Pattern and Kit Release!
Designer Elizabeth Morrison and I have teamed up to offer you a new pattern and kit! Elizabeth is known for her beautifully-written classically-inspired patterns. For this cowl, she was inspired by an ancient teal portico with wrought-iron scrollwork.
The Teal Door Cowl is worked in Knitcircus Yarns’ Spectacular, a new fingering-weight superwash merino singles.
You can purchase the pattern from Elizabeth’s Ravelry store, or the Teal Door Kit with printed pattern, Quoth the Raven yarn (black) and Olden Door yarn (teal), a colorway designed just for this project. The yarn knits up with a wonderfully soft-drapey hand and the two-color technique means it’s doubly warm!
Charlie Brown or Wild and Woolly Tree?
We finally got our tree!
My family has cut a tree at Summers every year since I was five. You come in and are greeted by hale and hearty farmers in their Carhartts, climb the snowy hill and then take the track leading to your favorite trees (we usually get a fir).
This year, it’s been bitter cold, so we wanted to get the closest pretty tree we could find and get back quickly for hot cider and donuts. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea, so the closer-to-home fields were pretty well picked over. Then Li’l Buddy spotted an unusual tree on the next ridge; a pretty tree on top, with branches cut off below so it appeared to be sitting on a big column. Mike and Lil’ buddy sawed away, we carried the tree down.
One thing I love about Summers is that they put your tree through the baler (always fascinating to watch) and tie it to your car for you, leaving us free to check out the cider donuts and cider-soaked brats.
Note: these dedicated guys were going to be out all day long. After a half hour in the seven-degree weather, we were done!
Then the tree project went sideways. We had made the classic mistake; the tree that looked perfectly reasonable in the outdoors turned out to be 12 feet tall. When we trimmed one foot off the top and three off the bottom, it turned out that all that was left were branches inexplicably pointing straight up, giving our tree a sad, skinny look. Li’l Buddy’s disappointment knew no bounds. So while he went out skating with friends, Mike and I tried to save Christmas.
I thought it might look better with our pretty tree skirt and some presents under it. Mike took a more direct approach. He fetched the cut-off branches from the garage and secured them into the tree, making a very wild and bushy but not sad and skinny tree. We didn’t think they would hold, but they did, and Lil Buddy was so happy when he returned that he ran right downstairs for the boxes of ornaments.
Even though it may not be the Perfect Tree, we’ve grown fond of our wild and bushy one (and there are more branches in the garage if they need substitutes).
Holiday Baking
The Yarn Harlot’s gingerbread post made me want to get a hedgehog cookie cutter!
We read Christmas in Noisy Village every year, where the most prized cookie cutter is a little pig. Pippi Longstocking makes great quantities of pig-shaped Pepperkakor, which I promised the kids we would try this year. So purchasing a little pig cookie cutter is next on my list!
Our whole family is taking vacation next week (whooo!!!!) so it’ll be time to rev up the oven for some serious cookie baking. We’ll be making gluten-y and gluten-free treats like gingerbread from my mom’s recipe, GF and regular sugar cookies, GF peppermint pinwheels, regular chocolate/vanilla pinwheels, low-carb gingerbread with cream cheese frosting, GF banana bread (not necessarily Christmas, but we have three bananas that need using). Mike and the kids make homemade caramels, and getting the wax paper wrapping line going is one of my favorite projects of the season. We’ll make a second (and maybe third) batch of peppermint bark, a second batch of gingersnaps (all gone already!), and some kind of white chocolate bark inspired by this Martha one with dried apricots, cranberries and pistachios.
Happy holiday season to all of you wonderful knitters,
Jaala
knitcircus 
I love patterns that look like stained glass.
You tree adventure reminds me of the trees we put up as I was growing up. Dad always drilled holes in the sparse section and tucked in branches that had been cut off. Thanks for the story that brought back great memories.