Happy Whatever

My friend Chrissie and I share a birthday and see eye-to-eye on many things. In one of those strange twists of fate, it turns out that when I was going to a town several miles from my school for elementary-intermediate ballet lessons on a Saturday morning, or private lessons at my ballet teachers' house on a Saturday afternoon, Chrissie was somewhere else in that same town, perhaps helping with the shopping or hanging out with her friends and siblings. She's been belly dancing for longer than I have, although prefers not to perform and is very modest. (When I complained that I still couldn't get diaphragm flutters, she said, "What are they? You mean, like this?" and demonstrated.) She now lives in the same village and pops in occasionally to put the world to rights over mugs of tea.

She's an experienced crafter, too. Amongst other things last year, she made her daughter's wedding dress. As I was rifling through a stash of un-named yarns which someone had recycled in my direction, I mused that she seemed to be knitting for everyone but herself, in an attempt to provide cosy Christmas and new baby presents on an extremely tight budget.

My hands closed round a 100g ball of chunky yarn in a pinkish lilac colour. It would tone with her purple coat (we may share a birthday, but our skin tones are different!). Perhaps she'd like a buff, to snuggle her neck or keep her ears warm on a chilly morning? 100g should be enough. A quick search on Ravelry brought up this pattern for a cabled cowl.

The pattern was based on aran weight yarn on 5mm needles. No problem, as I was going to be using larger yarn and needles. I did test swatches with 6, 7 and 8 mm circular needles and decided that the fabric from the 6 mm was best. The pattern was easy to follow, although the resulting width of the cowl was quite narrow - more a neck-warmer. At my usual death-grip tension, aran on 5mm needles would have been too tight around the neck! The Ravelry pictures show two and a half pattern repeats, or thereabouts, so I did that too. The instructions suggest five or six repeats, but the knit would have to be much more soft and squooshy for that to work - who has a neck that long? The finished cowl used up just over half the ball. As I put my hands into it to hold it out to admire, I realised that it was roughly the right size to cover both hands. So there was probably enough yarn left for a pair of short mitts to match, although it was going to be close.

I started on the left mitt, using the pattern for the back and knitting the palm in stocking stitch. I reversed the order of the cable pattern for the right hand mitt, so that it would be a mirror-image. I used the purl row (and a purlwise cast-off) for the edges at the wrist, the top of the palm, and the thumb hole, so the mitts looked a match to the cowl pattern. I had to reduce the number of rows and pattern repeats, using the kitchen scales to keep a check on the amount of yarn used and remaining. There was just enough.

The mitts are quite large, so I'm hoping they won't be too big, but should provide some protection against a cold steering wheel whilst allowing the fingers to grip it.

By our birthday, the weather will be warmer, so this present can't wait until then.

Happy ... whatever.