Finishing touches...

I used to have this tam which my Nan gave me. I'm pretty sure she'd bought it from a charity shop, but I really liked it. It was striped and originally from St Michaels (M&S). And then I lost it, I suspect at work. My suspicions were even more confirmed when I saw it on the head of a student. Problem is, I can only assume it was my hat - I can't prove it; I haven't fully searched my cupboards and draws at home, but I think the odds of a student having an old hat exactly the same as mine are slim - just not impossible. So I've been thinking for a while about knitting a replacement the lost tam (and yet still not about searching my mounds of clothes to see if it's still around...!).

When I saw the pattern in Hats for the 'Fair Isle tam', I thought it would make the perfect replacement. But the Fair Isle bit, although it looks great and perfectly possible, seemed too much like hard work. Luckily I still have a stash of striped sock wool from Wilkinson's to use up, which was the perfect way to cheat through this pattern:

I had to use an old hairband to elasticate it. It should make a suitable replacement, though... Until i can finally get around to searching for the missing hat...

The good news is, I finally finished the baby pouch for my future niece/nephew, now complete with teddy bear buttons which will be an absolute bugger to open in a hurry... :)

Eleven Shades of Red...

Another hat from Hats completed! I've skipped past the Tam at the moment, because I have to do some final touches to that before it's ready. Instead I moved on to a chunky knit hat; the reason being, a long time ago now I bought a couple of boxes of 'job lot wool' from eBay, thinking it a bargain at £40. The pictures showed many cones of machine-knit wool. Many, many cones.  The description was a little vague, but I took a punt anyway. Two huge boxes arrived - good stuff. Except that it wasn't exactly good stuff; it was 1ply and 2ply wool that looked like it had been stored in a shed for years. Nevertheless, it was workable, just thin. Very, very thin. Useless on my knitting machine and a pain to knit with. I tried out lace knitting without much success (or patience), and then I started to combine cones to make 3ply and 4ply yarn. That seemed to work a bit better. I have an unfinished pink top I'll show at some point from my first combining experiment.

Now, however, I'm a bit sick of having two huge crates of wool in my bedroom and really want to get rid of the stuff! So a couple of nights ago I had the brainwave of joining up every possible cone of the same or similar colour together to make a chunkier yarn - and it worked! It's fiddly and impractical, but it worked. I combined all the different shades of red into an interesting, not too bright tone and I now have a 'Ribbons and Bow' hat to add to the ever-growing collection... :)

Only fifty more shades to use up!

Hats all...

I never really got around to telling about some of my Christmas gifts from last year, but as I've been using one of them this weekend, now seems like a good time to correct that.

My mother bought me an unexpected book: Hats (Cozy) by GMC Editors. I hadn't asked for it, but after a flick through I thought it looked alright. I like hats; their relatively quick to knit. In fact, there are some really nice hats in this book, and now that I've branched a little into crochet, none of them are totally off limits. 30 hat patterns, to be precise. I had thought I might try and knit a hat a month. That hasn't happened, unsurprisingly. But, shortly after Christmas, I began my attempts, starting with a beaded blue one called 'Nocturne', which is basically a dark blue beanie with knitted bobbles and bead work. I didn't have quite the same amount of pretty beads as the original suggests (despite thoroughly raiding my old, broken jewellery stash), so I stuck to a few simple silver-ish beads from a broken costume necklace. It just about works:













I also tried, with my limited crochet knowledge, the 'Fur Fun' hat, which, after several attempts at working out exactly what was going on, I've had to abandon for two reasons: (1) ran out of suitable wool; (2) it just looks like a shower cap! Where would I go that I would want to wear a shower cap outside the bathroom?? However, I do intend to retry the pattern another time in a different colour, as I suspect it's the pale blue which really doesn't help its general appearance.

I am, however, particularly proud of my attempt at the 'Trilby', even if I have chosen to make it in dark pink, rather than the more acceptable grey. It's made with chunky wool and super warm, which is great for these British summers!!

I definitely recommend the book if you're a hat or quick knits fan - and it's fairly cheap too, if bought from the right places. I'm now on to the 'Fair Isle tam', although I'm cheating a lot by ignoring the Fair Isle aspect. I'll show you what I mean when it's done...