Hats, hats, and mittens

     Christmas knitting progresses, fortunately fairly quickly.    Daughter by love will get mittens and a slouchy beret to help keep her warm as she walks to and from the Metro between home and classes on two campuses.

The mittens are a basic vanilla mitten pattern with Paton's Classic Wool, Harvest colorway with a crocheted shell pattern at the top of the cuff.  The Stripey Slouchy Beret is the same yarn with the alternate stripes of a solid brown Paton's Classic Wool.  The photos do not do justice to the colors of the set, nor do they look like they match, which they do beautifully.

     Eldest son is also a lover of Mom's handknits and he will get a Pepper and Wine hat to go with his black overcoat as he also is a student and walking to and from the Metro bus to campus.

     The last project is the most difficult for me and may or may not actually get finished before it is hand delivered to our daughter several days after Christmas.  As a late teen/young adult, she had a lacy mesh black sweater that she wore over camisoles.  Now living in Florida, she wants a similar sweater for the rare cool days or evenings.  As the original sweater was a store purchase and is long gone from her wardrobe, all I have to go by is a dark photo of her wearing the sweater, standing in front of a dark, very busy background.  I have started the sweater 3 times, the first attempt of a saddle shoulder sweater, quickly messed with the lacy pattern.  Try two is a better choice of a pattern, but after about 6 inches of knitting, I realized the lacy was too bulky looking, even though I am using sport weight wool on size 9 needles, so again it was frogged and restarted with a simpler, lighter lace.  As the yarn is black and my arthritis makes using larger needles difficult except in short stints, I am plodding along on it between other projects.  It will get done, but maybe not by the time we get to her house.