On knitting. Again

While finishing the Drifting cardigan this loveliness was already calling me.

I had purchased five of these generous skeins, dyed by Plain&Fancy Sheep&Wool Co. at the Taos Wool Festival in 2012, plenty for a sweater. 

I decided to go without a pattern and to make this up, copying the fitting of a favorite shirt of mine.

There was swatching, measuring, calculating, sketching, more calculating. Then I re-calculated  (*sigh*, yes, way too much math, if you ask me), I cast on and voila!

 I hope that it will all come together, because this sure looks pretty! New Mexico colors, I think!

 As I went through my pictures I stumbled upon these from Christmas. There are always some hand knitted gifts like the dark blue and purple cowl that I made for my mom using some supersoft Malabrigo merino yarn from a yarn store in Hawaii. 

While it sure looks lovely, never mind me and my knits, cause I'm an old pro - here comes the exciting part...

What really means the world is a gift that my daughter gave her Oma. Because this girl started knitting just last year! 

It was really for the longest time just a piece of knitted fabric, that she kept working on to practice her new skill until just a week before Christmas. That's when she decided that she had to turn this thing into a Cowl/Neckwarmer/Miniscarf - capitalized, yes! - for Oma. With the obsession of a determined mind she went to work and finished the second half of the scarf just in time and she did it all by herself, even casting off! I only contributed by sewing on the button for closure - the girl had to sleep at some point!

That she chose to give her first ever knitted piece to her Oma meant so much to me, because, you know, that's where it comes from! The art, the knowledge, the wisdom of the working hands, it comes from the generations before us, from the women, who preserved it for us, the daughters and grand daughters.

Oma was a lucky woman this Christmas, but in fact we all are.