Are you as crazed as I am trying to get ready for the holidays? We are in high gear around here. Yesterday (our anniversary as you recall — thank you for the well wishes!), we spent the entire day trying to get our tree to stay upright! The elder daughter woke us up with, “The tree fell over.” Okay. So there was water everywhere. The tree stand we have — which is fairly new BTW — is gar-bawge. The entire day we were checking the tree to see if it was still straight. The answer was always, no. We had to re-straighten it multiple times throughout the day, and this morning as well.
I did do some holiday knitting which I could not capture well in a photo. I used one skein of Fiesta La Boheme (which is two yarns held together: boucle and mohair) in the color Wild Oak and made this cowl. The free pattern is from Knitomatic and is the Long Missoni Moebius Cowl. I started it yesterday in-between the tree fiascos. The colors just cannot be captured. The yarn is stunning. S-T-U-N-N-I-N-G. BadAmy made the same cowl with identical yarn — her pics are a little better.
I cast on 120 sts instead of 150 — the pattern says it can be wrapped around the neck twice, but to me, one wrap seemed sufficient:
It will stretch a little with wear. I have more of this yarn and will start another of these today…for me! I will cast on 100 and not make it wrappable — just a cowlish scarf to go under my coat. Too pretty to give away, so I need another!
First of all, Congratulations on 28 years of marriage! Truly wonderful and I wish you many, many more years of love and happiness!
The cowl looks gorgeous! The yarm looks beautiful in these photos so it must be amazing in person! Thanks for sharing your pictures, and…I loved the tale about your Christmas tree. It really is always something isn’t it? I guess if the holidays went too smoothly, what would we have to remember?
Happy Holidays to you.
Comment by Barb — December 19, 2010 @ 8:49 pm
I don’t blame you for casting on again right away. The shot of the yarn reaching its little tendrils up is just wonderful. If it looks better than that, then it is stunning!
Comment by twinsetellen — December 19, 2010 @ 9:16 pm
Oh, and good luck with the tree. We are hunting for a better stand this year. Not that ours is so bad, but we do have two young cats to introduce to Tannenbaums!
Comment by twinsetellen — December 19, 2010 @ 9:16 pm
The cowl is beautiful. I have a skein of that yarn and it’s waiting for me to get around to knitting a scarf or cowl for me. Looks like I may have to rearrange my queue.
Comment by 2muchfun — December 20, 2010 @ 7:59 am
I’ve always loved that yarn in that colorway.
Comment by surly — December 20, 2010 @ 9:40 am
I live on an island (Yes, I said island!) without benefit of stores, so we ‘improvise’ pretty creatively. The hands-down best tree stand we’ve ever had in 17 years of marriage? A 5 gallon bucket filled with rocks! We stick the tree in the bucket, fill with rocks to hold it straight, fill it with water (once, lasts the whole season), and finally, wrap the bucket in pretty wrapping paper. Unorthodox? Sure, but we haven’t had a tree tip over in it yet! Happy Anniversary!
Comment by marissa — December 20, 2010 @ 10:05 am
(1) Happy anniversary & a very merry. (2) The bucket of rocks trick works well for my family – use smaller rocks/large gravel. (3) The cowl is gorgeous. (4) And so is the sweater! Pattern available somewhere? What’s the yarn?
Comment by Suzan — December 20, 2010 @ 10:55 am
Your cowl is beautiful. I downloaded that very pattern yesterday. I have no tree this year and haven’t for a long time. I had forgotten about the possible flood aspect but not the straightening.
Comment by valerie — December 21, 2010 @ 10:06 pm