Small Warm Things

Oh my goodness, it has been freezing here! I know it's December now, but still! The weather forecast predicted a big snow on Thursday, which didn't appear :( I looked out of the window on Thursday morning expecting to be inundated with snow from the way the forecast was, and it was raining!!! I was very upset, I wanted to make a snowman! Still, at least with the rain, the temperature has gone up a little. It's now more like 0 degrees Celsius, rather than -4! My gas and electric bills are going to be so huge, the heating has been on all the time more or less.

It's been so cold that I had to make some small things to keep myself warm. Any excuse, eh? ;) I did want to make some more sweaters, but it's too cold. I want small things that are quickly finished and can be put on to keep me warm.

I made this scarf:



The pattern is from the CrochetMe book (amazon link) and is the Shades of Plaid (ravelry link) scarf by Julie Armstrong Holetz. It's my new favourite pattern ;) I've already made another, but I don't have pictures yet. It's great for stashbusting, and I love the tartan-y effect. Must be my Scottishness showing through!

The pattern calls for making a mesh then threading a crochet chain through it, but my chain wasn't big enough for my mesh holes, so I single crocheted (double in UK terms?) into the chain. That made it big enough, and also made it super super warm. I wore my other one out yesterday, and it definitely kept the chill away! I can see I'm going to make quite a few more of these. I keep looking at them and thinking of new colour combinations for it!

I also have become obsessed with cowls. I don't know why, two weeks ago I thought they were the silliest thing ever. I mean, why not just wear a scarf?

But then I made this



and have now decided that they are great. This one is the Darkside Cowl by Sarah Fama, and it's available as a free download on Ravelry.

I love this also. I love how it keeps my neck warm, and yet is not bulky at all. I'm getting a new jacket for Christmas (shhh, I'm not supposed to know, really!), and I keep thinking how great this will look with it.

There was a kind of convoluted process to getting to make this. I have this other yarn that I was trying to think of what to make with it, and saw another cowl pattern which I thought would be perfect, but the pattern got lost in the yarn. So I started looking through the patterns on Ravelry trying to find another one. I didn't find one for that yarn, so I've ended up having to design my own. But then I looked at my yarn on the shelf and saw this gold yarn. I remembered seeing the Darkside Cowl pattern and it just clicked that the two would go well together. It knit up really fast, about a day overall, and I'm very happy with it.

So now I'm designing a cowl for the other yarn that I originally intended to use, and when I was tidying my stash yesterday I came across another two yarns that would look nice as cowls. Some wider and floppier and some tight like this one. It's a bit scary, this sudden obsession, but I might as well go with it. Because of Christmas etc, the new cowl pattern probably won't be written up for a little while, but I'm planning to write it up and put it up for free. Eventually. ;)

Now I'm off to make more small warm things :)