I made a knitting resolution, and I’m still working on it.

The Yarn

7 x 100 gramme balls of Patons Jet – 3 in dark green and 4 in light green.

It’s a heavy aran weight yarn, a wool and alpaca blend, and I loved knitting with it and I loved  the jumper I made. But it pilled more than any other yarn I’ve ever used. So accessories that wouldn’t get too much wear and tear were the order of the day.

The idea

A hat and a long scarf.

I’d knit the hat first, and then I could go on with the scarf until the yarn ran out.

The patterns

I knew the hat I wanted straight away – this one.

I’d had my eye on it for a while, and I realised that if I made the lighter blue the dominant colour I would even up the amounts of the two shades for the scarf.

The hat I made is lovely, and it’s been my hat of choice ever since it came off the needles, but I was disappointed in the pattern. It wasn’t at all clear, and I was glad that I was familiar with hat construction – I changed the cable a little and I gave up trying to make sense of the instructions for the crown shaping and did my own thing.

Here’s my resident hat model:

I’m afraid that once she’d had her supper and evening walk she wasn’t much interested in smiling for the camera. And I’m pleased to say that the slouch/drape thing works much better on a human head.

I so to the scarf.

I had a scarf using the double knitting technique, but I didn’t enjoy it and the pattern wasn’t as effective as it should have been – it needed shades with more of a contrast. And so I set about looking for a pattern for a stripey scarf.

There are lots out there, but I settled on this free pattern with a chevron design.

I just changed the increases – from KF&B to M1R and M1L  – because I thought it looked better. And I knitted and knitted and knitted until the scarf was more than six foot long and all of the yarn was gone. It was easy, mindless knitting.

It’s rolled up for the moment, waiting for a cold day – the alpaca makes it wonderfully cosy.

Next

My next  knitting resolution project will be to turn two balls of purple yarn – leftovers from a jumper into another hat. And after that I have a shawl pattern in mind for some yarn my mother bought for a bolero that she gave up on ….