18 November 2014

THE WORLD'S CUTEST, STASH BUSTING BEANIE HAT!

Well, winter has arrived with a bang and we're all huddling down around cosy fires and hoping not to have to brave the icy blasts outside.

Bearing this in mind, my trusty friend of long standing, Aunty Sue got out her knitting needles and designed this fabulously cute beanie to keep us all snug and warm *bless*




It's fun to knit and fulfills one of our most pressing requirements - it's a stash buster!
Both Sue and I are avid knitters and both have an embarrassment of wool. There's no other way to describe it.  No ball of wool can get past us and we are very reluctant to part with even the meanest bit of leftover yarn in case it should come in handy at a later date.

Well that day has arrived!



The hat is super easy to knit, comes in 4 sizes from newborn (Occy size as illustrated - Beth snaffled that one right away) to adult and takes approximately 50gms of double knitting or worsted weight yarn for the main body of the hat and oddments for the ridges and 'worms'.  It's knitted on size 3.25 and 4mm needles, using a pair of double ended size 4mm needles for the i-cord tassel.

We are selling the pattern as an instant download in my Etsy shop for £2-50, so if you want to have a go and reduce your 'embarrassment' click on the link below.


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Enjoy!

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It would be much appreciated :0)

17 November 2014

LIFE AND TIMES OF A KNITAHOLIC




With the weather getting nippy, knitting is becoming more and more appealing - not that I need any encouragement.  I've been avidly knitting both with my two daughters and my best friend Aunty Sue for the past forty years, and my long suffering hubby has calmly put up with all sorts of knitting related panics.

If it weren't for him my much loved, over used, but slightly cranky knitting machine (which we all use for boring bits of our jumpers i.e rib) would have been on the lawn many a time - patience isn't my strong suit. He fixes it, maintains it, and talks to it nicely so it will work for us.

He also puts up with my huge 'embarrassment' of wool, which has a tendency to pop out, fall from or explode from any place in our house that I have managed to store it.

I once decided to put my latest overflow into a vacuum storage bag and conceal it under the bed.  Now for those of you who have never used these bags - beware! they have a tendency to leak, and when mine did Hubby was heard to wonder why our bed seemed to be a little wobbly.
When I looked, my wool had exploded out of the bag and was inflating and ever so gently lifting the bed on one side.

Who would have thought wool could be so strong and getting the wool back out from under the bed was another story all together - it fights back!

So now I try to stay away from temptation - is there a knitters anonymous?  There ought to be for us poor souls who can't help ourselves, when we get within sniffing distance of  a ball of yarn!

I once went to a shop where they were having the most amazing, and oh so tempting wool sale, and when the assistant asked if she could help, I told her, no, because if I bought any more wool, my husband would divorce me.  She must have suffered from the same addiction as me as her instant and very understanding reply was "Oh, you will miss him!"

Hopefully, it will never come to that as,being such a very tall super hero, my sweaters are the only ones that fit him.  Cunning eh!