little knitting

First FO's of the year! Here's a bundle of small knitted items. Weirdly, there's an unintentional theme here: sister-related and red. Please excuse the drab photography.

First, while my sister was visiting, I knit her a pair of short wristlets and a flower from the Malabrigo yarn that was left over from her hat. The flower pattern was from Handknit Holidays - the "Morning Star" pattern, adapted to be done in the round on dp's. The wristlet pattern was made up on the fly - K1,P1 over 24 stitches (#7 dp's), with garter stitch over a slightly expanded number of stitches. In retrospect, I didn't need to be so conservative with their length, as I ended up with enough yarn to make them a few inches longer. The Malabrigo can go a long way, I found.

Second, my sister actually knit a hat herself!! For years I tried to force knitting on her, and she totally resisted. Now it's just tacitly understood that I'm happy to help if she wants, and -- lo and behold! -- she actually wanted to knit something! It's a beautiful, precious baby hat for her friend, made out of Debbie Bliss alpaca/silk, color 19. It has a garter stitch border with bobbles and big pom pom at the top. Our own pattern, although the design was inspired by a hat we'd seen in some catalog.

Lastly, I made a Calorimetry headband, with the leftover cashmerino from last year's cabled hat. I added some royal blue mohair here and there to make it more interesting. The pattern as written is huge, and it's still a bit big even though I downsized to size 7 needles, only cast on 90 stitches (80 would've been sufficient), and did only half as many repeats of row 5 and 7. It's soft and fun to wear but a bit...well... garish. I think I know someone who could pull it off, though. I'm sending it my sister : )