Still being 'spoiled' and another 'finish'.

Firstly some more goodies in the Advent swap...The day that I opened up the parcel and found the Gail Pan pattern was a lovely surprise because only a few days before I had been looking at her patterns online and thinking how nice they were and that maybe I should order one to try...so how opportune was Cheryl's gift??

Now I feel a bit like a spoiled, over-indulged child but here are some photos of some of the goodies that I got from Liz in Canberra in another Christmas Swap; this one was organised through Elfster. Liz wrote in her card that she thought that a 'pamper' basket was the way to go at this busy time of year...and I readily agree! lol 

Look at these lovely wine glass markers in the shape of Christmas baubles...

 Then there was a  reusable coffee mug (with a lid) with a flavoured coffee...

 The pampering continues with some lovely green tea facial wipes (so gentle), some guest soaps that smell yummy enough to eat! a lovely body lotion, a tulle sponge and some tissues, all resting on a hand towel and washer set of the softest towelling.

 The basket had been wrapped in a beautiful linen Christmas tea towel...

 And look at these beautiful tree decorations and that gorgeous red ribbon with white stars that decorated the basket.

Thank you Liz for my beautiful pamper basket; I love it!

Now way back on November 30, posting day for this swap, I forgot to take a photo of what I sent Liz. Here's the parcel all sealed up ready for the post bag. I 'toyed' with opening it up when I realised I'd forgotten to photograph it, but because I'd used my last sheet of tissue paper at that moment, (I like to first wrap craft projects in tissue, then gift wrap) and I knew it would tear if I tried to undo it, I let it go. It was a banner made with felt letters (about 6 inches in height) which were padded and decorated and spelled out Merry Christmas. As I admitted to Liz, I didn't make it but instead bought it from the Karuna Hospice Christmas Markets.

Any way Liz reported that she and her 5 children loved the banner so it's found a good home!

Last Wednesday, I went to my last Knit and Natter for 2012 and by knitting under the fan the previous weekend, I was able to take along 'a knitting experiment' all finished. I'd often mused over whether it was possible to make an interesting looking knitted throw just using garter stitch. Some interesting/fancy yarns had been donated to K4BN in recent months and I had taken a few odd balls of these to see what I could come up with.

Now I knew that that old favourite of mine, the chevron , by its very nature, pulled in the width of the knitting somewhat, so I expected to get a wider piece of knitting with plain garter stitch. Hah hah! But I wasn't to know just how much wider it would be! I cast on the same 198 stitches as for the chevron and it soon became obvious that this was going to be much wider...it was 1.68m wide rather than the 1.2-1.3m of the usual chevron despite being the same number of cast on stitches.

The width of the throw nearly covers my large outdoor table...

It wasn't long before I decided that when finished, I would turn the throw so that the strips ran down not across as usual :-)
As well as the lovely donated yarns, I also used some 'leftovers' from the throw that I made for the parish Art Show in July.

Lots of colour and texture in my old favourite (but discontinued) Patons' loopy

As I mentioned, I decided to rotate the throw so the stripes run up and down. But the recipient can turn it any way he/she likes! lol

I know that Karen (the founder and organiser of K4BN) reads this blog and I bet as she reads this, she's already thinking of where 'its new home' may be. The girls at the K&N on Wednesday have said that my experiment has been, in their opinion, a success :-) . And I'm pleased that I got the effect I was hoping for by using those fancy yarns mixed with plain.