Pattern: Arched Gusset Mittens and Classic Cuffed Hat both free patterns from Purl Soho.
Yarn: TFA Green Label in Natural and Seabreeze and elann.com Peruvian Pure Alpaca in Hyacinth.
Ravelry project pages here and here.
Hello friends! It's been a crazy month. We had planned to take it easy in January after a crazy fall, but that just didn't pan out. Work, life, kids have all been more demanding than ever this month and I gave myself permission to not blog as much as usual. I hope to be back to a more regular blogging schedule soon, but the truth is I just haven't felt inspired. I'm feeling slightly frazzled and more than a little burnt out. I have ideas swirling in my head, so many things that I want to work towards, but I can't seem to get past the ideas phase with most of it. This should be our last heavy week of work, and if the boys can shake off their colds by the weekend then we could be looking at a fresh start next week. Finally! In my head I'm working on a blog post about how to fight creative burnout, which is ironic since I'm not winning the battle against mine at the moment, but I'm remaining optimistic. And in the mean time I'm knitting super simple projects in pretty colours. Actually, now that I think of it, I think that's the key. Just keep your needles clicking and knit your worries away with the perfect hat and mitts set like so:
These patterns are both absolutely perfect, have the simplest and loveliest details and lend themselves so well to customization - like colour blocking or a little bit of stranded knitting. This set is going straight into the gift bin for the next time I need a cute hand knit gift. Made entirely from scraps (that purple yarn is years old, the very last of the leftovers from this sweater from 2008.) The mitts in particular are a really fun knit. I highly recommend. It's a unique construction that makes a really pretty mitten that fits well - they are too big for me, but I have tiny hands and purposely knit them to fit a regular human sized hand since they will eventually be gifted.
Grammy always had piles of hats and mitts stashed aside, ready to be gifted at any moment. As a kid my mom would go for a visit and come home with new mitts and hats for each of us. She would even occasionally shop from Grammy's stash of mitts when she needed a gift for a very special friend. Grammy's mitts were very often in kid sizes, which is brilliant since kids in mitts are awesome. I'm going to try and take over where Grammy left off and knit hats and mitts from my leftover yarn stash for the gift stash whenever I feel the need for a simple little pick-me-up project.