Re-knitting...

I'm feeling a lot better today. Thank you for the get well wishes. Much appreciated. It's funny how families cope when a parent is not firing on all cylinders. Let's just say that needs a bit of work in this household. It's also amusing how dogs seem to know when you're under the weather. Harvey and Riley have stuck by me very closely this week and once or twice while I was sleeping they snuck up on the sofa so that when I woke I had two pairs of amber eyes looking right into mine.

I had some strange cravings this week. One was for avocado, which was easily satisfied by having avocado in salad, on oatcakes and so on. The other was for Barley Sugar sweets. Long forgotten sweets of my childhood, mainly eaten on long car journeys; it took M some considerable time to actually find them, about as long as it took to buy flu capsules, only five days too late!

With the flu capsules finally purchased, today I had a little bit more concentration and a little less need for sleep. I've been crocheting the odd granny square in random leftover DK but that got a little boring so I decided to tackle some knitting, or should I say re-knitting.

I love this Erika Knight pattern for a knitted slouchy beanie (detailed somewhere amongst my previous posts). I'm sure that if I'd been able to purchase the exact yarn it would have been perfect. As it is I've had mixed results with two alternative yarns. I knitted Ella's first in a lovely smokey grey using Sirdar Big Softie. It's a generous fit but not ridiculously so. She loves it. Next I knitted Jake's in some random superchunky black and it came out big enough to catch a shoal of fish in (big fish too). We had quite a giggle on his birthday when he tried it on. He has a largish head but obviously not that large! I quickly purchased the Big Softie in black and rustled him up another. Success.

Now back to the hat that is big enough for a fishing net... I tried to shrink it in the wash but alas no. Not successful. I unravelled it (with some difficulty) and this made a nice crinkly ball of black wool. I then completely guessed how many needle sizes smaller might make a hat my size... and went for 7mm instead of the recommended 10mm. I didn't faff around with tension swatches because it's a difficult thing to guage. The hat has such a generous band of ribbing that the hat needs to fit when the ribbing is stretched a bit, but not completely taut. Anyway, one afternoon, plenty of tea and a rubbish daytime tv film later... One perfectly fitting hat! I just love it when it goes right for a change!

(It has to be noted that my hat hasn't got quite the same amount of slouch as the kids' versions due to the drastic scaling down. This is no bad thing, after all I'm no teenager!)