Fast and Festive!

Okay, it's crunch time. You know what I mean, don't you? It's after Thanksgiving. The first of December looms on the very near horizon. And here I sit with only a few Christmas projects completed. What's a knitter to do??? The only thing for it is to find projects that work up quickly and still have a decent bang for the buck.

So, inspired by the free pattern over at Knit Picks, I did a test on a felted coaster last night. Here's the before:

It's roughly 3.75" square before felting. I did this on an ESG Wonderloom from Decor Accents (that gauge is no longer available, but a FG would probably be fine), using 17 pegs. Two pegs on either side were done in garter stitch and four rows on either end in garter stitch. The middle is knit stitch with my own snowflake pattern, quickly worked up on some knitter's graph paper last night. Yarn is Paton's Classic Wool Merino. After throwing it in my front-load washer with a load of towels and through a cycle on hot, it came out like this:

Finished product is approximately 3.5" square. Not a whole lot of shrinkage, which is good, and it shrank evenly in both directions, which is also good. Now I just need to make more of them. Oh, here's the back side:

Now that I see it works, I need to make a whole buch more of these!

Oh, and the Airy Scarf is finished. I probably could have done at least one more pattern repeat, but I always get nervous about running out of yarn. It ended up being a little over 47" long, which is pretty darned perfect. Now I just need to find a pretty pin to go with it. It's VERY soft and light, but warm. I hope my friend likes it! Blogger is being persnickety and won't let me load another picture, so I'll save that for next time.

Knit on for St. Nick waits for no needles/looms! :)