Shame on me!

Last time I posted that I'd received an Innocent bottle hat kit for Age Concern as a freebie, but thought I'd use the wool for something else and send a cheque to Age Concern.  After seeing Amelia's last post though, I felt I'd been rather too grumpy and should get into the spirit of the thing.  I then discovered that each hat only takes about 10 minutes to make, but that the closing date was meant to be last Monday.  Some hasty knitting on Tuesday and Wednesday yielded a dozen bobbled covers, beautifully styled here by some young friends. I've never knowingly purchased or drunk an Innocent smoothie, so we had to use some eggs instead.

By the end I was getting quite proficient at making the tiny pompoms.

I've started a scarf as a Christmas present to my sister-in-law, using my 21st Century yarns DK from Alexandra Palace.  How can there be so many scarf patterns out there, and none that quite seem to fit the bill? In the end, I've taken inspiration from a scarf in the Boden catalogue, with help from this pattern of Pagebypage of Maui.  The writer sums it up perfectly: "Berry stitch is great for scarves.  Both sides are beautiful. The stitch can be found in Barbara Walker's "A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns," on page 221".  They are indeed beautiful, and the scarf lays flat too which is important to me.  I'd love to have taken it directly from Barbara Walker but I'm unlikely to be lucky enough to ever own these books and the local library service have mysteriously "lost" all their copies.

It's very pretty, but reminding me why I don't often knit scarves, due to getting bored after the first couple of feet!