The book with knitting patterns had some with cats, so I had to make another Christmas ball.

Slightly glittery yarn in red and white seemed suitably Christmassy, but now that the ball is done, the cats look like demons with blood-red eyes and bloody paws.

Last year I got a book with traditional Scandinavian knitting patterns as a gift from a colleague. I had already been thinking of reciprocating with something knitted, based on a pattern from that book. Now that this year’s Christmas gift is “something hand-knitted”, I just have to. Except he already got a pair of socks from me last year, and repeating that would be too boring. And other garments and accessories are hard to gift when I don’t know what he needs. I couldn’t come up with anything better than a Christmas ornament, so I knitted a ball. It came out nicer than I had hoped for. I like the concept and I think I might make more, for other people and perhaps also for our own tree.

Every year since 1988, the Swedish Retail Institute has announced a “Christmas gift of the year” – a product that somehow embodies the zeitgeist for that year. Apparently it is based on “an independent analysis of consumption trends” but it’s probably just some group’s fingers in the air.

Sometimes they capture the beginning of a trend, or the introduction of a product that stays. The CD player in 1992, a cookbook in 2002 when cookbooks were starting to be hip, a flat-screen TV in 2004. Sometimes they zoom in on a temporary madness – the spiky acupressure mat in 2009, a juicer in 2013, VR goggles in 2016.

In 2020, the camping stove got to embody the Swedish people’s new-found love for the outdoors, triggered by the covid quarantine; in 2021 an event ticket symbolized the end of the quarantine.

Anyway, it’s a bit of fun, even though I’ve never let it affect my actual choices of Christmas gifts.

Until this year. The Christmas gift of the year for 2022 is a home-knitted garment. Inflation is high, and so are electricity costs. There is a war going on, and people in bombed-out cities are without heating or electricity. The world feels like a chilly place. People want something to warm them, both in body and heart. And home-made crafts, which used to be something for grannies and oddball hippie activists, are suddenly trendy again.

I have a cardigan to finish, and I really hadn’t planned to knit any more socks right now, but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. So there will be some socks under the tree this year again. I did half a sock today, just in meetings or while reading – thicker yarn makes the work go fast – so I can easily get some done before Christmas.

I haven’t quite reached as far as I had last time, but I’m getting very close. And the result looks better this time. You probably can’t see any difference in the photo, and even I sometimes can’t tell the two balls apart (hence the little row markers) but when I look carefully at the overall colour gradient, I can see it. So it was worth it.

Now that I’m getting close again, I’m starting to realize I might run out of yarn before the cardigan is as long as I want it to be. So I might need another ball of the same colourway. And if I do, odds are there will be a slight mismatch again so I have to do a fade, which means I need to decide well before I’m all out of yarn.

When the first ball of dark red ran out and I had switched to the second one and knitted a few rows with it, it became obvious that the two balls of dark red were from different dye lots. I really should have checked and noticed this earlier – this was pure noob sloppiness. And the sharp line between them really didn’t look good, and the one I used first was slightly darker so I really should have taken the other one first, so to make a long story short, I ripped up the whole red-to-dark-red fade and started over with it. I’m back where I was in early to mid-August. But the journey is the destination and all that, so I don’t even mind too much. I do mind the dangling yarn balls I now have everywhere – weaving in all the ends at the yoke is proving to be a minor nightmare, so now I don’t want to cut the yarn if I don’t have to.

The cardigan is looking good. The fade is all done, now it should be smooth sailing from here onwards.

The cardigan colour fade saga continues.

The first fade, from amber to orange, took me two attempts, but the second one was perfect in that it used up the entirety of the amber yarn, except for a small scrap.

For the second fade, from orange to red, I calculated and measured and weighed and triangulated and still got it wrong. I ran out of the orange yarn before it was finished. I was missing only 20 metres or 5 grams of yarn. Not willing to frog the whole fade, I bought another whole hank, so the leftovers this time are 95% of a hank. Sigh.

The third and final fade, from red to a darker and more muted red, I finally got more or less right on the first try. About 20 grams left where I would have preferred 10, so I could have gotten another 5 rows of knitting out of it, but I’d rather err in this direction.

And now there is no more of that! Just keep knitting with no more counting and weighing.

We used to travel with colouring books and crates of Lego for the kids. Now it’s my hobbies that take up space in the car.

I brought my cardigan project with me. I did consider leaving it at home and just doing socks for 10 days, because they are much more portable. But the socks are mostly time-fillers, whereas I want to actually finish this cardigan.

I’ve found nothing that beats a good-quality wicker basket for storing knitting projects. It protects the knitting and doesn’t get damaged by knitting needles or scissors. Unlike a bag, everything is clearly visible and there are no nooks and corners that eat up small things like markers or pieces of scrap yarn.

I finished the brioche scarf, with plenty of yarn left over.

I had guesstimated that two hanks of yarn would be enough for a scarf, but the store staff said it would only make a small one. So I doubled my purchase and got four hanks. Two was more than enough for a normal-sized scarf, I have no idea what kind of monster scarves they were picturing. So now I have two whole untouched hanks. I guess I’ll make another scarf, then. Can’t make an identical one, though (because that would be too boring) so the second one will get a zigzagging line. But now the first one will look plain in comparison so I’ll have to think of some sort of embellishment for it.

The yarn itself is lovely to work with. Butter-soft merino wool, after the fuzzy alpaca and sock yarn I’ve using recently. It felt weird in my hands at first, too smooth, almost greasy, but now I love touching it.

The first colour fade is done and I only have a teeny bit of yarn left over – perfect. It only took two attempts. (The first fade I tried was too abrupt AND I ran out of yarn before it was done.) I now realize that this photo doesn’t really tell that story very well. Trust me, they’re really small? I should have included something for scale.