Hats, Mittens and Scarves

I received this lovely little box of patterns a couple of years ago. In the best book club ever we always did a secret Santa draw. One year my friend Jill (of Homemade by Jill, oooooh) gave me this great set of patterns.

I made the Alpine Cable Scarf. It's basically one giant cable. The yarn I used is not my favorite. (A yucky little acrylic), but the pattern called for a SUPER bulky yarn and I didn't have much that fit the bill in my stash. I didn't have time to shop since I had to do this in a rush as a gift for someone. The Red Heart Light and Lofty has a very bumpy almost boucle texture and it really muddied the overall pattern. I would absolutely make this pattern again but NEVER with this yarn.

This is what it's supposed to look like. Depressingly dissimilar.

Knitted Critters For Kids To Wear by Jean Adel

I loved this book from the moment I first saw it. The basic hat pattern from which all the variations are made is so easy and fast. It can absolutely be knit up in a couple of hours. The variations truly are unique and different. Sometimes in books like this they claim to have 40 patterns and when you look it's more like 10. However, all the hats look very different with their embellishments and often have various knitted pieces to complement the animal so they are different. I only made the hat I didn't complete the coordinating scarf and mittens which accompany each animal hat.

I do wish I had stiffened the fins with cardboard or something. I have a floppy fin problem that no amount of sturdy sewing is fixing.

I used safety eyes on it and their pegs are kind of long. They bump into Beckett's head and kind of distort the fabric. I'm going to try and chop them off with wire cutters or something.

Here is my gracious model. I swear he said he liked the hat.

I'm Back!

After a long and lovely trip to Utah to visit the fam I am back in New York and attempting to get life back together. While I was in Utah I did lots of knitting and almost completely finished a project from Wacky Baby Knits. I now need to find 17 buttons to finish it off. Surprisingly, that is taking a long time. It would probably help if I took the outfit with me when I was looking for buttons.

One good reason to be back is that I was in time to catch the going out of business sale of the local yarn/quilt store. I managed to score this haul for $18! Those two sets of dpn's would cost more than that.

While in Utah I also ran into Joann's clearance for the yarns that were being discontinued. Thank goodness my husband packed light and brought a big suitcase. I just barely managed to get it all home.