Mothers' Day Knits

As I was bagging up all my balls, skeins and fluffy stuffs I came across this single ball (only 50m long) of Freedom 100% wool - delish! I bought it very early on in my knitting career, at my first visit to an actual yarn store I think! I picked it out for the quintessentially 'Mum' colours - pretty much all her favourites in ONE! But had left it aside, and when I'd finished all of my Skoota knitting projects I had other things on my mind (don't we knitters always have a dozen or so 'waiting in the wings' future projects we can't wait to get on to! And because I didn't have a set plan for it I didn't fish it out.

On going through my stash and making up an inventory I discovered that what I felt as an early kntiter (earlier, rather) was true - I really DIDN'T have a grasp on how much yarn can become how much of a knitted up item! The metre-age/weight didn't really compute, so I ended up purchasing many single balls of yarns that I liked for their colour, texture or whatever else - but ONLY one. It seemed a much more frugal way of doing things - sure it's an impulse purchase, but only a small one! It is now that I realise how difficult it can be to create something out of 50m of such a supoer duper bulky yarn!! So I cracked out my 20mm needles (yupp, you read right - TWENTY MILL! I bought them for ornamental purposes initially!) and started to knit a scarf width piece to see how it looked on the most gugantuous needles I have. And it looked great! Garter stitch on 20mm needles was EXACTLY what this yarn was happy to be!

I'm not a huge one for "Mothers'/Fathers' Day" as I think every day should be a day we show our love, appreciation and gratitude to our parents (and it seems like an excellent marketing ploy to amp up consumerism..) - but I never let them pass without a little something, preferably handmade, to express my love :) So this time around the timing was perfect and I decided I'd have the scarf knit up in time for the Sunday lunch skoot and I were putting on for our Mumsies!

So on Saturday while we drove out to the stunning local bush area in the hills for the lads to engage in the time-honoured sport of Down Hill Mountain Biking (in which I drive the 4wd ute up and down the hill picking them up and loading the bikes at the bottom, dropping them at the top then meeting them at the bottom for another go!) I knit all the way there in the car, knitknit when we stopped at the servo, knitknitknit while I was waiting for them at the bottom of the hill, and before we went to go home the scarf was done! Yay! Hoorah for quick, chunky knits! =D

The uber bulky yarn has a fantastic drape and snuggle factor and isn't too suffocatingly warm when knit up on the 20mm (how HUGE are they?!), and although not normal scarf length it's long enough to tie around the neck once, or wear with a scarf pin.

I'm delighted with how it turned out and was thrilled to gift the new knit to Mum on Sunday - as you can see she was equally delighted :)