Santa eat your heart out

The Elf Workshop is storming ahead in a blaze of woolly progress. I've finished another 3 Christmas presents in the last 24 hours, and can therefore be found admiring a steadily growing pile of completed projects and munching on a chocolate brownie. Nice.

First up is my Secret Santa gift for the office. The lovely Isobel wears a lot of red and so will receive this:

Which is not as orange as it looks here, but a rich red Rowan Biggy Print. A basic slip stitch rib from a keyhole scarf pattern but the measurements given didn't work out, so it's now more of a collar that will have a chunky button sewn to it shortly.

Continuing the chunky theme, we then have the oh-so-speedy Colinette Point 5:


The simplest of cowls, since the yarn hardly needs further embellishment. The shade is called Slate, which should hopefully go with pretty much anything.

The Colinette continues with this fabulous colour - Lapis

9 twisted drop stitches and you just keep going til you run out of yarn. Brilliant way to get the most out of one skein and it works really well for thick and thin yarn that can be a bit awkward, so thanks to Ravelry for the pattern.

A little more sedate, but no less delicious, we have the Yarn Harlot's One Row Scarf:

Does what it says on the tin. Fantastically simple but it's reversible, flat and shows off a fancy yarn beautifully. This is the Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend I posted earlier and is possibly the most fabulous stuff to knit with in the history of the world. It's soft, it's silky, it weighs nothing - I'm in love. And it looks like one skein is going to create a scarf 12 feet long, but we'll see.

As with Wisp, I'm finding the same pattern can give you very different results with a simple yarn subsitution. This is the same scarf but in Koigu:

Again, it's lightweight and I know just the person to enjoy the rainbow colour scheme.

And of course there are a couple of larger items sitting quietly in the corner of the workshop, but you'll have to wait and see on those. I'm having slight sizing anxieties, but in the end I'm going to have to trust my tape measure and just go for it. If they open it on Christmas morning and the damn thing doesn't fit, well, I'm sure there'll be a way around it. I mean, no one needs both their arms, do they?

I'm also attempting something a little more adventurous that will require me to design my own chart. The little voices are telling me not to even attempt such a foolhardy idea. It'll drive me nuts, I'll waste hours planning it only for it all to fall apart and I'll end up doing the simple version after all. But amidst the rabble, there's another voice piping up quietly from the back, and pointing out that, if I can manage to pull it off, it's going to look damn cool.

Even little elves should aim high now and again...