And now for something (not so completely) different...

 Last fall at the Artisan's Faire I participated in,  our friend Lydia bought some of my yarn and asked me if I could make fingerless gloves for her (grown) daughters for Christmas presents. 

Well, I love Lydia to pieces and was only too happy to comply.  In fact, I decided to go one step farther and make little cowls for the gals to match the gloves.  
 


In this set, for the cowl, I dipped into my stash of "little balls of yarn" and used bits and pieces of left over yarns from other projects, the turquoise from the gloves, next was some yarn that had turquoise, blue and golden brown from a baby sweater I made a few years ago, (which matched the golden that I had left over from making the other set - see below), then some navy, that had a little of the gold color in it from a hat I made for my sister, plus some light turquoise (which was some of the first yarn that I ever spun!) and then finally another couple of rows of the original color.

 


I don't think the colors could have gone together any better if I had planned them to be that way. 

 For as many crochet books and magazines that I have, I ended up making up this pattern from an afghan pattern that I found - and added two silver buttons to keep it closed. 

This was a "small" version of my favorite scarf - Mosiac Scarf's Little Sister - I used some Ferndale Fiber Potluck Roving called "Golden Pear" that I got last year at our friends fiber sale.  It is not a color that she makes on a regular basis, so I was lucky to get it. 

I was spinning it at the Artisans Faire to demonstrate how yarn was made.  Lydia bought it right off the wheel!  After I made the gloves, I looked at the gold with some brown alpaca that I had spun up and decided that they were a natural together.

It made quite a pretty ensemble, don't you think?  I just put one brown wooden button on this one - The roving was fairly soft and of course, the alpaca was absolutely dreamy. 

I hope that they are enjoying their gifts as much as I enjoyed making them.