Warming up from the Winter

Beanie hat and handwarmers in blue and white yarn

I had tried knitting a few years ago when I first picked up crochet and never fell in love with it. Crochet was a much more tactile and rewarding experience for me. Its definitely not the wealth a cute amigurummi patterns offered by crochet that swayed me...no definitely not.

However someone at work set up a knitting group last November which ignited a passion for the craft. The group was intended to knit scarfs to donate to St Mungo's (a homelessness charity) and I think we ended up donating at least 30 to them shortly after Christmas!

Since handing my scarf in I've been looking for ways to start usung up my stash of yarn that isn't all that suitable for amigurummi. Knitting provides a perfect space for that and so I embarked on knitting a pair of handwarmers with a lovely ball of yarn that Wool and the Gang no longer sell. The hope was to get them done in time for Christmas as a gift for my partner.

The handwarners were just a simple square starting with some ribbing for the rest and moving into garter stitch with a line 4 wide of stockinette stich going through the middle. Then sewn up the side with space for a thumb hole. A pretty simple project and I managed to get it done in time for Christmas (just) which was perfect.

However, the two handwarmers didn't use up all of the yarn. So my thoughts turned to making it into a complete set, settling on making a simple hat. That was a bit more effort than I thought it would be. Mostly due to the absolute nightmare scenario of reaching the end of my yarn mid project! I had a bit of brainstorm of what to do and decided that I could potentially find some other similar yarn to supplement the hat.

Rummaging around the stash, I found some cream yarn of the same type that I had lying around from another abandoned project and thought it would be perfect for the rim of the beanie, so I unknitted the entire hat and started all over again. I casted on with the cream yarn and completed a 2x2 rib stitch for the rim then shifted into the blue variegated stockinette stitch for the rest of the hat. I completed the hat with a mostly cream bobble but I put through the remainder of the blue yarn to use it up and it gives a fantastic streak of blues through the cream.

Overall I'm very happy with the hat. While it was disheartening to start again after so much progress it certainly has led to a much better end result. The complete set with the hand warmers was a lot of fun and has the added bonus of probably being the first project in a very long time that has left me with less yarn in my stash than I started with. The best bit, of course, was gifting these to my partner. Safe to say I think they're pretty happy with them!