Winter small items

This is the second year when I'm knitting from my stash (not exclusively though!) with the Ravelry Stash knit down group, in particular the Personal Small Items "club". The idea is simply to (before the year) starts pack one small project per month -yarn from stash plus pattern- and work these projects month by month.

The idea is that by packing the yarn and patterns beforehand you quite quickly forget what you packed and are happily surprised with what lovely yarn and a nice pattern you get to reveal from its bag monthly! Well, that's what happens me most of the time. These here are the two fun projects I've made this year.

The January small item is the Reading in bed shrug (pdf link) by Pam Allen. I knit it with some sport (or maybe DK?) weight alpaca yarn on 5mm needles. Now I love my Addi circulars, but they certainly weren't suitable for lace knitting with slippery alpaca yarn! I really had trouble trying to keep the stitches on the needles and getting the needle tip into the lace stitches at times. But I did it! The pattern itself is just a short scarf sewn at the ends to form sleeves, and the lace wasn't difficult either, just the cooperation with the neeedles. Plus, I had 100 grams of the yarn, I think I used 35!

My darling husband Nick (check out his new site by the way!) is organising a big event here in Essen and is not available to take photos of me wearing my knits, so please forgive me for the mirror picture!

Now the February small items I could photograph myself too. They are egg cozies, would you believe! I took inspiration from the Four egg-cozy hats from the book 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders, but all in all I knit egg hats from my head. I made them somewhat smaller, but still so that they will cover the whole egg thus keeping it warm. I used some vintage Irish wool kool-aid dyed by me and 3,5mm dpns to get a tight gauge. The four hats took somewhat less than 50 grams. Fun little projects!