First is the cowl I finished for my son’s mother-in-law for Christmas. She and I exchange gifts every year and last year I made her a headband so her ears would be warm when she went walking and I wanted the cowl to match. I used the dandelion design from the headband pattern and designed where to put it, how many stitches to make the cowl, how many stitches before starting each pattern and between so the pattern ended up right at the end and staggering them. I’m not really a math person so it always takes me a while to design where to put designs, so I don’t do them very often. I had to frog this several times until I got the count and placement right.

The bottom picture is a package from Fiber Love Diary on YouTube. She gets a spinning package from Paradise Fibers free for their Fiber of the month club to show to her followers and then she buys one to give away. I won the drawing this month from last month’s package, woo hoo!! It was a nice one. I really like the fiber that Paradise Fibers sells. For fiber there were 3 2oz bags of their new chunky multi merino blends (and the card shows all the colors that they have), 1 oz of autumnal chunky merino blend and a sample of their whitest white merino (most “white” wool tends to be a little on the creamy color scale), plus a purple bent nose darning needle, 3 harvest inspired progress keepers, a stash tea and a sticker of their ewe mascot. The fiber colors are very pretty. Lots of merino to spin and I can always use another darning needle for weaving in the ends of my knitting.

I’ve started another hat for my son in law, the one I made him is just a tad tight. I’ll post progress as I go.

My fiber optic Christmas tree quit working so I had to order a new one, I bought it used in 2005, so I can’t complain, it lasted a long time. I wasn’t sure they still made fiber optic Christmas trees but happily they do!!!