Two Needles Versus One Needle

These last few months I have been spending more time with two needles rather than one. I have fallen in love with knitting again and alluded to this from time to time, but been a bit low on the blogging. You see, I don't think my knitting blogging is as interesting as my sewing blogging. Some disinterested person, male, definitely male, may have said in the past "don't show that bit of wool on those needles, show me something I can recognise."  Which kind of sums up photos of knitting on needles. Mind you  I suppose you could say the same for photos of fabric!

Anyhow, I started knitting again with the hitchhikers shawl knit a long I and two others, Ali from Creations of Crazy Dazy and  Lorraine who doesn't blog, did in the autumn. Blogged about here. I loved both the community knitting and the actual process, but mine seems a little skimpy compared to the others and I did have rather a lot of wool left.

Next up I knitted this hat and gloves for my daughter. I was on a girly weekend in Derry and bought a ball of tweed aran in a lovely little wool shop. I knitted gloves, and ran out of wool just before the end. Of course that was the last ball the shop had, which was I could only buy one. In hindsight the wool was still full price, usually reduced by that stage. I was able to buy two extra balls online, much cheaper, that old conundrum again.

With the extra wool I was able to knit a hat, the deep cuff hat from Purl Soho, a free pattern from the shop website. As we all have little heads, and the hat was one size fit all, I made it an inch or so shorter. Pom poms are in vogue so of course I made a pom pom which is fun.

Well, she loves the gloves and her hat, but the hat is still a little big with a big heavy pom pom on the top which wobbles about! The jury is still out as whether to remove the pom pom or not.

Next up was a request, a hat and gloves for the daughter's school friend. They met on the first day of senior school and have been friends ever since. In red aran this time. The hat is the same hat, still an inch smaller and no pom pom this time. The gloves are a free pattern by tin can knits on ravelry.

Feeling the love, I felt inspired to knit a whole hooded cardigan! In aran! Easy when you know how but daunting when you haven't done this for years. The pattern, supplied by a work friend was approved, the wool chosen online was approved (I couldn't get any non itchy aran in the right colour locally) and away we went. Actually a heads up here to the wool company, Love Knitting, the wool arrived very quickly and was a great price with the new customer discount. This time I learned my lesson and bought extra. The wool is an aran wool by Paintbox and I love it.

So far I have knitted the two fronts, and up to the armholes, nearly, on the back and no major hitches. Though there may be a first section of knitting set aside for a future hot water bottle cover if the wool holds out! So excuse the bit of wool hanging on the needles photo, hopefully I will have a proper photo to show you soon.

Helen x