Family Ties

When 0j0 was last here, she found an old Paton's book of bazaar knits (that's bazaar, not bizarre) and was laughing at the knitted ties, tea and egg cosies. She then asked if I could knit a really garish tie as a Christmas present for a friend of hers, and hinted that she really needed that knitted dachshund draught excluder...

Not having anything on the pins at the moment, I was happy to tackle the tie commission, and chose a ball of turquoise, orange and yellow acrylic as I was passing through the Chinese Bazaar yesterday. The tie in the book was a silky slip of a thing; With DK I was obviously producing something much more substantial. Something that could be used to replace a fan belt in an emergency.

I cast on 6 stitches with 5.5mm pins and knitted garter stitch. The yarn was quite pleasant in texture for acrylic; quite silky and without any of the usual horrible squeak. After a foot, I increased to 8 stitches and knitted to the end of yarn, an event that coincided with the end of the programme I was watching on Beeb 2 about Communism in Czechoslovakia. I looked down at the finished article, and realised that the space dye had coincided nicely with the row length, and produced a neat yellow zigzag up the tie. I'm not sure what 0j0's reaction will be as it turned out quite attractive in its own way, and I think her intention was something a trifle more gross...