Slouchy Knitted Hat - A Proud Achievement

I'm a slow knitter - well, I'm not slow at knitting, if it's a simple pattern then I can whizz right through it! But what I mean is that I will go through a phase of knitting like a mad woman and then put the project down for a few days and come back to it a year later. I have a basket next to my sofa full of WIPs which are all in various stages of un-finishedness. 

So it may surprise you that my Made By You Monday post is, first of all a knitted item (gasp!), and secondly a knitted item that took me two years to make - despite the simplicity of the pattern!

Awkward self-posing picture alert!

Basically, my friend gave me the yarn and we didn't know what kind of yarn it was. I knitted and purled like a crazy lady... until I got to the shaping at the end. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to make it a bit longer and slouchier than the pattern dictated, and if I did - did I have enough of my mystery yarn?!

And so the project laid dormant for about 23 months (I kid you not!). Until at the end of last year I decided to take the plunge and finish it as the pattern stated. Better to have a hat that's slightly less slouchy than you'd like than a piece of knitting clogging up your only circular needles right? So in November I finally finished it. And then this week.... I finally sewed the ends in! (Told you I was slow!).

The pattern is free and can be found here and unfortunately I can't tell you the yarn, as lovely as it is!

PS - you know I said I had many, many WIPs? That's true. What I didn't tell you was that this hat is my first ever FO! (oops!). Don't tell my husband - he'll stop me from buying all my lovely yarn!

Today I'm linking up with the following:

Squares

At the moment I'm knitting squares. Eventually they'll be turned into baby blankets for still born babies, but for now I'm content to just be knitting squares. How cute are these colours together? I'm thinking I might be able to get two or three checked blankets out of these two balls of yarn. The blankets don't need to be big, as the babies are normally so tiny. It's so the mothers can take something home as a precious memory - apparently they often want to take home the hospital sheets, but the hospital needs to keep those, so they'll be given a knitted blanket instead.

I love how the stitches look so neat all together. If I'm just knitting on the train on my own, I like to pray for the mother and family who might end up with the blankets. I hope that through having something carefully handmade they might know that there's people out there who care, and who are praying for them. Who knows how God might use a baby blanket. When they're all sewn up I'll try and show you pictures.

When I have chunky yarn, myself and some girls from church are knitting scarves for rescued girls who have been sex trafficked. The A21 Campaign is doing an amazing job in helping to abolish sex slavery Greece and Eastern Europe so the scarves go to them. It's nice to think that through making something for someone, and praying for them, that God might use it to let them know that they're loved and valued. It's just a small thing, but a precious thought.