Hat week has been continuing for me this week!  After my lovely Brioche hat that I was so proud of last week I still had a fair amount of the lovely Rico Bonbon wool I had used left over.  Not enough for a whole new hat but it got me thinking... I picked a ball of Rico Wild Wild Wool  in Black and cast on for a simple hat with a stripe from the multicoloured Bonbon.

This hat left me with still a fair bit of the Bonbon and most of the ball of black Wild Wild Wool.  So, another hat was cast on, this time I thought narrow stripes would be strikig with the colours of the Bonbon.  Hat 2 was born - only downside was a lot of ends to sew in!

Unbelievably, I was still left with enough black to complete another hat, but had very little Bonbon left - until I remembered the left overs from my legwarmers I knitted last year in a particularily cold spell.  Hat 3 is bridging the gap between  Hat 1 and Hat2, wide stripes using all the leftovers. 

So there we have it, 2 balls of super chunky wool, some leftovers and a few hour's work, and we now have 4 new hats available to buy in the shop!

Jen
~x~

The theme this week has definitely been hats!  The rico pompom delivery arrived and I got straight to work making a super chunky hat to display.  I've been admiring brioche knitting for its cool looking rib and people telling me how squishy it is.  Luckily we have a book by Rico called SystemHATic that has patterns for each yarn weight in a few styles (crochet, stocking stitch, garter, cable and brioche)  with the help of You Tube, off I went!  I'm really proud of that hat, and think it looks amazing with the Faux Fur pompom!  I'm now doing another hat, this time plain stocking stItch with the leftover wool.  Wonder what pompom will look best!  We have 7 colours in all...

As well as these and the teal I used for the hat, there is  black and a lovely faun colour.  They're easy to attach and so soft!

We also have kits to make lovely children's animal hats.  theres a teddy or rabbit in fluffy wool, or crochet kit where you only have to crochet the hat itself - all the extras to transform it into a monkey, owl or penguin are already crocheted for you!

 

The rabbit kit is £9.99 and the animal hat kits (in owl, penguin or monkey and different colour combinations) comes in at £7.20.  Not bad at all for a hat, especially when all the parts are sorted for you!

Jen
~x~

Brr!  The weather has certainly turned cold this week! I have been wearing as many handknits as I can find, matching or  not, to combat the cold, and so far I have to say its working.  Between the handknits and the trusty shop radiator it's been quite snug!  The Christmas fayre was very fun and rather busy!  All the Tinsel hedgehogs and robins have gone to their new homes, there are still a couple of penguins in the shop waiting for rehoming for £3.00!

 This new to us yarn has come in the last few weeks from the Ella Rae brand.  Its called Cozy Soft Chunky and is definitely cozy and soft!  It's a blend of 75% acrylic and 25% wool and as its machine washable is perfect for chunky baby knits! Suggested needles are 6 or 6.5mm which gives a stitch gauge of 14 stitches over 4inches.  In stock we have 3 multi colourways with the plain colours to match, above is the blue mix with the coordinatimg blue, green and  cream.  There is also a pink mix as well as a mix of greens and orange which looks very Spring like. 

Soon to come are more of these lovely pompoms, in an array of colours.  They would be the perfect flourish on top of a super chunky hat knit with Rico Super Super super chunky wool.  Very on trend at the moment and in all the shops at the moment (much more expensive than the wool to make your own!)

That's all for now, the wool beckons!

Jen
~x~