Hot Water Bottle Cozy

Something recently possessed me to want to make a series of hot water bottle cozies. A desire for comfort? Some kind of nostalgia? I'm not sure. But I went ahead and bought five hot water bottles and this is my first one. It is meant to be a present for someone, but I think it's safe to put it out here. I think I know both the people who are reading this blog at all and it's not meant for either of them.





The yarn is Manos del Uruguay kettle dyed wool color 101 and it only took one skein. I found this cable pattern in my new Vogue Stitionary Volume 2. It's called a "drunken cable." I've done drunken cables before, late at night, but they never looked as orderly as this one does.





I tried this one out last night and it is pretty nice to have, but the brand new hot water bottles have a kind of unpleasant odor. I am hoping they will finish offgassing before I have to give them as presents.

My First Scarf

I've never finished a scarf before. Generally, I think scarves are boring to knit. Too flat!

I've been meaning to try knitting with cut strips of fabric for a while now. A few years ago at la Superette, before I even started knitting, someone had made scarves out of old blue jeans and I thought that was interesting. More recently, Erik's sister Iris had been knitting a hat out of strips of cut fabric when she was visiting Boston.

I bought the grey fabric I used here a long time ago, intending to make myself a dress from it. The actual knitting went fairly quickly on the gigantic size US 50 needles. The long part was getting the right combination of materials. I've had that gold thread hanging around my knitting stash for years.

Here are a couple of pictures so that you can see the fabric close up.

A Couple of Hats

I got the yarn for this one at a shop in Vermont. It's nice and fuzzy.



I made this one for a friend who has a larger head than Vigo's, but I let Vigo wear it skiing.

Welcome to Earth Sweater Vest

I made this little sweater vest for my friend Ingunn, who has a new baby. It was my first sweater. I used a great book called The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns to make it. I love this book. It's just got five or so basic sweater structures and then tables laying out gauges and sizes. I love books that give you the basics so you can get into designing your own stuff instead of just following a pattern.



I drew a little card to go with the sweater, too.