Does it come in a set?

Thank you for hanging in here, everyone. I am now genuinely feeling up to writing happily about knitting, and since there's been a three-week break since the last time I wrote happily about knitting, there is a lot of knitting to happily write about!

I won't try to catch up all at once, but will rather focus on the most exciting news of the day, which is that Interweave Knits has released their Holiday Gifts 2013 issue, which means that I can now talk about some of my stuff!

As part of my 12-in-12 challenge, I submitted a proposal for a mitten pattern and a scarf pattern. I had designed the mittens as the 2012 holiday gift for DD2's teacher:

(first side)

(second side)

A scarf wasn't part of the gift, but I added it into the proposal because I thought it would be nice to do a matched set. Interweave wanted it for the IK holiday issue, and asked if I could make a matching hat, too? Oh, and would it be okay if we went with a high-end yarn for the mittens and hat? Like, say, cashmere?

Well.

*Tsk*

If I must.

(Oh, how I suffer for my work.)

The "Ivy" yarn that was sent to me (from S. Charles Collezione) was 100% cashmere and...Oh. Mah. Gawrd. Mere words cannot describe how dreamy it was to work with. A tad splitty, but not to the point where it became difficult to work with. And it made glorious end products. Meet the Woodcutter Hat and Mittens:

Here's the other side of the mittens:

And here's the hat being worn by my husband:

And here's what the hat looks like at the top - I really like how the decreases come together:

For the scarf, I was sent some Poems Silk Solids, from Wisdom Yarns, and it knitted up very nicely! This is the Caldicott Scarf:

The idea for the texture patterns came from tweeds - specifically, herringbone and houndstooth. I was designing for men, so tweeds seemed a good source of inspiration.

Making a set of three things when I hadn't planned for that kind of output was a hectic experience, but I'm delighted by the end result!

And continuing on the "Oh hey, can you make a matching...?" theme, I recently submitted something which got an acceptance...along with a request for two more items in a set to match! So that should keep me busy over the next month. :)