I Actually Finished A Quilt

I spent a lovely morning on Christmas Eve with a large cup of coffee and some binding to sew.  The pure pleasure I found that morning was primarily due to the knowledge that I was finally, after two years of procrastination, finishing this quilt for my own daughter!  Luckily toddlers need quilts just as much as babies do, and this one is generously sized to cover her for quite some time.  Actually it was Grammy that could be found snuggling under it Christmas morning, because the toddler was way too interested in her new tricycle to care one bit about a quilt.

I used the Zig Zag Quilt Tutorial on the A Quilt Is Nice blog, which is very easy to follow and did not contribute in any way to this quilt taking two years from start to finish.

The fabrics are Joel Dewberry voile from the Heirloom line.  The voile makes this quilt SO. SOFT.

One Gifted Two Received!

Christmas knitting was pretty slim this year as most of my spare time was spent finishing up a toddler quilt (blog post to come), but I whipped up one cowl for the tween next door and there were two cowl's under the tree for me!  Give and you shall receive indeed!

First up, my project.  Aforementioned tween showed up one morning wearing a cute cowl that belonged to her college aged big sister, and before I knew what happened I had blurted out "I could make you one of those if you like".  Did I mention this conversation took place two weeks before Christmas?  I had been trying to decide what to get her anyway. I knew it would be a quick knit, so a search on ravelry, a dive into my yarn stash, and just a few days of furious knitting resulted in a great present!  If you need a quick knit for a teen or tween or grown person even (I want one now), this is the pattern for you.  As with most great fast patterns it is all about the yarn and a fantastic way to feature two skeins of your favorite bulky deliciousness.  My choice was a Plymouth Handpaint Wool, which probably falls in the super bulky category, and this cowl is WARM.  Yarn details and such on my Ravelry here.

I was gifted a cowl from my Aunt and one from my Mom, both have been getting constant wear since Christmas so I can confidently recommend them both as great gift ideas if you are in need of one (never too early to start knitting for next Christmas).  This cream and blue one is the one from my Aunt, her Ravelry account is sadly neglected so I can't snoop and see if she used a pattern or anything, but it looks like a simple cast on of about 72 stitches, knit in the round in a knit two pearl one pattern with chunky yarn.  Simple but turns out totally cute!  This goes with everything.

My Mom is pretty good about her Ravelry account, so I was able to find out that she knit me Eufaula from the Scarf Style 2 book (Mom's Ravelry link with yarn details here).  The color she picked is one of those that goes with absolutely everything and since it can be doubled or worn long it can be more scarf-ish or super cozy cowl style.  With some low temperatures in the single digits for Atlanta next week I know this one is about to get a lot of use in that cozy cowl option!