And I did indeed get everything finished, even the scarf of doom and successfully beat the Second Sock Syndrome - twice. Not to mention I resisted the pull of my log cabin afghan.
The first one to be finished, well in advance, were the Opal Sideways socks. I have mentioned that the pattern is an absolute joke before and I didn't use it as more than a rough guideline. While I had already cast on for the second time, this time with the modifications to fit my Mum's feet, I found Nona's Sidewinders pattern and have been itching since then to try this pattern. But I have to admit, once I figured out how to make the socks fit my Mum's feet, I did not feel like messing with the gauge and so stuck to my modifications. I'll be on the lookout for a yarn with the required gauge though and try it then. Knitting the socks sideways was fun and challenging and it gives a completely different look to yarn that I'm usually not too fond of (I'm more for rather random, short colour stripes, usually only a few stitches long).
And my Mum loved those. In fact, she's that in love with the yarn that she's thinking about knitting a cardigan for herself in that. And considering she's usually very thrifty in her yarn buys and this is Opal at 8,95€/100g skein, that's saying a lot. I forgot the exact name of the yarn, but it's from Opal's Hundertwasser collection, something with Ultramarin III in the title of the picture, I believe, and it's knitted with 2.5mm needles.
Next to be finished were the Elfine socks (PDF). I've been in love with this pattern since I saw it for the first time, but had to find out that it wasn't meant for me and frogged the half sock I had in Koigu.
The structure the pattern creates is simply fantastic and I think, unusual for lace, that they look as good off the foot as they look when being worn. My Mum loves lace knitting, but is firm in her belief that she can't do it (no matter how often I tell her that she knows all the stitches and I'll explain it to her - for her knitting is about speed and relaxation, so ribbing is as adventurous as she gets), so she was very exited about getting these socks and being able to finally wear them when the weather gets cooler.
The only things I changed were the toe and cuff. My Mum didn't know these were supposed to be for her even though she saw me knitting on them plenty of times (and I still can't believe she bought it when I told her socks in this colour were for me) and so I even followed the exact instructions for the foot and lef length, since my Mum's feet are pretty much the average for women. Makes it easy to knit for her without her ever trying them on.
The change to the toe consisted of using a short row tow with a crochet chain cast on, my standard for toe up socks, since the recommended Figure Eight cast on just drives me absolutely batty. And instead of four rows of garter stitch as a cuff, I did a picot edge, and bound off very loosely. The socks were still a bit tight, but the cause of that was the crochet I used to keep the cuff folded over, so after my Mum received them, I just undid the crocheting and instead sewed the top of the cuff to the inside. It's much stretchier and looks just a nice.
Finally, the much bemoaned and sworn at Lead of Follow lace scarf. I love how it turned out, but boy was the way a long one. It's knitted in Rowan Scottish Tweed 4-Ply in seagreen and I used 5 skeins to complete 19 pattern repeats plus the border. I could still have squeezed out another repeat, but my Mum is a small person and so I didn't want the scarf to be too long (it's just perfect in fact), not to mention that I couldn't face knitting another repeat after I was already so happy about finally reaching the end.
The scarf did indeed dry in one day, so I didn't have to sleep on the floor or the living room couch, and for blocking I tried a new (to me) method of putting nylon string through the edge stitches and then putting the blocking pins inside the quadrangle created by the string. I usually always have problems (especially in lace) with pointy bits in the supposedly straight edges, but with the string it worked perfectly. I put the pins in just like I normally would and then pulled on the string on one corner of the scarf and so created enough tension that the string pulled all the edges straight. Very simple solution and blocking lace now holds much less of a dread for me.
Again, my Mum loved that I knit lace for her, when she doesn't want to do it herself and she also loved that she can wear this scarf for warmth, wound around her neck, or just as an accessoire, loosely draped over her shoulders.
Finally, all the pieces came together and only had to undergo one more little test. Idiot me had forgotten to buy wrapping paper, so I improvised a little. A small box some yarn from Wolhalla had been in, a bit of printer paper and a slightly modified picture from the Windows example images... et voilà...
... the present for the best mother in the world.
