levi's pixie hat

This pattern is ingenious. You basically knit a square, and it miraculously folds into a cute little pointed pixie hat! I used Arucania Ranco Multy yarn in color 308, and size 3 needles. I didn't follow the directions for the ties on the sides as written in the pattern, and instead just picked up 7 stitches on each side and did K1P1 ribbing for the ties. I learned about this great hat from soulemama - I adore her version of it and think it is so cute that it is too big for her baby. Mine is a little more form-fitting, but still cute! In the picture below, you can see the sides of the hat - the way it is knit forms a neat triangle pattern.

The hat is really great and stretchy, so it will fit Levi for a long time - at least the rest of the winter, which is what I was hoping for. He has already grown out of his first handknit wool hat, and I needed something for his little head now that we're starting to take more walks!

a little squirrely

I think I've gone a bit nuts. It all started with the squirrel dish towels on purl bee, which I immediately fell in love with. I hesitated on buying the supplies though, because I didn't want to spend the money. Well, you know how you always want what you can't have? Well, a few days after purl bee posted those dish towels, the squirrel tape in brown was completely gone. And it is discontinued, and from Japan, so there was no getting more. Once that happened, I immediately jumped on the white and red squirrel tape, and then started looking for some fabric to go with it.

In about a week's time, I had accumulated quite the collection of fabric for these towels. I did buy some of the awesome Nani Iro Double Gauze that purl bee recommended for the towels (bottom fabric in the picture above), and I bought some of this white cotton waffle fabric from a little goodness on etsy (top fabric). I figured these two fabrics would look great with the white squirrel tape, but I still needed something for the red squirrels. In the back of my mind I was thinking about a flax-colored waffle weave fabric, preferably with some linen content. I looked everywhere for something like that, and finally found this fabric on etsy. I bought the last half-yard and was so happy when it arrived because it was exactly what I had in mind.

I'm really happy with how the towels came out. I had to use a walking foot to sew the hems because the folded fabric was so thick. The two white fabrics were also both very difficult to work with. The Nani Iro fabric was just so gauzy and drapey that getting it cut into perfect rectangles was a pain. The cotton waffle weave was so squishy that it compressed when being sewn and it was hard to sew the tape on straight.

I'm thinking that these towels are way too nice to use for drying dishes, and I think I will hang them in a bathroom as hand towels. The problem is that I've gone a little squirrel crazy and am plotting all the fun things I could do to coordinate with these towels. I definitely think I want to make a bowl of needle felted acorns like these, or maybe I need a little soap dish full of acorn shaped soaps? I've gone so nutty that I'm even thinking of taking up paper cutting so I could frame this awesome squirrel valentine and add it to the squirrel themed bathroom set!

lots of fingerless gloves

I went a little crazy and knit two more pairs of the purl bee fingerless gloves. I really loved the ones that I made for my friend Rachel for Christmas, and wanted to make red ones for myself. My sister left a comment on my blog post implying that she would like a pair as well...so I made a third pair. By the time I finished three pairs of these gloves, I decided that I never ever want to knit this pattern again. So this is it!

I used Blue Sky Alpacas Sport weight alpaca for both the trim and glove body. The trim on both is color "natural dark brown," my gloves are color "red" and my sister's are "eggplant." The glove pattern was originally written for a luxurious cashmere yarn, which was out of my price range. I found the sport weight alpaca to be a decent substitute - it was maybe a little less lofty than would be ideal, but the gauge worked fine and the gloves turned out great.