A few months ago I wandered into town of a weekend, just to have a bit of a poke around the shops. And what should I find in the main shopping centre? A surprise craft fair. Now, while I’m no hoarder, I do try not to buy yarn for which I have no specific project in mind; but it seemed rude not to buy something given they’d set up a whole fair specifically to delight me on that particular day.

I had a rummage and nabbed three balls of Debbie Bliss Roma for an absolute steal, in a delightful shade of coral pink. I had the rough idea that I could make a really cosy winter set that would go with my main winter coats; two grey, one dark olive green, and one bright yellow. (Is that a lot of coats? I am British. That’s a Big Coat, a waterproof coat, a smart coat, and a fun coat. Well, even if it is excessive, I think I’ve done pretty well to find a colour that goes well with all of them.)

Anyway. After a bit of thought and a very brief swatching exercise, I thought I would probably be able to get a hat and some mittens out of this yarn, and not much more. The mittens came together quickly and surprisingly well, considering I made them up as I was going along. Though I suppose they’re not really a complex shape; just a tube, except for the thumb and very end of the fingers.

One and a half hand-knitted pink mittens lie in a beam of sunlight on a wooden table. The half one is still on the needles, sat next to the ball of yarn it's being knitted from.

The single, solitary beam of sunshine in my house and I use it to photograph my knitting project.

Next, I had a bright idea. The mittens are nice and cosy in and of themselves, but perhaps there was a way to make them even cosier. I stared at the convertible mitten-gloves I made a few years ago, and pondered. The Roma was far too chonky to make individual fingers as I did on those inner-gloves, but what I could do is make a little removable insert that’s effectively just a slightly smaller mitten with a hole for the thumb. It could just slip inside the full mitten and provide absolutely ludicrous levels of cosiness.

A pair of bright pink hand-knit mittens with a little insert sitting between them. The left hand one's insert is next to it, the right hand one's is inside, and you can see it's much thicker and cosier.

The one on the right has the insert… inserted, so you can just about see how much thicker and cosier it is.

Then on to the hat. The last hat I made ended up a bit weird and pointy, so I knew I needed to take a bit more care with the shaping at the top, and make it a little bit more flat. In one sense I might have overdone it, because it does fit very closely and I haven’t seen many hats around with that fit. On the other, it provides an excellent base for the unfeasibly large pompom.

That I made with the old-school two-circles-of-cardboard, using an ancient 360° protractor I somehow still have from my A-Level maths days. I had been smart (it happens sometimes) and saved all my ends and trimmings from making the hat and mittens, so that I could make my pompom as luxurious as possible.

A beanie hat hand-knitted in cheerful coral yarn, sitting over the neck of a tailor's dummy. It has a very large and equally cheerful pompom on top of it.

I may have overdone it with the size of the bobble, it’s almost too powerful.

Finally, I pulled out my sewing machine and made a little bag to keep them together while they’re not in action, and used the very last remnants of the yarn to make an i-cord drawstring for it.

A hand-knit winter set in bright pink chonky wool; from top clockwise we have a hat with an unfeasibly large pompom, mittens with removable inserts to make them super-cosy, a tiny knot of yarn that's all that remains from the original amount, and a folded drawstring bag to keep them in.

That little knot of yarn is all that’s left from the project. Judged it perfectly!



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