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December 19, 2005

Take A(n Irish) Hike, Lazy Elves!

What do you do when the scarf you're knitting for your office's annual Yankee Swap isn't done in time? Easy, blame it on the elves!

Dearest Yankee Swap Recipient:

Due to the mediocre time management skills and general laziness of the elves assigned to knit this scarf for you, it is not quite finished. They have promised that if you give it to Shannon, she will see it is completed and returned to you in time for Christmas.

Please accept my sincerest apologies, and rest assured that the elves in question have been dealt with harshly.

xoxo,
Santa

What you can't see in the too-dark picture is that the note is tied to a half-finished Irish Hiking Scarf knit in Wool Ease. I chose Chestnut Heather, a sort of coppery-red, in an attempt to make it pleasing to either gender without being black, brown or green. It ended up in the hands of a new employee who was attending her first ever company holiday party and, accordingly, had none of the alcohol-related expectations I discussed last year. Perfect! She gave it back to me at the end of the swap on Thursday night, and I took it home to finish up over the weekend.

Jason was out most of the day on Saturday, and when he returned we suddenly had two Irish Hiking Scarves in the house.

Picture 011

He'd given the nurse he works with a ride home that afternoon, and she'd left her scarf behind. Though the picture is a bit blurry, her scarf (on the right) is a smaller-gauged version of the very scarf I'd just finished (on the left)! Failure to meet a deadline notwithstanding, I really enjoyed this pattern and can see why Irish Hiking Scarves are sweeping the knitting world this holiday season -- it's the old "knits-easy-but-looks-complicated" trick!

The elves made up for last week's indolence by really powering through some Christmas knitting and finishing over the weekend. In just a few more days when the gifts are distributed, I'll be able to share pictures and details!

Posted by shannon at December 19, 2005 3:27 PM | For related posts: Christmas Knitting 2005, Christmas Scarves

Comments

Very pretty scarf!

Posted by: katie at December 22, 2005 2:40 PM

Something happened! The scarves are gorgeous but I can't read the text because it's really really tiny! Help? Am I going blind or did this actually change?

Posted by: Shetha at December 28, 2005 12:52 PM

Shetha:

The text of the note (under the first picture) is meant to be small, but not unreadably so! The rest of the entry is supposed to be normal sized. I just double-checked it, and it looks OK in my browser (IE) -- which do you use? In any event, if you can't read the text of the note, it's copied below.

___________

Dearest Yankee Swap Recipient:
Due to the mediocre time management skills and general laziness of the elves assigned to knit this scarf for you, it is not quite finished. They have promised that if you give it to Shannon, she will see it is completed and returned to you in time for Christmas.

Please accept my sincerest apologies, and rest assured that the elves in question have been dealt with harshly.

xoxo,
Santa

Posted by: shannon at December 28, 2005 2:45 PM