Four Hats to Melt the Ice

The bag of yarn that my coworker gave me (that I made my two ponchos from) also had six balls of a different red yarn that I wasn't sure what to do with, but then I heard about the (at this point) semi-viral Melt the ICE hat from my friend Becky. The story of these hats is as follows: This design of red hat was originally worn in 1940s Norway as a sign of protest against the Nazi occupation, to the point of red hats being banned by the regime. Now people went and 'ressurected' the pattern as a protest against modern, nazi-like behaviour (hence the title). I loved the idea, and while we do not have ICE in Germany, we got plenty of wannabe nazis of our own, so it can never hurt to have a couple of anti-nazi hats at hand!

Turns out this yarn was perfect for the pattern, and I managed to make four hats in total before I ran out: One for me, one for Felix, one for my mum and one for my coworker as a thank you for gifting me with all this yarn!

 It feels nice to have used up the whole bag of yarn and made some room in my crafting corner, but there is plenty of yarn still to use, so I'll better get those needles a-clicking!

A birthday month start

 So far this year, I did a pretty good job working through my WIPs, but around my birthday this month, I suddenly felt the urge for a new start, and I think I deserved it! My choice was Cloudfactory's Magical Creature Calendar, a SAL from 2015, and I think I bought the chart about ten years ago. The fabric came from when I had a Fabric of the Month subscription with Jodyri, which was about 8 years ago I believe, and I bought some pretty overdyed floss for the border from Colourfever at Stitch Basel three years ago - so you see, this start has been a long time in the making!

I actually started a couple days before my birthday, working on the border, outlining the first four of the months, and then started  and finished - March. 

 This beautiful Phoenix is one of my favourite panels on the design and was an absolute treat to stitch, I adore him! Now the plan is to stitch one panel every month and finish in February next year, but if the mood strikes, I might put in some extra work in between to finish sooner than that, we shall see. At any rate, you should see this again soon, once I finish the April panel!

A sweater for next winter

 My big finish for March is a sweater that has been a long time in the...planning? I originally fell in love with this pattern and bought the yarn about ten years ago, but chickened out of actually casting it on back then. Now, after having a lot more knitting experience, I finally bit the bullet about a year ago and made a start on it. And I have to say, it's a good thing I waited. This pattern - NOT beginner friendly! Some knitting patterns just assume you know how to knit a sweater and that it's enough to give you some general pointers, and ten years ago, this would have been way out of my league. Now I was able to finish it with minimal confusion, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out!

 

The pattern was from a booklet called the "Wolke Hegenbarth Collection" that came free with the yarn many years ago. I'm not sure whether it's still available - the yarn isn't - but as I said, as happy as I am with the result, I can't really recommend it!

This resulting sweater is very comfy and cozy, but also pretty warm - I was hoping to not have any reason to wear it before next winter, but the last couple days have been so cold, I just might! 

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

 I don't know why, as I don't do a lot of seasonal crafting and never celebrated Saint Patrick's Day, but last weekend this little Leprechaun Hat called to me, so I sat down and made it.

 It was a pretty quick and easy craft and I'm very happy with how it turned out, although my hands hurt when I was done - I used a smaller hook than normally so the hat would be nice and stiff and hold shape well. 

Sometimes it's nice to just make something on a whim!

Happy Birthday, Grandma!

 We have been celebrating my grandma's 94th birthday this weekend! That is an impressive age and we are all so happy to have her with us in as good health as she is - especially since last year around this time, she wasn't doing toohot. So we celebrated with good food and lots of cake and even more love. Happy birthday, grandma!

Of course me showing my love usually involves some crafting, and so I made her a new pair of wristwarmers out of the yarn left over from my Tsunami socks last year. Here they are (modeled on my own hands) shortly before I gave them to her:

As usual, this is my favourite "Jacoby" pattern by Berocco yarns. Takes just about 30g of sock yarn to make and fits almost every hand, I highly recommend!

Bellatrix - 70 Hours

 This month I picked up Bellatrix by Bella Filipina - in my green conversion as charted by my friend Ashley - for a stitching quest, and I was working towards 70 hours, I realized I never even showed you the 60 hour update! I think I pretty much fell off the blogging weagon at the time that happened. So, for you this will be a big jump of almost 10% - I added the book and candles on Bellas left, made a start on the border, and put a whole lot of stitches into her dress. Still plenty of green to go, though!

 This is 39.9% done, so I think I should get a move on with the background. Next time I pick her up, unless a quest prompts me otherwise, I want to work up the left and get started on the greenery along the upper border. She might be a finish this year if I really focused on her, but I think I got other plans, so just aiming for some good progress for now.

SAGA - 50 Hours

 After working on this for quite a bit back in January, I picked SAGA up again this month and finished the next ten hours, bringing the total up to 50 hours and 7.62%! 

I worked my way down the third arch from the top, and look who showed up - a wise owl and a fun little octopus! 

 That's what's great about this pattern, so many fun little details,and as I slowly work my way through them, I get to show it all to you! Although I don't always know what to say in these little updates, haha.