Happy New Year!

So I am finally getting around to writing Happy New Year. Well, it is only January 4th, and I have been busy. Had a great time with best friend Martine and various members of her family. We had a lovely Italian feast and a few drinks, and of course, Jools' Hootenany on the telly. In the background mostly because we have a new CD player, one that actually works, so can play loads of music. :-)

Things I have been making include fingerless gloves. When S turned 18 there was a friend of hers here who had a nice pair and I thought I could copy the pattern. Well I have made some different ones. Haven't got a photo of the first pair, which looked very nice.
Here are the ones made for C according to his wishes. It is my first attempt at colourwork and I used a pattern by Zortified on Ravelry.







Here is a hat and scarf I crocheted for myself before Christmas. Bigga wool and crochet means it took me about 2 hours in total, making it up as I went along, and that includes making the hat too small to fit around my head, and redoing it. It is lovely and soft and warm, so I have been enjoying the cold weather. :-) The only problem is that since I cut my hair short, when I take it off I have a rather interesting hair do that doesn't look nearly as good on me as it does on Laurie Anderson.




Another lovely soft warm thing I made is this neckwarmer.



I still think of it as a snood, but they appear to be called all sorts of things, snood, cowl, neckwarmer, collar, etc., so I will just go for functionality and call it a neckwarmer. And it does keep my neck warm. I had this Sirdar yarn lying around, having bought it from ebay ages ago to make something for R. She does have a hat made from it, (and so does S but she never wears it cuz it is too big) and we may get around to a pair of legwarmers soon, and some wrist warmers.


In the mean time, I used some of it to make this for me.



I just cast on 100 stitches, worked in stocking stitch for a few rounds, decreased by 5 stitches in 4 rounds as I went up, to end up with 80 stitches. I cast off with a crochet hook, nice and loose, then crocheted a row of cord stitch at the top. I then added yarn to the bottom and crocheted a row of double stitch and a picot edge, just so it would be easy to tell the top from the bottom. I dampened it and lay it out overnight, but the bottom still curls a bit. I don't really mind. It is warm and soft which is the important thing.

Also, best friend M got me 5 hanks of undyed wool yarn and some dyes to dye it with! What fun!!! I have done one of them this morning, and this is what it looks like.


I don't know much about dying, but this was quite easy, and seems to be good fibre reactive dye, although I did use a lot of it. I am trying to decide if I want to do socks or legwarmers, or maybe wristwarmers with this bit. I will have to see if anybody else in the family wants something, but I like these colours, so it will probably be for me!

I think that is all for now. Back to finishing off a bday present for a friend. Oh yeah, and feeding the children....

Peace
Julie