Swaps are such fun

I'm getting quite addicted to this swapping lark. They are great fun when it all works out properly.

I'm in a group on Ravelry.com ( a site for knitters and crocheters) We decided to make and send a whole scarf to another member picked at random for us from our group - that way we would all receive one each but not necessarily from the person we sent to - make sense? good.

Once I was given the name of the person I would be making for, I started to look at her profiles and blogs to see what she liked. She had lots of black accessories but wanted to put some colour into her life this year. So I chose this lovely Chunky yarn from James C Brett. It is so soft to the touch and great to work with. She received it a few days ago and yeay, she liked it. here's what she said about it,

"I have the most perfect scarf, its long long long and soft and squashy and gorgeous. Its definitely not black but lovely shades of pink and purple and covered from end to end in wonderful cabled Celtic knots which my swap partner realised I had a thing about from checking out the blogs - oops - forgot to add, my lovely partner was EddyG

Isn't that wonderful. I feel fuzzy all over to know I got it right. Actually, as I was working on it, I kinda fell in love with it and wanted to keep it - so I was going to make one like this for myself.

But now I think that all my other scarves can go to the back of the wardrobe as I received, from the swap (and yes a different person) this amazing scarf...

It's in one of my most favorite colours in the world; Navy blue and is knitted to look like a piece of Swiss Cheese - how fabulous is that? It's also over six foot long. You all know how I love anything unusual.

My wonderful partner even sent me some extra yarn so I could make a matching hat if I want to. It's made from lambswool so very soft and warm. And some lovely extras that I wasn't expecting; A postcard for my collection, french chocolate, red fruits tea, Yum.

I love it when a plan comes together.

"Ugly hat"

My daughter has been hounding me to death about getting her one of those peruvian style hats that they sell in gap and places like that. I don't even like these hats; they look ugly to me with their big earflaps and dangly ties (that the local kids don't even tie - drives me nuts - I wanna go tie it for them!!!)

So eventually I gave in, partially because I'd got a new yarn in and wanted to see how it knitted up. It is called Rainbow Multi by"Creative Yarns uk"

It took much botching to ensure that the two earflaps looked the same, using this self-patterning yarn. But after that it didn't much matter what the yarn did.

I even had enough yarn left at the end to make a short scarf too. This was only a 100 gram ball so quite a big surprise to me.

Well, my daughter likes her hat - and even I think it didn't turn out TOO ugly. Quite proud of it in fact.

A free knitting pattern for you

I'm not counting this in the challenge as I made it last year...

I used to have a hat-scarf (hooded scarf) like this when I was a kid (showing my age now).

So I made one last Autumn for my daughter Rhiannon to wear to school. The only problem was that I ended up having to make about 8 of them for all her friends in different colours.

I've been searching the web for a pattern like this but the only ones I can find are for those who can use the dreaded double pointed needles! Ooh scary.

So just for those of us who are only really comfortable with two needles and not four I've written out the pattern just for you.

You can get the pattern free here http://www.scribd.com/doc/9684141/Rhiannons-Hat-Scarf