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Sorry I’ve been a little quiet over the holiday period but been a bit hectic here. Hope you’ve all had a good time. I’ll try and catch up. There was a lot of knitting going on over the Christmas break; plus I have a few projects I couldn’t show you as they were Christmas presents. Starting off…. Hats I initally made a Kernmantle hat for my Mum for Christmas. The pattern is a Woolly Wormhead one. Being a green kind of girl, she got Rowan Creative Focus Worsted in New Fern. Ravelry project page It worked out perfectly and it suited me so I thought I’d make myself one in the recommended yarn. Unfortunately, I learnt a lesson about swatching, even if you’re using the same hat pattern and needle size. The Malabrigo Merino Worsted behaved very differently to the Creative Focus. I thought since they both had a good proportion of wool there wouldn’t be much difference. I was wrong. Upon blocking, the Malabrigo completely relaxed and grew hugely. I’ve added shirring elastic to the inside of...

The Woolly Wormhead Mystery Knitalong 2014 has started. I started mine as soon as it was out on Saturday morning – didn’t have a lot of knitting time Saturday but it was done by lunch on Sunday. I won’t post a picture, as I know some people like the surprise. If you are interested in seeing the progress so far then follow this link . I think for a second there, I may have forgotten about the Mystery Hat Knitalong. It’s got a bit colder recently here and I was thinking about my winter wardrobe – so I thought I could knit a warm winter hat. Ahem… so bought yarn, then remembered I was already going to be making one! Oh well, they’re different colours, so I will have two new hats! The pattern I’ve used is Kernmantle – another Woolly Wormhead pattern. I just takes one 100g skein of yarn for the largest size. I’ve used Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Vaa for this one. It's a beautiful deep bottle green colour which is quite hard to capture in the photograph.

Sirdar’s Heart & Sole sock yarn is really lovely. I’ve made a pair of socks before . They’ve just brought out a new colour palette and the stripes aren’t quite as thick. I used the Clever Clogs colourway (love the names of the colours – there is also a Pigeon Toes colour! I may just have to knit this just for the name). I made a Puerperium by Kelly Brooker quite awhile ago from the free DK version. This time I used the Beyond Puerperium pattern, which covers 4 ply, DK and worsted weight and up to 2 years. I made it in 4 ply and size 45cm / 18” chest. Again I used the mismatched buttons, which I think works wonderfully with striped yarn. It’s a great pattern and I definitely see another one in my future! Ravelry Project Page I’m doing Woolly Wormhead’s Mystery Hat Knitalong this year. I particularly like this KAL because each clue is in bitesize pieces and doesn’t take up too much knitting time from other things. Anyone else doing it? I’m using the Deeply Wicked by Easy Knits ...

I finally got around to using my yarn that I picked up at the Big Coffee Morning yarn swap at A Good Yarn . Nicsknots  brought this gorgeous Easy Knits skein to swap and I was lucky enough for my ticket to be drawn first. The pattern is Rubbish Mojitos by Woolly Wormhead . I was very impressed with the pattern for the Mystery KAL this year and thought I'd try another. I didn't realise the crown had such beautiful swirls on it before I started. So that was a lovely surprise. The yarn ended up make spirals for the main body of the hat, which I thought was cool. Though being mainly purl stitch it hides it a bit. For some reason I decided that I was going to knit the hat inside out; so I was mainly using knit stitches instead of purling. Not that I have any particular objection to purling. I think it was more an exercise to see if I could work out how to reverse the knitting. I read the instructions from the end of the round and worked out what would be worked on the wrong side - ...

There are some SPOILER photos here; so don't continue if you want the hat to be a surprise. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've taken part in the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL 2012 . This is the first time I've done this and I really enjoyed it. I normally steam through projects and I was kind of nice to be able to do a project in small portions; made me appreciate the experience more! Also, I'm not 100% sure I would have picked the hat had I seen it first. It's lovely but probably not something I would normally do. It's good to try different things. It took an awful lot of effort to finally choose some yarn; I kept finding that everything I wanted to do would just go into a 2nd ball to fit the size I wanted. I finally found a yarn that would work with just 1 ball which is Louisa Harding, Amitola which is quite an unusual yarn. It's sold as a DK but it has 250m/50g which is an immense amount of yardage for a DK. It's a single ply yarn with long stripes. M...

I seem to have been really busy this last week or two but not a lot to show for it. I've been sucked into the enthusiasm of the 2012 Woolly Wormhead KAL . I really enjoyed the Orchid Thief KAL. I've been very good recently and there has been an embargo on stash acquisition, which accidently came to an end yesterday when I bought this: I've a feeling one ball won't be enough as I've got rather a large head. There is 250m on the ball so I'm crossing fingers. There's plenty of knitting going on but nothing finished. Here's a sneak peak of my Rams and Yowes blanket: Hopefully it'll be finished shortly but I had a minor disaster with it last night. I'd sewn the border down to the inside and blindly did the whole thing without checking the tension of the sewing. When I'd finished I did my usual thing of pulling it into shape and proceeded to snap all the sewing that I'd done. I'd done it way too taut so I'm patching it back up at a much...