Hello Kitty It's Winter

I came across this hat pattern, which is the Pretty Kitty Beret, designed by Amanda Clark, and available for £2.50(GBP), by accident some months ago. I have a five-year-old Hello Kitty-obsessed grandniece. I had resolved to only knit for my grandniece Cauliflower and her little brother once a year, for their birthdays, as they always have way more clothes and other stuff than they need, but this hat was just so cute and Cauliflower would love it so much that I ended up yielding a point and making it. After all, it's just a hat.

Except of course it ended up not being just a hat. I whipped up the matching mittens using this free Drops design pattern. I had the yarn on hand and don't know exactly what brand it is anymore (the ball bands being long gone) but I think it was Kroy sock yarn. My niece tells me Cauliflower has a black winter coat and a hot pink winter coat, and this turquoise set should look fine with either one. I bought most of the beads and the tiny gauge crochet hook I used to slip the beads on the stitches. The tiny black beads I used for the whiskers have a funny back story. Some years back when my sister-in-law was at my place for the Swan family Easter do, the necklace she was wearing broke and the beads scattered everywhere. With the help of several other family members, she picked up most of the beads but there were some stray black seed beads still lying about. The next day I picked them all up and put them carefully away in a small bag in my bead box, thinking it would be amusing to incorporate them into a new necklace and give it to her some Christmas. I never did get around to making the necklace, but the black beads proved to be perfect for the whiskers on the hat and mittens that I'm going to give to my sister-in-law's beloved granddaughter this Christmas. You never know what will happen when you leave craft materials behind in a crafter's home.

I made just one mod to the hat pattern, which was to only put one kitty face on it rather than the six or so the pattern called for, as I thought it looked better. Lately I've been trying to make sure I learn something new during the course of every project. This project involved me learning two new techniques: the long tail tubular cast on, and beading. I'm going to be using the long tail tubular cast-on for every hat, glove, mitten, and sock I make from now on (love that stretchiness), and I'd like to do more beading. It really is very easy.