Her first scarf finished!

Tomorrow is the last day before Christmas vacation. Before a whole TWELVE days that my kids have off. It's also the day of the class party, which these days is called the "Winter Solstice" party, you know, because we have to be politically correct. (Like the party on Halloween is now the Harvest Festival?)

We usually get the teacher a small gift, but this year Helen's class moms asked for a donation in the beginning of the year. You aren't required to donate, but I was happy to. From that donation (only $25) they would cover a birthday gift, a Christmas gift, an end of year gift, and some gifts for other folks in the house. What a great idea! In Sophie's class, they don't do that (but they might want to consider it for the future!) This year Sophie decided to make her teacher a scarf. She started it months ago. In all honesty, she's not the most enthusiastic knitter. She knits if I ask her to, but usually about 4 rows at a time, and then she gets sidetracked by anything remotely more interesting to her. Like the cats. The hermit crabs. Her dolls. Heck, even the clouds passing are more interesting to her than knitting it seems.

But she knit a bit here and there, and finally last week made it through her second ball of Plymouth Encore Mega. She had cast on a few too many stitches to begin with, and was knitting on a size smaller needle than she should have been. So her scarf, after two balls, was rather wide and short. I got her a third ball and told her she better get cracking. That this Tuesday was the big day. She had to make the scarf long enough, and bind off, weave in her ends and wrap it.

So how is it that, despite me reminding her about a million times this weekend that she HAD to finish the scarf, I came home this evening to find that her scarf needed a good 10 inches more to be wearable? And Sophie was out with Marc's parents on an annual Christmas light tour (they've done this each year since they were born.) So she certainly wasn't going to have time to get it done.

Talk about multi-tasking. They arrived home at 8pm to find me baking banana bread, chocolate chip cookies AND knitting the rest of Sophie's scarf all at the same time. Standing and knitting is not really my cup of tea, but it worked tonight, and I'm happy to say I was able to help her along so that the scarf was actually completed in time for her to wrap. (Of course she LOVES to wrap it. Just didn't LOVE to knit it.)

When it was done, I held it up and looked at it. This is what you get when your mom, a knitter of 26 years, finishes your scarf:

I guess all those years do make a difference in tension!

And then I folded it in half and had to chuckle. Look at how relaxed she became as she progressed in her scarf! What started off as quite tense (and thin!) became much more relaxed.

What a great first scarf. A beautiful piece with lots of signature marks. I'm sure he'll appreciate it.