Giving Way

The rain here has given way to snow, and while that’s the absolute death of autumn, I find it infinitely more cheerful.  Snow you can at least brush off, or shovel up, or look at. Snow doesn’t leak into the basement.  Snow makes me think that Christmas is coming (it is) and puts me in a fine mood to organize and buy a tree and make lists and start figuring out who gets what, and maybe even bake cookies.  Snow makes me want to go for long walks in the evening so I can look at it sparkle.  Snow at its very least, is pretty.  

This snowy day is a good day to show you the finished Fernfrost, knit out of my precious laceweight cormo from Foxhill.  

Mercy, but I do love this scarf, it’s long and gorgeous.  In the interest of full disclosure, that’s the only change I made to the pattern.  Anne calls for 11 repeats, and I did 17, because the cormo is so soft that I wanted it to be able to wrap it. 

This wonderful thing was intended to be a Christmas gift, but I think I might have made a mistake.  I knew I was attached to that cormo yarn, I knew I’ve been looking forward to knitting it, I knew that I would love anything that I made out of it, but I’m really good at giving knitting away. You can’t knit this much and not be good at giving knitting away… so I thought that somehow, I’d be able to let go of this.  The whole time I’ve been knitting it, I’ve been thinking that it was going to take some personal resolve to give it,  but I believed as long as I was making it for someone I really loved, who I thought would really adore the scarf, that everything would work out fine.  Now that it’s done it’s so absolutely delicious I find my generosity is failing me. This scarf makes me want to walk straight to The Bay where I’m sure I could get a very nice commercial scarf that would make the intended recipient very happy. It’s not like they would ever even know that this was supposed to be for them.

Sure, maybe they’re reading the blog right now, and they’re looking at that scarf and they’re wondering if it was for them, but they’ll never know for sure, not even if they open a box with a store bought scarf in it at Christmas. They might suspect that they were supposed to get Fernfrost but it’s not like anyone in my family is the sort of person who would ask.  (Actually, that’s a lie.  There are totally people in our family who would ask, they’re just not the sort of people who would expect an answer, or at least not a truthful one.) 

If I kept this  (and to do that, I would have to get it off Natalie first, which might be a little bit tricky) I would have to reconcile myself to the fact that every time I wear it,  someone in the family is going to look at me like I stole their Christmas present.

I might be okay with that. 

PS.  Every time I use Natalie as a model, someone asks me about her woollies.  I am finally thinking ahead enough to be able to tell you.  Natalie’s mittens are her Oh Deer! pattern, and Yes.

They are antlers disguised as mittens.  Yes, that is ridiculously cute.  Yes.
Natalie is like that.

PPS. Speaking of Natalie, she’s working on rounding out my teaching/speaking schedule for next year. If you were hoping I would be able to come and teach/speak at your shop or guild, now’s the time to email her.  She can be reached at Natalie@yarnharlot.ca.