Another Drifting Pleats scarf. This is the second pattern I have knit three times (the first being Ann Budd’s Ruffle-Rib baby booties). Those conniving ladies at Knit/Purl knew I was good for a store sample. And really, who can say no to baby alpaca?

With the twelfth day of Christmas officially drawing the holidays to a close, what say we blog a few more gifts?

Back in November I got a lovely letter from a dear friend in New York. She reads here and I don’t want to embarrass her, but she’s been one of the chief mentors of my life and a true kindred spirit. The sort of person you name a child for. No children other than the four-leggedies in the offing here, so I thought I’d better knit her something in the mean time. She mentioned wanting to knit “a really wow-y scarf” and asked for a pattern recommendation. So I knit her a wow-y scarf so she’d have something to warm her neck against the vicious Upper West Side winds, and sent her a copy of the book it came from. I present Drifting Pleats, from Lynne Barr’s clever Knitting New Scarves:

This is The Fibre Company’s Terra in the color Sorrel. Three skeins is exactly the right amount for this pattern – there were only a couple of yards left at the end. I can’t praise this yarn enough. It feels wonderful in the hank, but it’s even better when you’re knitting with it. It’s plump and lustrous with silk, but soft with baby alpaca and conversational with merino. Do you know what I mean? Some yarns feel so interactive, as if they’re having an invigorating discussion with your fingers. Anyway, I couldn’t get enough. And this pattern is such a kick that I found an excuse to drift some more pleats right away.

This color is Redwood. I blame these three skeins for pushing me into my love affair with the cinnabar color that left me helpless to resist that bulky wool I showed you last post. This scarf is now finished — bound off last night and just awaiting some end-weaving and a couple of blasts of steam — and almost ready to leave for its new home. This one is a commission from a friend who wanted a unique, handmade gift for his lady love. I’m a sucker for sentiment like that (and I may have a certain weakness for kind-hearted and extremely handsome men who can bunny-hop the cyclocross barriers), so I told him he could reimburse me for the yarn and we’d call it good. After all, knitting with this yarn is its own reward.

Know what? The year is only six days old, and already I’m seeing a trend emerge. 2008 is going to be about the appreciation of special yarns. 2007 was, in many ways, about patterns — mostly the designing of them. But most of those efforts began with the idea for the garment, and I co-opted whatever yarn seemed like it might suit. But my new projects are beginning with the desire to transform a beautiful yarn into its ideal knitted shape. It’s a subtle difference, but a whole new challenge. There will still be plenty of design happening at Blue Garter. I should be able to show you my Shibui sweater and socks very soon, and I’ve got a new pair of socks on the needles for them for this autumn. And one of these days I’ll properly blog the dainty little Jo Sharp Aran Tweed sweater-in-progress I’m calling Victoria, the pattern for which will be available here eventually. My sketchbook is fat with more ideas. But I’m going to try this year to give some of the special yarns in my stash the attention they deserve. And that, my friends, is as close to a New Year’s resolution as I intend to come.

In cycling, the flamme rouge is a red pennant that tells the riders there’s one kilometer left in the race. For knitters, and I suspect for anyone else who makes their holiday gifts by hand, Thanksgiving serves as the flamme rouge. It’s time to dig deep and knit hard if you want to finish in time. Here’s my red pennant:

A little sample hat from the Colinette Arboretum book I knit up for the store. It’s simple as pie: a bias rectangle (a rhombus, technically) with the CO and BO edges plus two of the sides seamed together and the corners folded in and tacked down at the crown. I knit this one with alternating rows of Pagewood Farms worsted-weight merino and ShibuiKnits Silk Cloud. It was so easy and it’s such a good way to use up remnants that I may have to whip out a few more for holiday gifts.

I also cast on for a secret Christmas-in-Tallinn stocking from Knitting on the Road. I don’t think the recipient reads here, but I’m going to hold off posting pictures just in case. And unfortunately I can’t show you my finished sweater for Shibui, which has now gone to the tech editor. So I’m going to have to distract you with what’s distracting me:

Meet Lark. Nine pounds of irresistible mutt, and really a very good girl. She made the journey from Texas without any fuss at all, and she’s already charmed Mr. G’s relatives, half of whom she met yesterday when we trucked her up to Olympia for a big Thanksgiving feast. She’s a sweet little thing, not without her moments of puppy sass, of course, but smart and people-oriented and so far pretty darn good with the cat. Mingus is taking the whole thing better than I could have hoped. Lark got her face smacked for licking his butt and for chewing his tail, but he didn’t use his claws. He’s still sleeping in bed with us and demanding lap time, even with the pup nearby. And since he gets his breakfast an hour earlier than usual as we stagger out of bed before six, he may even be seeing some benefits from the arrival of his new canine sister.

Okay, off to do some frantic holiday knitting before the little one wakes up from her morning nap!

In all honesty, I tend to add to my fiber stash because I have a low threshold when it comes to resisting beauty, and yarn senses this weakness in me and preys upon it. As a result, I have drawers full of lovely moth bait currently serving no purpose except as fodder for dreams and receiving no attention besides the occasional petting. But because they exist in my house, I can, upon a whim, decide to make a Star Wars hat for my little cousin Sam’s seventh birthday. Look here! Black alpaca from a Spiders swap two summers ago. And here? A ball of pewter grey RYC silk/wool I bought to swatch for a corset top (I ended up using Cathay instead.). How about some white for the six little R2D2s? Yep; the hat I’ve planned out of Cascade 220 will never miss a few yards. I thought I was stymied when I got to R2D2’s blue bits, but sure enough, in the very back of the worsted/DK wool drawer, was a lone ball of Mission Falls in the perfect shade. Now, light saber colors: here’s a bright heathered red skein of Cascade 220 from the swag bag I got on the yarn cruise around Manhattan. And lo! A whole sack of ancient Thorobred scheepjeswol Brushed Wool in powder blue, inherited from Mr. Garter’s mamma. Someday it will be a nifty ’40s-inspired cardigan, but right now a few yards will give the blue light sabers that potent fuzzy glow. And in a galaxy not so very far, far away, a hat is born:

[Note to self: Dude, next time take a picture of the front of the hat that doesn’t show the join, eh genius?] And it just happens that my little cousin’s name lends itself to Star Wars font, so of course I had to take advantage of that:

It’ll blow his mind, if it fits his wee blond head. Cross your fingers for me that his noggin isn’t bigger than 19″ in circumference, okay? I have to say, this was fun. There may be another of these in my future, because Mr. Garter has been drooling over it. Time for more stash diving!

Note: The charts are free here; there’s really no other pattern for the hat. I worked it on US#3 needles, figured six repetitions of the chart would make a boy-sized hat, and threw in some double decreases at the top between motifs. I worked the letters under the brim upside-down, used a row of purl sts as a turning round, and sewed down the cast-on edge to the inside of the hat at the very end.