Is it a sloth, or a bear?

 On Easter weekend, we visited a friend who's having a baby soon, so I took that as an opportunity to finally finish this baby hat I had started last year, to leave it with her as a gift for the little one. Back then a group of friends all started the Bearly Bonnet by Pure Stitches, and I took entirely too long to finish it for such a quick knit!

 Here it is, modeled by my friend Simon the sloth, whose head has just the right size to pull it off. Isn't he cute? I think he quite enjoyed having visible ears for once!

March WIPocalypse

 We were visiting family for a couple days over Easter, so now I am very behind on blogging and reading again - but that's okay, I'll get caught up in time for sure! For now, let me talk about March WIPocalypse.

March was one of the one-a-day challenge months for the year, so I was working on my oldest WIP, a blue printed table cloth. I managed to finish the 3rd side and made a little start on the fourth, so this is officially over 75% done now!

 I really want to finish it this year, so, as there is only one more challenge month, I will probably have to throw in a couple addition stitches here and there, but it would feel good to get this crossed off the list.

Speaking of the list - no real progress on the WIP list in March! I had one good finish (the comfy sweater), but also a new start (the Magical Creature Calendar), so the total count is still at 55! I'm hoping for some finishes in April though, so I am not worried so far.

Last but not least, the question of the month is Which of your current WIPs do you consider your most difficult piece to stitch? Honestly, none of my current WIPs are too challenging, but if I have to pick one it'll be the Jacquie SAL, because those dragonfly wings use quite some stump work and it's my first one doing it, so it takes a long time to do neatly. 

I got a couple more posts lined up and the week off work, so hopefully, I'll see you again soon! 

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!