ConnieLene – KnitDesigner

Of course he can, and my Best Beloved has this set. Hat and neck warmer in a rugged yarn (no label sorry), of a masculine kind, well a masculine colour. It is a gorgeous green with a multitude of green flecks.

The neck warmer / cowl / halsmudd or what ever you call it – sits well on the shoulders and keeps the wind and cold out of the neck area. It is great under a heavy jacket.

The shape looks a little like a ruff from the Elizabethan times (around 1560s) but I won’t tell Best Beloved that. The ruff was a fairly useless piece of frippery, used to give the laundry maids some extremely difficult work and didn’t protect the neck from anything at all.

My neck warmer is a practical piece, entirely suitable for modern living in a very cold environment and can be laundered easily.

The design is of course unisex.

I needed to knit a hat or a slouchy hat or a beret and I did create that there hat and I also played with the stripes a bit. It can be difficult for me to hold onto stripes in the formal sense – you know – 2 rows col 1, 3 rows col 2, and so on.

I had 4 colours, three different shades of Purple and a lovely soft grey. I don’t know if it is a slouchy hat, or a beret – perhaps it is both.

Now back to another beret or slouchy hat, or neck piece, or ??

Living through two cold winters in the Netherlands has made me knit more hats than I could ever ever need back in New Zealand, along with an excess of scarves. I have given away most of the scarves, to colleagues and friends, as well as to De Schalm. The hats have been fun to play with, and to help me to write up my simple Intarsia information for my 3 different berets pattern Which is available on Etsy now.

We have enjoyed the snow, the stillness, the light, the food, the family, the fun and joy of being together, and skyping Melissa, Tomas and Laurence in New Zealand, and I finished some of my knitting projects in time believe it or not.

While our family were driving from Switzerland to us in Haarlem in the Netherlands on Christmas Eve day – I finished the two hats for the boys – one purple, and one orange. I also went over the huge rug, bed cover, to be snuggled under mohair and faux fur piece to make certain all those ends were gone. And I found some ends of course.

I didn’t start the red socks – so those are IOU’s for JJ and for Morgan.

I did complete a cream cowl for Angelica the day before. It was knitted in 2 strands of Naturally Mist 1 ply Super fine Kid Mohair from New Zealand. It does look fantastic. It was knitted in the round from the neck down with 3 rows purl, 3 rows Knit – and increasing both the stitches and the numbers of rows of purl and knit. The cardigan will have to wait for another time. Angelica is from Chile and has extraordinary skin colour and the cream cowl looks great on her. I think this one might just make it into the patterns to come category as it looks really good.

I didn’t finish the capes and scarves so they are still in my unfinished object pile.

Because of the timing of completion of the hats and cowl I don’t have good photos – just snaps taken at present opening time. They have promised to send good photographs.

JJ is at work, the house is empty, and now I can just knit again – but somehow watching the birds eating the food we have placed outside in the tree I can see from my windows and the snowy scene around it keeps drawing me to it.