sort of choosing us. I never thought we would be Those People with three cats, but here we are. And I love them. From left to right there we have Igby (who is a real punk, as you can see), Mal (the pretty one), and Bokeh (who is a little on the slow side).

In other positive news, back in September I also bought a fancypants new camera!



February lady sweater, in action!

You know, I don’t have a ton of pictures OF the camera because, frankly, it’s pretty much constantly glued to my face. If anyone is curious it’s the new Canon Digital Rebel XSi, and yes, I am completely in love. There are no words that can adequately express my love for this camera. It’s like magic. With a minimal amount of effort, everything looks so great. Especially food. Be expecting infinite amounts of food photography in the near future. And it’s all gonna look DELICIOUS.

And finally, in knitting news? Not a lot I can talk about right now. I’m knitting what feels like tens of thousands of Christmas presents and can’t post any info about them here, or on Ravelry for that matter. (Hi Mom!) Come Christmas there will probably be a few rapid fire FO posts. Here’s what I’m working on for me in the meantime, though:



This is the Tapestry Cowl, pattern by my flickrbud Minty. It’s taking me a while to knit because it’s double knit, so basically every stitch you see is two stitches.



But the results so far are completely worth it, and as you can see, I cannot freaking WAIT to wear this thing. As anyone familiar with double knitting probably realizes, the back side of the cowl is the same pattern but with the colors reversed. OH the choices! I’ve posted the details on ravelry, but here they are in brief: koigu, 1 skein each of the two colors, purchased at Loopy Yarns, on US5s.

So, if there’s anyone still out there, thanks for sticking with me, and hope to see folks around sooner rather than later.

I may have gotten behind on my episodes of Lost lately, and the catching-up may have involved a lot of knitting

This is a Birthday Cowl from Novamade, and the pattern is spectacularly fun and fast. I used more of that Jo-Ann Dolcetto yarn that I made Becko’s scarf with, and I think my original evaluation of the stuff still stands – really soft, pretty color, but this yarn has just absolutely no elasticity whatsoever. I like it, but I don’t think my hands could take more than a small project with it.



Maybe soon I’ll complete a knitting project that I actually get to keep for myself?