Grey and Black Baby Hat

I've held off on sharing this little project because it was a gift, but now that it's been given to the new parents I can share this cute grey and black baby hat!

I had some odd amounts of grey and black yarn in my stash, and I've discovered that baby projects are the best way to use up those small leftovers! I borrowed the book 60 Quick Baby Knits from the library, and used one of the patterns to make this hat. It's made from yarn that I'm 90% sure is wool, though I lost the wrapper to it ages ago.

This is actually my first project doing circular knitting. My awesome in-laws got me a nice new set of knitting needles for Chanukah, so I've been experimenting with trying out new techniques. I'm a little hooked on circular knitting though, so there will likely be more little hats in my future!

Quick Knitted Ear Warmer

This winter has been rather snowy here! On one of our snowy afternoons, I whipped up this quick knitted ear warmer using some leftover chenille yarn. I found this pattern, which I mostly followed. Since my chenille yarn was thicker than the yarn used in the pattern, I cast on as if I was doing the kid size, but did the length about halfway between kid and adult size since my head runs on the small size. I think I actually could have made it even shorter. If you try the pattern, I recommend measuring often!

Since I have some leftover chenille in grey I may try the pattern again and make it smaller to see if that fits me better. I do like the ear warmer for days when I don't want a full hat but need something to keep the chill off my ears when I go for a walk!

Dalek Dice Bag

Yikes, a month since my last post! That's what theater does to me, but I wouldn't change it for the world! I have a few recent projects that I'll be sharing over the next couple of days. The first is this dice bag.

Sean recently started playing D&D with our friends, so of course he had to get his own set of dice. And when you have dice, you need a dice bag. One of our friends gave me this pattern that she adapted to make dice bags for both herself and her husband. The original pattern is for a travel jewelry bag, and it has 8 interior pockets. My friend eliminated the interior pockets completely, but when Sean saw the pockets he thought it might be nice to have a few so I changed the pattern to have 4 little pockets rather than the original 8.

Sean's very happy with the results!

 the completed dice bag

Daleks on the outside with navy thread

The pattern was very simple to follow. It tells you to print out 4 copies and tape them together, but I only printed 2 and then folded the fabric, placing the center line of the circle along the fold.

stars inside with yellow thread

For the pockets, I only had to make a half circle instead of the full circle in the original pattern.

I used a black satin cord, and knotted on some blue plastic beads that I had in my bead stash.

This was a really simple project that I was able to finish in only a couple of hours. Now that I have the pattern, I might make one for myself for jewelry travel like the pattern was designed for! The only problem is that I probably shouldn't use Daleks or I might end up with dice instead of earrings by accident -- or Sean could show up to D&D night with the wrong bag! Hmmm...I guess this calls for a trip to the fabric store to find some more awesome fabric!