A Possum and A Mandate

Although I have achieved the age where I don't receive many Christmas presents and that is a really good thing, some stuff has entered the household this past holiday season.  

First, there is the hat made from yarn spun from perhaps the most beautiful Widdershins roving ever.  It is organic Polworth and so soft that it doesn't feel like wool, especially if your idea of wool includes the word, scratchy.  After much looking and deciding (about a year's worth), it kept telling me to spin it as a thick two-ply.  What could I do but obey?  

And then I made the hat.

It is not the best photograph of the hat but it does include "Drunk Santa" who is our holiday friend that we bring out each year since I found him abandoned (and clearly half-sloshed) on the street.  I'll leave you to wonder at who would willingly dispose of DS while you admire the pretty yarn made into a hat. And yes, Dan, there are echoes of Gerald Ford's football helmet in it.

Our 38th President.

Next up is my Gradient cowl (Rav link).  I had a lot of this mohair-esque alpaca yarn from a sweater that I gave up on many years ago and it was just the ticket.  It is a very fun project, especially if you don't mind yards of seed stitch.  You knit with three strands of yarn and every four inches, you drop one colour and add in the next so that you end up with a gradual colour change.  It is so darn clever!

And so darn pretty too.  I think Lucy will be the primary recipient of this one.  Personally, I am not a fan of alpaca so I may yet make another one in wool for myself.

Photographing knitwear is serious business.

One can wear it in a single, long loop or double it up as pictured above.  I only include this rather embarrassing photograph because it also shows another item that I have welcomed into our home - a genuine vintage Shetland sweater from Shetland.  I found it on etsy and I have barely taken it off since it arrived.  Love, love, love, love!

Finally, here are three skeins of yarn that also traveled the globe to arrive in Queens.  They are from New Zealand, made from NZ merino and possum.  The possum are not like the kind we see around here and, apparently, they are destructive and some kind of invasive menace so making yarn from their fur is a good thing.  Or so I was assured when I kept asking, "you mean, they kill them to get the fibre for the yarn?"  In New Zealand, it's every patriot's duty to knit with as much possum as possible.

A friend who was living in NZ for a year brought it back for me.  He is an avid cycler and can get very esoteric about bike parts and various cycling paraphernalia very quickly.  Walking down the street with him, I noticed that he checks out bicycles the way some men check out women.  In any case, he was totally amused to encounter a similar level of geeking out when he went into the yarn store to purchase this yarn.  He had no idea what to buy and soon had several eager knitters asking him all sorts of questions to help him along in his decision.

We knitters don't need all that titanium this and alloy that, just give us a possum and a national mandate and we are all set!  I think they did quite well by him, don't you?