Appreciation

I've been joking for a while that if my brother didn't like his Christmas gift (as described in my last post - a six-foot long reversible scarf done in stranded knitting with fingering weight yarn on 2.75mm needles), I was going to kill him. Or there would some other, similarly dire, consequence.

Well, I gave it to him today. He and my parents and my little family had a gift exchange in the hour leading up to the larger family Christmas dinner that my parents hosted tonight (this dinner was originally supposed to happen on Christmas Day, but the power outage due to last weekend's ice storm delayed all that). He knew what it was going to be before he opened it because my hint on the gift tag was pretty obvious, and he ripped open the paper with great gusto. He seemed pleased, tried it on, and thanked me very nicely.

From this I gathered that he liked it rather a bit, and genuinely appreciated my knitting efforts.

Fast forward to dinner...as we were all gathered round the table preparing to listen to my mom express gratitude for the meal and the company, he - very uncharacteristically for him - spoke up. He said he was sorry to interrupt, but he wanted to say something. He announced to the entire family that he had received an amazing scarf designed and made by me, and then whipped it out and showed it off to everyone, pointing out details about the construction as he did so.

I was completely gobsmacked, because this is a guy who is usually super-reticent at family functions and doesn't really get excited about most stuff, and yet here he was, so thrilled by something I made him that he wanted to make sure everyone not only saw the scarf, but appreciated all the effort that went into making it!

I'm still vorklempt about it, actually. I can't think of anything else he could have done to express his appreciation better.

(Which means, of course, that I'm going to have to make him something excellent for next year. :)

And here's a better shot of the scarf than I posted last time, modelled here by my husband (with some of the effects of the aforementioned ice storm in the background):

If you have a similarly appreciative potential gift knitting recipient, are looking for something fairly epic to make for them, and have an incredible amount of patience and endurance, I've written up the pattern, it's available for free. To get it, you can either click on the "High-end Scarf" square in the left sidebar, or...