Knitting for warmth

Thought I might manage a quick post before bed! I just found the photos I took of my last project. Last year I made the lofty mittens on the Straw.com web site. Well they were green and had cables if you will excuse the predictability of my project! They turned out pretty well - they are big enough to fit magic gloves under to keep my hands warm, although my fingers still go numb - it's a good job I don't live anywhere that's actually cold.

Anyway, I needed a matching hat and scarf. I knit the hat on the circular needle I used for the gloves. I used the same cable pattern as the mittens and worked out the number of repeats to get the size of my head. I think my tension was a bit tight though - no surprise there - so it is quite snug now it is finished. Here is the beginning of the hat...

It finished now. I do find that it doesn't keep my ears warm though. It is only single thickness round the band so the wind blows through. Hence I have hardly worn it. I think I will make an extra band to go inside so that it keeps the breeze out. And here is the start of my hat avec mittens. Ta dah!

I seem not to have taken pictures of the scarf. That could be the dark winter days we had around that time. Not good for photos. I had great fun trying to get the scarf right. I think I unpicked the last shaping of the hat three times before I got it to go right. On the other hand I think I knit about a foot of scarf three or four times and a whole ball of yarn once and frogged it before I got the needle size and right number of stitches to make the scarf narrow/wide enough and soft enough to wear. Good job I like knitting cables.

In case you were wondering the blue fluffy thing was my sister's Christmas present. Hideous eyelash yarn - hideous to knit that is. Well actually it is not hideous to knit, more hideous if you make a mistake or drop a stitch as you can't see the stitches to sort it out. I followed the pattern to the letter. One size fits all it said. One size that is very small! I got there in the end but I don't have pictures as it wasn't very photogenic. It looks like a blob. I tried to lay it out but it was having none of it. It made a nice background though.....