Billy Bobbin : On the Needles

Over the Christmas Holidays I enjoyed a spot of knitting and knitted my mum a pair of gloves - I follow the MillaMia blog as I love their yarn, patterns and books and whilst reading, I came across this post on gloves and loved them so I decided to knit a pair. The pattern can be found on Ravelry - it's called Emilee Dee Mitts by Paula McKeever.

As I didn't have a pair of size 4 (3.50mm) DPN needles and I couldn't wait to get started I used a size 3 (3.25mm) and cast on 48 st. I also repeated the chart 1 instructions to make the gloves longer in length. Once finished they fit me perfectly and my mum tells me they do indeed fit her perfectly too.

I used a yarn called Elegance by Loops and Threads in color Earth and one skein was just enough.

A craft I have been struggling to get the grip of quite literally is crochet, I have youtubed it, watched tutorials, read tutorials followed photo tutorials and still it aludes me, I put it down to being left handed and not quite knowing which hand to use, although I knit fine right handed, Crochet has just had me puzzled and frustrated until now.

My lovely Mother-In-Law Viv, also more commonly known as Grannie, taught me over this Christmas Break, we sat down together for a one to one and very patiently Grannie taught me to crochet literally one stitch at a time until I got the hang of it.

And my first crochet project was the triple layer flower by Lucy at the fabulous blog Attic 24 - if you have not discovered her blog go now quickly it is truly wonderful.

Once I had got my first flower under my wing there was no stopping me, or Grannie, between us we managed 8 in one day.

It's wasn't long before I was crocheting these little beauties all by myself and Viv and I made them into brooches, by adding a pin bar button at the back and jazzed them up with buttons in the middle.

The last completed project hot off my needles is this lovely pink seed stitch hat - which will be available to buy in my Etsy shop shortly.