Christmas prep

The fish pie was epic! Full of salmon, coley and king prawns, in homemade parsley sauce and then topped with mashed potato flavoured with nutmeg! Apparently there is a school of thought which suggests adding a few hard boiled eggs into the mix, but, please, I am no pervert! Our fish pie remains egg-free, and unsullied!

Our Christmas tree is now up, and, for once, we haven't had to move all the furniture round by 15 degrees to manage it. Go, go gadget bigger front room!

We have a pre-lit black tree and this year we have red and gold baubles and our individual items.

Every year we each get to buy a nice decoration, and we've gotten knitted penguins, felted crowns, glass drops, all that sort of thing. So we always end up with probably more 'special' decorations than ordinary ones!

I personally love my glass deer!

Then today we've been baking.

Dylan has made rocky road snowballs for his class and teachers. Aaron made christmas samosas - filo pastry mince pies essentially. And I've made beetroot brownies and Christmas biscotti.

The worst to make were Dylan's and the most satisfying were, for me, the biscotti.

Everything is really tasty. Nothing went quite like it should. But it's done and dusted, and we can get on with our lives now!

And I have finished my Christmas knitting! Yay!

Ciara's poncho has been washed, blocked and wrapped and is now in a box waiting to be posted to Ireland. This means I can now start all the projects I have had on my list since I started the shrugs and poncho.

Amazing how I didn't really have anything I wanted to knit particularly until the moment I committed myself to knitting Christmas presents. Now I have a list of gloves, mittens, ear warmers, cardigan, jumpers for Dylan and some little toys. Sheesh!

Knittage

So the poncho is complete.

I had just enough yarn in the end, and all of the colours work really well together.

The moss stitch border at the bottom holds the whole cape part down nicely, and there is plenty of growing room in it for her.

The hood was knitted flat, and then the cape was picked up on circular needles, with the opening being knit 6 cm deep.

Then there were 4 increases every other round to give a lovely neat increase up the middle back and front.

The hood is all moss stitch, and the stripes are 6 rows each.

Then the white is repeated all the way to give a nice basis for the whole colour scheme.

When it was all completed, I sewed up the top of the hood, which was the only real sewing in the whole thing.

Then there were a lot of ends to weave in, and I crocheted a simple cord to thread through the garter stitch transition between the moss and stocking stitches.


All-in-all this was a really fun thing to knit, and I already had the yarn, which is just so very soft and lovely. I just hope she likes it now!

Today I have cast on some hand warmers for me, in Weekend Retreat Bronze - 55% merino, 33% microfibre, and 12% wool. So they should be nice and warm. 

Very simply knitted in the round using a 2x2 rib, and 8mm circulars. I don't plan for there to be any shaping, and just a buttonhole type thumb slit.