Not socks

Contrary to popular belief, I have been making more than just socks this year (mainly socks, yes. But not ONLY socks). One of my best friends had a baby last month so there was a lot of teeny tiny knitting and crochet going on. First up was a love heart blanket with a matching hat, in the colours of my friend’s nursery.

Right now I’m working on a matching hat and mitten set with some self-striping yarn that my mum sent me. I’m using the Barley hat pattern from Tin Can Knits, but I’m really not sure about the sizing. The smallest size, labelled “baby size”, seems way too small, so I tried the next size up and the difference between them is ridiculous. I might have to see if I can fudge the pattern to land somewhere between the two.

Mum also sent me two crochet kits to make this hedgehog.

I struggled with this one. First of all the pattern is in UK terms, and yes I did get more than halfway through before realising this and had to frog it all. Grr. The yarn is quite stiff and hard to work with so that’s not fun. Plus I just don’t like the construction – there are gaps at the edge of the bobble stitches, I had to fudge the spacing of the bobbles on the head so they didn’t end up lopsided, and I just don’t think it looks as cute as it could.

Next up is the beginning of a jumper, using a ball of Melange that I got from Jinty & Baa, the yarn shop in Dunoon. The idea was to use the one ball to make a top for myself, but I was quite a bit smaller when I bought it so there’s a distinct possibility that it will end up as a cropped, short-sleeved jumper. I just stuck the sleeve stitches on waste yarn, so I can do a few body rounds and see how it’s fitting. I am prepared to frog the lot and start again if I can get away with a smaller size, but we’ll see what happens.

I also got a commission for some personalised robin baubles this month. Instead of taking the easy route and finding a pattern to follow, I decided to just make it up as I went along. Mistake. I also left it to the last minute, big mistake. I put everything together, sewed their little hats on…and realised that I absolutely hated them. They were nothing like the happy little robins I’d planned in my head, but I was already running 5 minutes late for choir rehearsal (where I was supposed to hand them over) so there was no chance for a re-do.

During the rehearsal I decided to give my robins a beak, as it couldn’t possibly make them look any worse. And you know what? They somehow changed everything. Suddenly I didn’t hate the robins. In fact they were pretty darn cute. It makes no sense to me, but thank goodness I took the ten minutes to add that finishing touch.

I mean they’re still not perfect; if I were to make them again I would give them smaller bodies, and do a ribbed brim to the hats rather than a rolled brim. But considering how disappointed I was with them before, I’m counting this as a solid win!

So there you go, I do still know how to make things other than socks 😀

Hannah

xXx

Advertisement