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I started it in November on the plane to see my boy and originally made the edges in a seed stitch.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

Snuggly Snood

Project complete! Remember that post last week with the giant crochet hook and gorgeous yarn? Well I finally did something with it. And when I said it was gonna be simple, I really wasn't joking. This was for two reasons:
1. I needed a quick project.
2. I wanted the chunkiness of the project to stand out.

I started it at about 6pm today and with eating and a bit of faffing I had it done by 10pm so extremely easy and quick!

Me and my boy have a skiing trip planned next week so I made this snood for that. Gotta look good in those minus temperatures (shame I didn't have it for the big freeze in the UK last week!)

Pattern
Materials
20mm crochet hook
2xSMC Select Highland Alpaca Yarn (or any other chunky 100g balls)
Split stitch marker (a larger one will be more handy)

Method (work in a continuous spiral)
Base: ch35
Join last stitch to first with sl st, take care not to twist the chain.
Round 1: SC each stitch (35), mark last stitch.
Round 2-15: SC (35).
Cast off.

I was annoyingly 4 stitches short of the 15th round when the yarn got too short. So, as I was working in a spiral, I cheekily cast off a bit early :/ Hey, you can't tell so it's fine (just keep it our little secret!)

New project alert!

Bought these super chunky and super soft balls of yarn today (new wool/alpaca mix) from John Lewis to use with my gigantic crochet hook that my brother got me for Christmas...I seriously cannot wait to use these! I'll hopefully be making a snood type thing, pretty simple as I need it in a few weeks time. Watch this space for the finished product :)