Crafting Thursdays (I don't know the days of the week): Hats, hats and hats.

Just as well I made no promises about weekly updates: it's been a fortnight since the last post. Since then it's still been all about hats. After my last post, my bestie dropped over a massive bag of her yarnie odds and ends, so I've been having fun playing with her yarn too - though the massive reduction I'd imagined in my own stashed left-overs hasn't quite happened ;) It's all good...

Much of what you see there - the blues at the bottom, plus the pink, green and cream - are ball of Woolganics, a beautifully luxuriously organically produced Australian yarn. Heavenly to knit with, and super-warm, but it felts if you just look at it funny so it's awful to care for. I know some people love it for garments, but the one cardie I knitted for my daughter from it now fits her teddy-bear. Unintentionally.

So, it's perfect for hats, which assumedly won't be washed very often. I'm enjoying knitting it up, anyway.

Yesterday I caught up with my friend and gave her the hats: she liked them, and I hope her people do too. I'd done quite a few kids-sized beanies though, so I'm keeping on with knitting the adult sized ones as realistically they're going to fit more people.

So I've finished 16 beanies: top row - toddler sized, 2nd row - younger child, 3rd row - older child, bottom row - smaller adult and larger adult.

There was another on the needles that's not pictured - I should have had it out while we were chatting over lunch at the cafe but I didn't think of it - anyway, I finished it last night.

To make the stripes in this one a little more interesting, I used a random number generator (limited to 1-4) to tell me how wide the stripes should be. I think it's really effective, so I'm going to do that again. Also, it managed to give me one stripe of each width of each colour, so it REALLY appealed to my sense of order ;)

So while I'm still keen to use up this yarn and make many more beanies, I am also looking forward to knitting something else this week! I've signed up to knit in a Mystery Knit A-Long (MKAL) by the amazing lace designer, Kitman Figueroa. I really should wind my yarn, as the first clue was just released a few minutes ago.

This is how my yarn currently looks. It also needs beads (some 1720 of them!!), so I'll need to buy some more of the matching pale bluey-silvery ones I have.

An MKAL is an unknown pattern: you know before-hand what item you'll be knitting, and what your yarn requirements are, but you don't know what it'll look like. It can be kind of stressful not knowing what you're knitting, but as this is the third of her MKALs I've taken part in, I think I can trust that I will like what I make.

These are what I've made in the last two of her MKALs - I think you'll have to agree she's a talented lace designer!

(I had trouble photographing the second one - the light was just all wrong any time I tried. If you want to see my other photos, then click on the photo and it will take you to my project page on Ravelry).

I'll post pictures of my progress with the MKAL next week, but if you're participating in the MKAL and don't want to see them - don't look! I'll post a warning up top next time.

Happy crafting, and I'll chat to you next week.

Kx