Mrs. Claus must do the knitting.....

I say this as I was Heather's Mrs. Claus this year, and knit her this cozy/warm hat. It was a

very nice Christmas over all. No snow, it was terribly green. But it was good to have family together, had a wonderful organic turkey for dinner with Jennifer's famous roasted veggies, and the obligatory Christmas pudding.

I managed somehow not to over eat, and got a tremendous amount of knitting done. Currently, I am working on the Shimmer shrug found in Knitty.com, but my version is being done with the Alpaca yarn mother gave me. I had some trouble with the lace pattern on the body of the shrug, as I forgot that I am lace challenged and need to put markers at every section of the repeat. Doing so when I got home, I now have 12 markers on the needle, but the pattern is coming along splendidly.

Today is the first day back at work, and Eden and I plan to do some Boxing Day yarn shopping (heaven help us). I am torn between buying some Noro, or getting some Cashmere. Will have to decide in the moment.

Squeaky Silk

Last month, Magknits came out with their monthly selection of patterns, and I immediately fell fo Coco. I have had the yen of obtaining my own little black evening purse, but felt many of the ones you could purchase to be too flashy or too frue frue. This one was simple, elegant, and knit with silk. As the yarn indicated was from England, I did a little research and found the Canadian equivalent would be Estelle Silk. Not a problem, I thought, Romni will have it they have everything. Well they had the brand, but not the colour I wanted, black. The rep at the store told me black in silk usually doesn't last too long in stock, and I really didn't feel like going all over the city in search of this colour. So, a little Google later and I found it at Yarn Forward in Ottawa. Figuring that the shipping would more than cover the time and expense of looking for it myself, I put in the order and it arrived in due course.

As with many new types of knitting, I had more than one false starts. I had done much cable knitting before, and this was lattice work cable. In a repeat of 8 the 1st row has the cable in front and knit, the 3rd the cable at the back and pearl, the 5th the cable is at the back and knit and the 7th the cable is front and pearl. After about 6 goes at it, I finally found my rhythm and was off. About 2 weeks later, I had the main part of the body done, and spent a weekend afternoon knitting/sewing in the gussets and lining. I then spent 3 evenings knitting as many i-cords about 40 " in lenth. On the 4th evening I braided them together and secured them to the purse. Walla, it was done. The button I obtained from a sewing store in Bloor West village, than also has needles and yarn.

I must say I am quite satisfied with the end result, although it is a bit different from the original pattern. I second guessed my guage and as a result wound up knitting the pattern 6 stitches less which resulted in a 1" difference in the width. In the end, this doesn't seem to make too much of a difference. A snap was put in instead of the loop the designer suggested, which I am begging to question. When pulling apart the snap, it does tug on the knitted fabric somewhat. As long as I am careful when opening this shouldn't be a problem. It was also interesting to note that silk does seem to squeak when knit, which I thought that only sea silk would do.