Enormous knitted flower consumes neck warmer

I was given a gorgeous skein of hand-dyed, hand-spun Lisa G yarn for christmas and it took me ages to find something suitably special to do something with it. Eventually I decided on Knitty's Flora. I did my calculations, and bought a ball of pale blue alpaca to ensure I'd have enough metreage to finish the project and then got started. Despite working perfectly to gauge it soon became abundantly clear that I was only going to have enough yarn to complete the neck warmer – I would have to choose a different colour for the flower.

I'm the first to admit that I then made a couple of poor judgement calls, the first of which was to opt for a bold contrast colour. My second was to decide not to test for gauge with the new yarn (I know, I'm such a lazy knitter). The end result is really rather amusing. Most amusing of all is the fact that I managed to complete the entire flower without realising how enormous it was. What was I thinking? Instead of 'decorative flower on neck warmer' I ended up with 'enormous flower consumes neck warmer'.

Here the monster flower lies in wait in the bushes.

He sees the neck warmer and POUNCES!

Yum yum!

So, the enormous flower (Ella calls it 'the octopus') was put aside for a different project (a bag perhaps?) and I finished off my version of Flora (can it still be called that?) with a simple button that I found in mum's chaotic sewing room. I'm very pleased with myself for finishing it despite the whole man-eating flower fiasco. The colours of the yarn are gorgeous – I find myself just looking at it and giving it a good ol' fondle. And my, it's warm too! Just the trick for this cooler mountain weather.

Comments

[Miss Helen]

Gauge checking is for sissies! And smart people.
You could maybe try felting the flower in the washing machine? But I fear it might still be too big. Octopus is a little frightening! Maybe he would be a loofah-y washcloth?