made a jake beanie

for a special order; really pleased with how it turned out:

   

Now for Finn….(which should be a lot easier, minus teeth!)

Happy Friday to you all, on this lovely cool autumn day in Cape Town x

 

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hot fuzz

I was asked to make a hot water bottle cover in black furry yarn, so you have to admit that ‘hot fuzz’ is appropriate here.

It doesn’t photograph well, but the top is a separate little crocheted dome with elastic round the edge which fits nicely over the sticky-out spout bit. I’m not sure how much heat it’s going to let through but it does look lovely. And feels nice – like a big furry and very squashed cat.

I enjoyed the knitting, it’s a nice change from crochet every once in a while (even though that bloody furry fuzzy stuff isn’t my first choice of yarn). So I kept my needles out (or the knitty sticks, as Rachel would say) and cast on for a garter stitch beanie:  rikke hat

I’m using the new Print colours in Elle Pure Gold DK from Saprotex, there are 6 shades and each has lovely flecky bits of various muted shades offset against a solid base colour. The rikke hat is ‘la Fonda’, it’s my favourite so far. I’ve crocheted some hats with three of the other colours:

It works up like a dream. And chop-chop. You know how I love chop-chop.

52 hours of train

So, Karen and I did the train thing to Johannesburg and back a couple of weeks ago. It’s 26 hours one way (from Cape Town, remember!) People said, “Are you insane? Why don’t you just hop on a plane?”, but we knew better.  We knew better because we’d made the same trip about 15 years ago, when we had small children and husbands and unpleasant jobs. That trip gave us uninterrupted peace and quiet, and ever since our code phrase for “my children are driving me mad” or “I never want to lay eyes on my husband again” or “what a foul day at work” or “the next person who asks me what’s for supper will get punched in the face”, has been “I wish I was on that _______ train….”

So we did it again.

It was fabulous. Even better than the first time.

Karen packed a massive hamper full of good food and coffee, enough to feed the entire train. We had books, music, phones, ipads, and crochet, but mainly we relaxed. Karen spent most of her time relaxing, actually, relaxing and looking out the window and resting and sleeping and dozing and reading and napping. And a small amount of crochet.

After my first big rest, I was happy to get some serious work done. We can’t all have a salaried job, after all!

I made nine hats. I cheated a bit because I didn’t use any patterns, so they went pretty quickly. The one with the five horns is my favourite.

I need to do a proper stock-take tomorrow, my market bags have got all mixed up and I don’t know how many hats are in each one. It could go one of two ways — bad, or very bad.

Bob’s Burgers ?

Anyone heard of Bob’s Burgers? Me neither, until I met a young woman who loves the program and asked me to make her a hat like the pink one below:

Well, I tried. But I think this one has to go down as a fail. The ears are too close together, they aren’t pointy enough, and THEY DON’T STAND UP.  I’ve used a medium-weight interfacing in them plus a bit of plastic-coated wire, so they certainly won’t lose their shape – just their erectness. (Is that a word?)

I handstitched them to the top, to try and give a bit of three-dimensional shape to the base, if you know what I mean. But floppy still prevails. Plus, Cape Town is an extraordinarily windy city – I’m worried those ears might whack down and give the wearer two black eyes.

If you have any advice to share about sticky-up ears, please let me know.

pixie hats

A while back I made a pixie hat:

It came with me to a lot of markets but no-one liked it enough to buy it. Until last Saturday, when a woman came along, grabbed it, stuck on her sister’s head and said Right, this is yours. And could I please order one for my son?  I’ve just finished his:

        

Despite all the things I crochet from patterns, this is my favourite thing of all – to just make something up as I go along, changing colours and thicknesses, adding in a row of popcorns here and there, and doing some wiggly beady bits on the top to finish it off.  This way, nothing can ever turn out wrong !!!