Winter Woolens

The winter coat I received for my birthday required a new hat -- the old one, knitted by my mom, was a bright magenta that went well with my old black coat but clashed with my new, wine-colored one.  Buying a hat wasn't an option (my head is too big), so I decided to use my newly acquired crochet skills to make one.  The pattern I picked was the Chain Link Slouch Hat by Jennifer, which was overly ambitious on my part -- half way through the hat I finally got the hang of the chain pattern, and then had to rip out almost all of my progress because I realized I had been doing it wrong.  I also made the hat shorter, so it fit like a cap rather than slouching at the back of my head.  I am quite pleased with the results:

The deep purple mittens and scarf my mom knitted went beautifully with the new coat, but of course I promptly lost one mitten.  No way was I going to try to crochet that, but I did have a deep purple wool sweater that I felted years ago.  Using Martha Stewart's guidelines I cut out four mitten shapes and sewed them to each other on the machine.  They were rather plain, so I added some lazy daisy flowers in various colors of tapestry wool.  This was a super-fast and easy solution to the lost mitten problem!

Now I'm all set for the commute to my new job.