Christmas in July

First Christmas present of 2010 is off the needles and on the drying rack.

That’s a dinner plate giving this Rose Red tam it’s shape. Otherwise it looks something like a jellyfish — minus the tentacles of course..and fuzzy, as it is made entirely of Sublime Angora Merino. Delicious to knit, but the cause of much sneezing on my part. Oh, the lengths I go to for my family and friends.

Who gets it? That’s for me to know and you to find out. *wink*

Edited to add: This is a response to Bells question, “How was the knitting of it?” And I feel I must endorse this as the ideal gift knit. It only took three days of leisurely knitting and was one of those projects where I would keep marveling at the finished section’s beauty — which made me want to keep knitting “just one more row” to see the next portion. I will say, that I didn’t realize at first that there was a chart with this pattern and struggled needlessly through the 1st 20 or so rows using written instructions (personally, I hate those). I finally dropped my pattern sheets and thankfully, it fell open to the last page where I noticed the charting. It just flew off the needles from there. It’s only 70 something rows long, so you’re finished almost as soon as you start.

It’s a top down knit, beginning with the i-cord. There’s a few M1 rows at the start, then you’re increasing by yarnovers and decreasing with ssk, k2together and both sskp and a mitered double decrease — s, k2together, pass slipped stitch over. Personally, I can’t see much difference in those two stitches and would be interested in any knitter that could tell me when the ideal times are to use one over the other.

***RECENTLY LEARNED TIP: Just learned of a new, left-leaning decrease. It’s slip 1 as if to knit, slip one as if to purl, then knit the slipped stitches together. It’s supposed to be the best mirror of the right leaning k2tog. I don’t think Ysolda’s pattern needs any improving, but for all you anal retentive knitters out there in search of the perfect matching decreases, this might prove useful in future projects.