Scent of Honey

This handmade ornament is actually honey mixed with cinnamon and other spices. It is filling the whole room with the wonderful scent of spiced honey!

Happy Christmas Eve!

Today is a magical day... for me, it's always been full of excitement and anticipation. On Christmas Eve, I make the Braided Bread the we always have for breakfast on Christmas Day. Presents are wrapped, and just a few are put under the tree. In the evening, the Christmas Pies are made, and one is for supper! One present may be opened before bedtime. At midnight, I walk through all the rooms of the house, with frankincense, clearing the living space for a new year of Life and Light. I've heard that the animals can talk when the clock strikes 12 on Christmas Eve, and when I was little I used to make sure that the cats slept on my bed so that I could hear them talk when midnight came... but I always fell asleep and missed the magical moment!

I rose early today to finish another last-minute gift, these fingerless mitts for dog-walking:



The pattern I used a great, very quick - Garter Stitch Mitts by Ysolda Teague. These took me just a few hours to make. They could be done in a day, if you need a last-minute gift. I rushed home on my lunch hour yesterday to block them, so they'd be ready today, but they can be given without blocking if you're in a pinch. I've made this pattern before, and it's always well received. They fit great, are adaptable to so many sizes and many different weights of yarn. The last time I made them, I used fingering weight sock yarn.



This time, I used Swans Island worsted weight with a size 8 needle. They turned out man-sized and nice and warm for those early-morning dog-walking jaunts.



The cuffs are long (which I love because they're warmer) and if they were for me, I might wear them turned up:



As you can see, I used suede slipper patches for a palm. This is important with dog-walking gloves because the dog's lead is constantly rubbing against your palm - especially the dogs we walk - they love to run and play in the snow!

Now I am planning my new year knits. My friend Mette in Denmark sent me a most wonderful gift: a book of traditional museum patterns for embroidery, beaded crochet, or stranded knitting:



There are so many patterns in this historical booklet, with fold-out templates for re-creating them! This one shows a beaded purse (knitted or crocheted or embroidered) of the type that was made in early 1900. I have a very small collection of these purses, as well as some original purse clasps that I found at an open air antique flea market one year, so I could use this pattern to make one for myself! I think that I'll need to do a whole blog entry on this subject sometime...



My first thought was to use some of these graphs to make stranded knitting design mittens. One of my favorites is this Oak Leaf:



It's fun and inspiring to plan new adventures in knitting for the turn of the year, even in the midst of Christmas. Currently on my needles, for after-holiday projects:

1. A helmet hat out Noro Kochoran (very soft with the bit of angora in the yarn!)
2. Ribbed play-school pants in BMFA STR Spike
3. A raglan-sleeved cardigan with a patterned yoke (DROPS pattern). I'm doing this in a nice teddy-bear brown with yellow snowflakes.

These should keep me busy for a little while.

I hope you all have a joyous Christmas Eve, if you celebrate the holiday, and if you don't, may your evening be magically peaceful and full of promise.

The Art of Knitting

Strange things happen around my old New England farmhouse sometimes. Things disappear. Sometimes I think that I am living with The Borrowers, or that the field mice are lining their winter nests with my knitting! The most recent things to go missing are all my fingerless mitts (I would call them gloves, except they don't have fingers). I've had a couple of pairs of my own Koigu Gloves pattern - one was my favorite green Broccoli mitts - and use them every fall before the weather gets cold enough for really serious gloves. But when I cleaned out and organized the coats, jackets, and accessories they were nowhere to be found - nowhere! Borrowers, indeed.

So...here are my quickly knitted replacements: Veyla, from Ysolda.



I can't say enough about this pattern. The finished gloves are so lovely and with their lace and details they look like a complicated knitting project - but they're not. The pattern is clear and very fast. I made this pair in three days, just working on them in the evenings while watching Rubicon.

My yarn is the wonderful MacKintosh Yarns in the Iona Fingering, which is a merino-cashmere blend, with a little nylon for durability. It's so soft and her colours are stunning in person. This colourway is a deep blend of dark teal blue and black - very "ocean-depths" coloured!



The buttons are antique faceted and silvered black glass. They were a gift from a friend and, I wanted to use them on something where I would see them often. I have enough for a sweater, though, so if I make something else that they would be good with, I might switch these up and use smaller ones on the Veylas.

These mitts fit perfectly and I'll use them on those early frosty Fall mornings we are having. (like today - 39 degrees Fahrenheit right now, although later today, it will be closer to 70!) I see more pairs of Veylas in my future!



The book in these photos is a precious antique volume of The Art of Knitting, 1902, published by The Butterick Publishing Co [Limited], London and New York, Price: fifty-cents or two shillings.



This incredible original came to me as a gift from my friend Marky in Australia - its a real treasure! This was obviously a well-used volume over the past 110 years, as the pages are filled with faded photographs of mysterious people, patterns cut out of other magazines of the day, and hints on cleaning felted hats and pressing silk sash ribbons between muslin... This photo is the beautiful "Maggie" holding a garland in her lap and perhaps dressed for a wedding with her deep V-necked gown and dainty button-up shoes.



The frontispiece is a very familiar one - a scene that I've found in several of my old knitting and crochet volumes from the mid and late 1800s, that of a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to knit, and leads me to believe that in a publication from 1902, at least some of the patterns have their origin in an earlier century. Perhaps this picture is meant to indicate that the patterns span generations?



The patterns are quaint, like this simple and quick pattern for sleeping socks:



Its heelless design and openwork pattern would make it a very easy pattern to work up in a bit of leftover wool or silk.

I particularly like this pattern for a cuff, with it's scalloped design and think I might make a pair to peek out from the slightly-too-short sleeves of my brown jacket:



And, of course, these beautiful mittens will have to find their way into my wardrobe this year. I don't really wear mittens much, so I'll probably re-design these to have open fingers.





On the very last page of this fragile booklet, the previous owner has pasted a pattern article from a 1915 newspaper - the WWI years. It is "A Cap Comforter for Tommy" - a hat and neck-cowl combination for a soldier in winter. With it's ingenious design and historical significance, I think it deserves it's own post, so plan to put that up in the future.