The York Mittens and Amelie Hat

I have a pair of fingerless, flip flop mittens that I love. As it turns out, so does my daughter and we both almost have the same size hands. After a morning of her trying to convince me to allow her to wear mine to school (and me not budging) I promised to make her her own pair.

I have quite a few skeins of some Ironstone flake cotton yarn that she wanted me to use but I don't like the feel of it and I really don't think it would knit up well or warm enough for mitts. Instead I found an extra skein of Caron yarn in my stash in sage green. Caron yarn is super cheap but it's also super soft and puts up with being thrown in the wash with no issues. It's perfect for using on kid's projects as a good Aran yarn.

The pattern I finally settled on was The York Mittens pattern by Mariana Wegener. The pattern is another free one from Ravelry. I love Ravelry for finding great, free patterns. The pattern is very easy to follow and I finished these mitts in about a day. The only thing I haven't done yet is make the I-Cord button loop and attach buttons since my daughter hasn't decided on which buttons she would like.

Next on the list was a hat to match her mitts since the only new one that I have made for her recently is the Slouchy Snood and that is in red. Red and green go great together for the holidays but not everyday is Christmas.

For her hat I fell in love with The Amelie Hat pattern by Christi Wasson. This is also another free pattern from Ravelry. This pattern gave me the perfect opportunity to use up some of the Ironstone flake yarn that she so desperately wanted me to use. If you have some of this stuff laying around I highly suggest using it as a striping yarn for decoration and sprucing up of knits. Searching online for good patterns for the yarn I wasn't too impressed with how the yarn looked on finished projects. It just looks really messy and like it's going to fall apart at any moment. Apparently Craftsy had an overstock and sent a bunch out in purchased mystery boxes and not many were happy when they saw it either. I got mine on clearance from Knit Picks. It was around a buck a skein so I thought why not, and bought 9 skeins. Now I know why...