Two FOs!

A fair amount of knitting has been done, but both of the main pieces have been stealth projects (as is the current one...) I handed both over this week, though, so here are some pictures and details.

This is Mam's birthday stole, the Melon scarf/shawl from the cover of Victorian Lace Today

It's worked in GGH Kid Mélange - the yardage on this stuff is even better than KidSilk Haze (which I really dislike). It was fiddly to do, and I should have known that a 6 row pattern with the instruction "repeat 62 times" might drive me batty a few times, but the result is rather beautiful, and it was much appreciated...

The second project is rather different. I’ve loved the damask flower motif from Kaffe Fassett for ages and knitted the peplum jacket from the cover of Glorious Knitting when it came out. But then I saw sew200’s cushion and thought ‘I want one of those’, and thought Jan probably would, too.

I used the charts from Kaffe Fassett's pattern library - the Small Damask flower repeated twice on the front,

and the Large Damask flower on the back, with a made-up chequerboard pattern as an edging as I wanted it to be a mass of pattern (the symbol at the corner means M1,K1,M1 in the same stitch).
The cast-off is a three-needle-I-cord-bind-off, with the yarn doubled and right sides out. Cast on 4 sts, slip one stitch from the left needle containing the stitches from the back to the left needle containing the stitches from the front, knit 3, k3tog, slip the 4 I-cord stitches back to the right hand needle and repeat the instruction in italics to the end.

I was enjoying this one so much it was frustrating not to be able to post it on Ravelry, or Flickr; thankfully I was able to e-mail in-progress shots to a patient and encouraging knitter friend... And here it is in situ in its new home...