Not much this year, as it turns out. I'll post about a Christmas-y hostess gift that I knit, but, otherwise, I only knit two Christmas presents this year. I don't have any good pictures of the one, but here's the other: a pillow for my mother. The yarn is some lovely Rowan tweed that I think has been discontinued. (I'd been hoarding it for a long time without being able to decide what to do with it....) The flower intarsia pattern is from Kaffe Fassett's Pattern Library, which I got free with Lexis points. It was even a signed copy. (I definitely think more highly of Lexis points now.) I had a lot of fun planning and knitting this pillow. Fassett's Pattern Library is a really inspiring book: 180 beautiful color charts that you can incorporate in whatever patterns you please. I'm sure it would take some thinking to figure out how to work them into sweaters and the like, but a pillow was a great easy project since it required minimal modification of the intarsia chart. It also let me practice my intarsia technique, which is definitely still a work in progress.
Here's a shot of the back of the pillow. I did the bands surrounding the buttonholes and buttons in k3, p1 rib so that it would avoid the stockinette curling while still sort of looking like the rest of the pillow. You can definitely tell that it's rib if you look closely enough, but I think it's not bad at a distance.(My mother didn't like the buttons that I originally used so we went out after Christmas and found these to replace them.)
I'm looking forward to seeing what you all knit for the holidays!
And now it's back to the studying. Anyone want to quiz me on the federal rules of evidence?
