It's official, Ryan Gosling loves knitting.

So, in a recent interview (click here), Mr Gosling admitted that "If I had to design my perfect day, that [knitting] would be it."   *SWOON*

Purple Snood

©TheYarningDarling 2012

Another knitted Christmas gift!

My sister-in-law loves scarves.  She also loves purple.  So, it made sense to combine the two to make her a scarf!  I decided to make her a snood, or infinity scarf, with cables.  I wanted to break them up with a rib, but wanted to do something a bit different, so I flicked through my book of stitiches and found the brioche rib.  Seemed easy enough and I liked that it added a bit of thickness so that the scarf would be all snug and warm.

I started it in November on the plane to see my boy and originally made the edges in a seed stitch.

©TheYarningDarling 2012

This all started out fine, but for some reason, the brioche rib unravelled on the plane, luckily I managed to save it.  Whilst in LA, it happened again, but this time it was HUGE!  Silly me didn't take any tools with me, not even a crochet hook!  I had to improvise and with a safety pin I patched the area up; it didn't look great but it did the job and looked alright from the right side.

©TheYarningDarling 2012

Three balls of yarn in and one to go, it happened again!! ARRGGGHHH! I'm a bit of a perfectionist and having three fairly big mistakes annoyed me.  Like, seriously annoyed me.  The only solution was to start all over again.  It's funny how satisfying it can be to unwind 20+ hours of work :/

©TheYarningDarling 2012

Thankfully, it all went well the second time round - albeit a few minor mistakes!  And my sister-in-law loved it :)

For those who want to know, I used the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran yarn on 5mm needles.

Vintage-style Tea Cosy

©TheYarningDarling 2013

So this was tea cosy number two - made for my boyfriend's sister as her Christmas present.  Well, I'd actually bought her a lovely Cath Kidston teapot and made the tea cosy to match it :)

I used exactly the same pattern as the one made for my 'twin' in a previous post.  For this one, I replaced the pompom on top with a rose.  Now, I'd love to write down some kind of pattern, but I'm afraid I made it up on the spot and didn't write down a pattern :(  All I can say is that it's a stockinette stitch so that it did that curly thing!  Oh, and the leaves were crocheted.

I was pretty sad when I had to give it away, I loved it so much!  But I'm a coffee drinker so if I had a 6 cup teapot it would just sit and gather dust!