Cute bear hat

At the moment I'm doing a lot of knitting as I have some friends expecting a baby soon, so I've been knitting some little hats and currently progressing through a baby blanket.

At church on Sunday night, they were showing the England v France football match, (which didn't end well for us) and for those who didn't want to watch the match, the Muppets film was being shown in another room.

As I was trying to knit in the dark with Kermit and Miss Piggy on screen, my friend Beth saw the little hat with bear ears on it and asked me if I could knit one for her and that she would pay me for it. Well I wasn't going to turn that down, and I wanted to knit an adult size bear hat for ages but never got round to it.

I didn't use a pattern off the web, instead I just adapted a pattern that I already had and attached ears to it :)

I used 5mm and 6mm straight needles.

Cast 108 sts using 5mm needles.

Do a K2, P2 rib for 6 rows.

On the 7th row P2, P2tog (P4, P2 tog)

Change to 6mm needles

Beginning with a Knit row, continue in stocking stitch until the hat measures about 23cm from beginning, ending on a Purl row.

Shape Crown

1 - K1 (K2tog, K3) k2tog, k2

2 - Purl

3- k1 (k2tog, k3)

4 - Purl

5 - k1 (k2tog, k2)

6 - purl

7 - k1, (k2tog, k1)

8 - purl

9 - k1, k2tog

thread yarn through remaining stitches and pull tightly. Sew up the hat and weave in the ends.

Ears x 2

Using 6mm needles cast on 12 sts

Work in garter st for 8 rows

9 - K2tog, k to last 2, k2tog (10 sts)

10 - k2tog, knit to last 2, k2tog (8 sts)

11 - k2tog, knit to last 2, k2tog (6 sts)

12 - k2tog, knit to last 2, k2tog (4 sts)

Rows 13 - 16 increase 1 st at the beginning and end of each row until you have 12 sts again, Work in garter st for 8 rows and cast off.

Sew up the ears and attach to hat.

Back again with bridesmaids' bouquets

Hello, it's been a while since my last post, mostly due to the fact I was busy with wedding prep and I got married! 

The days leading up to the wedding were so stressful as I still had 1 bridesmaids bouquet to finish and I was panicking that it wasn't going to get finished. Luckily though it all came together and it looked fantastic on the day :)

I used the same technique as my bouquet, a polystyrene ball with knitted roses attached to it with diamante corsage pins. I also used 2 corsages I bought from a haberdashery in the sale for 98p each, as it went with the colours and also took up some space so I didn't need to knit more roses!

The pattern was a lot simpler and bigger than the one used for my bouquet and I got it off the knittingpatterncentral.com website, which is like a database of free knitting patterns for personal use.

The pattern is this:

Row1 : k60
Row2 : k2, [yo, k2tog, k4] 9 times, yo, k2tog, k2
Row3: k60
Row4: k60
Row5: k60
Row6: k60
Row7: k60
Row8: k5, [yo, k2tog, k4] 8 times, yo, k2tog, k5
Row9: k60
Row10: k2tog 30 times
Row11: k30
Row12: k2tog 15 times
Row13: k15
Row14: k2tog 7 times, k1
Row15: k8
Row16: k2tog 4 times
Row17: k4
Cast off leaving a long length to use use for sewing
Twist into a rose shape and sew to secure..

This pattern was also used for the buttonholes and for the table place settings for each guest, with their name written on a paper leaf attached to it.