Saturday, June 29, 2013

A wrist warmer...

Apologies for being missing from the blog for a while. Been quite disrupted in my life, what with a few events, so let's see how we go from now, yes?

Thanks for your patience and sticking around :)

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A few weeks ago, I saw this awesome looking baby blanket posted on one of my feeds. Now, I usually make my baby blankets in what I call the "granny square" pattern: basically 3tr,/3dc, ch, 3tr/3dc, ch etc. I like my baby blankets that way, but I do worry about little fingers getting caught. I do also figure that the weave will be close enough to keep bub warm, but open enough to drape in a hotter season. But this baby blanket was made with more a shell stitch, in a deep purple, and it looked amazing. So, I followed a link to the basic stitch that she'd used:


Blanket stitch! I'd never heard of it! So, I grabbed a ball of Schoppenwolfe sock yarn that I'd found pretty cheap (yes, Schoppenwolfe! I think it was because it was the last ball of the colour lot - I only saw one of this lovely cheery pink - and it was in the mid-year sale anyway) and had a bit of a go at this stitch:

(picture from CrochetSpot.com)

Isn't it nice looking?

Well, my first experiment went along quite well, and I suddenly thought I should actually *make* something instead of just trialing out the stitch.

So, I made up a hand warmer. It's been rather cold of a morning here in Melbourne-town (where I live now - part of the disruption!) with about a solid week of frosts (something I was used to up in the country, but which I thought I should have mostly left behind!), and I found I was sitting on the tram in my gloves, unable to pick up my tablet/phone and read a book! Darn it all! So, I thought I should make some fingerless gloves, or hand/wrist warmers. 


Ta da! Whaddya think! I didn't follow a pattern, and realised about 12 rows up that it was coming along nicely for my wrist, but gee my hand attaches to my wrist and it's a fair bit wider :D So I started increasing the pattern, which was a bit tricky since it's a fan/shell sort of pattern, but I got it going. 

Then I tried it on after I sewed it together, and realised that I should have really fastened the bottom of the warmer with a button since the starting row is RATHER SNUG! For a moment there I was thinking I'd be wearing the glove for a while since I couldn't get it off! And it's still pretty snug to get on, but it works. I added in a whole little thumb section too (my first "separate thumb" for a glove/warmer!!) and added a bit more to the main part of the hand as well. I edged the top parts in a dc/sc just to make the top snug around my thumb/hand. 

Now, just to make a matching one!