Knitting in the Great State of Texas

Texas is generally a pretty warm place. Some might even say that it's too warm a place to bother with knitting.

But to those knitting naysayers, I respond: "Untrue!"

However if you need further proof of the true necessity for knitted things in a place where snow and hurricane, desert and swamp shade into one another across the miles, reference: my mother.

She knit this scarf for herself out of some lovely bulky alpaca yarn and found inspiration in Joan (of Arcadia's) long, long scarves. Go Mom!

These fingerless mittens (halfings, lessmitts, halfmitts) are based on knitty's Fetching. I knit a couple of pairs for my grandmother's last year and since then my mom has been constantly hoping and hinting for a pair of her own. I'd meant to finish them for Valentine's Day, but just barely managed to do it in time to leave them in Tejas on my last visit.

They're very simple, but even without the made up (and thus oddly shaped!) intarsia, they can be very lovely. The cabling is pretty, and depending on the yarn can be done all the way up instead of just on the cuff and fingers.