Christmas-ish.

Alright, I swore I wasn't going to do and Christmas knitting, and I was only sort of right. To clarify, I did not specifically knit anything for Christmas presents. What I did manage, was to sew up all the baby hats I'd knitted for my ninja nephew and get them ready to be gifted. Everything had been knitted over the summer, but then left at the 'nearly finished' stage. You know, that low point between the fun of knitting and the joy of seeing something finished - also known as sewing up. Luckily, the commuter trains were quieter than normal in the week running up to Christmas. Even more luckily, I work in London where nobody speaks to anybody else on the train,even if they're brandishing a darning needle and sewing up baby hats! Just to check that everything was safe to shove in the washing machine, I did just that on 23rd December, blocked the hats and left them overnight to dry, to wrap them before going to work on Christmas eve. 

The yarn is left over sock yarn, which I managed to intercept from knitting/Guiding friend K, as she was passing it on to knitting/ Guiding friend Goo. Neither of them minded. K got rid of yarn, Goo was given other bags of yarn to make pom-poms with her Brownies and I got sock yarn for a sock yarn blanket. 

Yes, a sock yarn blanket. 

It was only after reading a leaflet which came with one of the knitting magazines, possibly around the time of Princess Charlotte being born, that I realised my yarn had a higher calling. I still have some of the sock yarn left over, so if I do ever make a sock yarn blanket, I can look at it and remember the baby hats made for my nephew. 

The pattern was part of a layette set. The pattern was a fairly simple rib with a one stitch selvage, followed by stockingette stitch, until a set of descreases for the brim. I found it easier to ignore the selvage stitch and do a simple 2 x 2 rib, and then increase by one stitch when it got to the stockingette section - so that I had the right number of stitches for the decreases. All in all, a very simple pattern, which I would knit again. 

Also a really easy knit to take with me to Japan to do on the plane and shinkansen. The red, white and black one was knit in a park in Ueno on my first day in the country.  The black and white one was knit at the top of Tokyo Skytree.  The pink, grey and yellow one (Opal yarn) was knit on the train to the airport home. 

I did attempt a jacket as part of the layette, but I could not seem to get guage without using really small needles. My worry was that I'd knit a fabric so stiff that baby wouldn't be able to move in his/her clothing. There's less of an issue with knitting hats. Babies grow so quickly that the hat will fit *sometime*. As it was, they all ended up a slightly different size, so he's well kitted out for the winter.