Christmas knitting

Hi everyone. Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Happy New Year! I had a lovely time over Christmas - presents were given and received, we had a lovely Christmas dinner, and my nieces were little bundles of Christmas joy (well most of the time anyway). More of my most exciting new toys (including a new pasta maker and ravioli tray and some gorgeous fibre) in the next post. In the meantime here are some of the things that I made as Christmas gifts.



Christmas tree biscuits - made from a recipe in Nigella's Domestic Goddess with added Christmas spices. It's funny I only added a few gratings of nutmeg but it's the most dominant flavour in them. Obviously 'tis the season to make Christmas cookies as I handed a bag of these over to Ellen in exchange for a bag of yummy homemade gingerbread and chocolate covered marzipan.

Next up a Damson shawl knit from less than one skein of Malabrigo laceweight in Snowbird. No modifications other than going down a needle size as I was using a finer weight yarn than specified.





Mum was very pleased with this. It even came as a surprise despite the fact that she picked out the yarn for it in Manchester a couple of months ago.

And finally two pairs of Ritzy mittens for my cousins. I came across this pattern when Liz G. brought a pair that she was knitting to Bluestockings a few weeks ago and we all raved about them. I then forgot about them again until Liz brought another pair to our last meeting before Christmas and this time I remembered for long enough to make a note of the pattern name.





Cousins also very pleased with mittens which makes it almost a clean sweep. The only bit of Christmas knitting that I've had to make adjustments to are my niece's cosy bedsocks. She was happy enough with them but they kept slipping off so I had to retrieve them to add an extra half inch of length in the foot to each one. Although I measured her feet myself I still didn't really believe they were 6.25" long!

More knitting to come. I've just sewn in the ends on my o w l s sweater. It's fantastic and I love it but it's also grey so I need to wait for a less grey day to photograph it. It also needs blocking and eyes. Luckily I'm off to London on Saturday so I can visit Button Queen in search of some lovely buttons.