Archie The Wonder Dog

Hello!  Welcome to the December Furtle, which is also acting as (if you wish and only if you wish) a 2019 Round Up Furtle - a dual purpose Furtle, if you like. This month has been an odd one for making, but let's see what I can pull out of the archives. (Is it just me who can't quite believe that the beginning of December was only 30 days ago? It feels more like it might have been 90 days ago but, at the same time, I don't know where December has gone...) I've already blogged about the  penguin hot water bottle cover and two rope baskets (haven't quite managed the third one of those I was hoping, but there's still time left in the quarter, even if there isn't time left in the year!) I've made this month (which feels like it happened last month, at the very least), but I made a last-minute Christmas present for my niece: I bought the fabric from here , the zip from my usual place , and used a combination of this tutorial for straight-si...

This month seems to have been a bit of a quiet month.  Mainly because I unexpectedly had a hat and scarf to knit just as I'd nominated my #StickyProdAlong2019 project and sworn I wouldn't start anything else until it was finished. Oops! Here's the hat: I love the crown on this pattern And here's the scarf: Both are knitted with Rowan felted tweed.  The hat is the Iced Hat pattern and the scarf is based on this project  (the stitch is cartridge rib ) but I made it shorter and folded one end over to create a loop for the other end to go through (59 sts, 36.25" long, fold over 4.75").  This has helped reduce the bulk and make sure that Mam doesn't have to deal with dangling or whipping scarf ends while walking Eddie. There has been a lone LV scrappy trip block, which brings the count to 21: Sorry about the night time photo - I didn't press it until late afternoon yesterday! Quite a lot of progress on the penguin hot water b...

As stated on my current FAL list , the hat I knitted for Mam's Christmas present ( find the pattern here ) needed a little adjusting as the lazy wind kept creeping up the small gap round her ear lobes and making her chilly!  I had enough yarn left to extend the brim, but didn't want to pull the hat out and start again (all those cables!), so I decided that the best way would be to pick up around the brim (the original cast on edge) and add lengthen the rib on it - upside down, if you like. Here's how the hat looked at the start of the quarter (it's the one on the right): And here's how it looked after another 2.5" of rib had been added to the brim: I made sure to pick up the stitches going from the wrong side, so that the ridge was on the right side of the hat.  This was important because that ridge needed to be hidden in the fold of the brim, rather than pressed against Mam's forehead (which would have made her look like she'd had serious ...

One of the items on my Q1 2016 FAL list was another Iced Hat for Mam and at the start of the quarter, it looked like this: In December, I made two of these as Christmas presents (one for Mam (right), one for my sister-in-law (left)) and they were well received (but not well blogged, oops!), but Mam decided she'd like her next one to have a longer brim so that the lazy wind couldn't get up the gap between her ear lobes and the hat! I knew I'd have plenty of yarn as I had plenty left when knitting these two hats and, although I used different yarn this time, I had about the same yardage and only needed to add an extra twenty-two rounds of rib. I'm afraid there's a staggering lack of in-progress photos for this project as it knitted up within a week and not once did I have my camera near me when I was knitting!  Even losing my cable needle didn't slow me down as I had a spare.  (I lost the cable needle before I started using it - it wasn't in t...