FO's and two new projects

Well, the brief dishcloth knitting turned into a stash-cleaning (No more kitchen cotton! Woo hoo!). Here's a sampling:
















I finally finished the blue lace scarf this morning, and will post some photos once it is blocked. It doesn't look much different now from the last photos. To celebrate, I cast on two new projects - more Christmas gifts. The black toque is a slight modification of this pattern, knit in Briggs and Little Heritage 2 ply. I had quite a bit of that yarn left from a sweater I knit last year, so I'm hoping I might have enough for matching gloves. Here's where it's at:







I love how warm this wool is, but it's pretty unrefined. It's really scratchy on the hands, and that little pile of fluff on the right there? That's all the little bits of grass and moss that I've pulled out of the yarn so far. You'd think that stuff would come out in the processing, wouldn't you? I mean, these must have been some seriously dirty sheep! The thing is, I bought a lot of this a couple of summers ago in Newfoundland. It was really cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for. Anyway, this one is for my dad, and he's usually not too fussy. A least it will be warm when he's in the woods. I plan to use some of the remaining voluminous B&L stash to teach myself how to do traditional Newfoundland double-knit fisherman's mitts one of these days. My grandmother must have knit hundreds of pairs of those over her lifetime.

My other new project is my fourth Branching Out lace scarf from the Spring 2005 edition of Knitty. I'm knitting this in Elann.com Highland Silk, in bright purple. Here it is after three pattern repeats:

I knit three of these over the summer (all gifts), and my favourite was in this Highland Silk, in a dark blue. It looked really different after blocking, with better stitch definietion, and is really nice and soft. Maybe I'll get to do one for myself after all of the holiday knitting is finished! Alrighty then, back to my knitting!