One for you, one for me - catching butterflies

Yes, I know, I am supposed to either be knitting my jumper or making my Christmas presents. But another one of my purchases from the Knit and Stitch show was Woodland knits, which is full of very cute patterns (most of which I am unlikely to ever make as they are a little too quirky even for me, but at half price who could resist?). So instead of pressing on with my Christmas list I decided to make the catching butterflies fingerless gloves for myself - it is getting cold after all, and doesn't every girl need a new pair of fingerless gloves per winter? They are just too cute to resist! And in my head I figured it might be best to test-drive the pattern for myself before making it for someone else.


The glove body pattern is fairly simple to follow and involves some cabling to produce what I imagine is meant to look like little butterflies. Really, they just look like Vs, but with a little imagination I guess the lines could be perceived as butterflies. The actual butterflies are then knit separately, made more butterfly-like with the addition of a body (I wasn't entirely sure what I was meant to use for that so just used some thread. The small ones are then stitched on the front and the big ones on the palm of the hand.

The pattern suggests using 2.75mm  needles for the rib and 3.25mm needles for the body, but I only have 3mm ones so I used them and it worked out just fine. Although this is for my hands, which are pretty small - I think they would just not fit someone with slightly bigger hands, so you might need to experiment a little with needle size. Similarly, for the butterfly the pattern called for 2.25mm needles but I only have 2.5mm ones, and to be honest I doubt it really matters!

As for the yarn, I went for Debbie Bliss Rialto 4-ply, which is very soft and shiny, and thus has very good stitch definition. The butterflies are made with Rowan kidsilk haze.

The front, with tiny butterflies attached

The back, with big butterflies attached

 The butterflies have caught the light very strangely in those photos and look very fuzzy. They are in fact pretty fuzzy (although not to that extent), but I think that is the idea given the use of kidsilk haze. I did consider not forking out the money for it given that the pattern only uses a teeny amount but I wondered whether the effect would not be quite so pretty. In hindsight, another very thin yarn might have worked out well enough too, and perhaps they would have looked a little less like bows and more like butterflies? The kidsilk haze is quite difficult to work with anyway, and so they were a little fiddly, especially when trying to add the body. So the small ones in particular look quite wonky, and I am not sure how happy I am with them.

Slightly clearer image, in which the butterfly is more defined.

Fuzzy butterflies aside, I am pleased with them and I do think they look pretty. If I were to make them again (another Christmas gift in theory), I would probably make the body shorter (so do two instead of three pattern repeats before starting on the thumb) as I am not sure it is necessary, and instead make the top a little longer (perhaps by adding half a pattern repeat) to make them  warmer - as you can see, the top stop quite close to the bottom of the fingers, so there is very little coverage.

Ok, back to that Christmas list!

Raverly link

The Christmas knitathon begins - Vanessa headband

Last weekend was London's Knit and Stitch show - if you have never been to one, I thoroughly recommend it, for the atmosphere, bargains and the vast array of yarns that you have probably never heard of before (yarn from camel anyone?). I spent another crazy day walking , being totally overwhelmed by choice despite my promising myself that I would be decisive this year! That plan of course went totally out of the window, and I wandered around for 4 hours, grabbing bargains and luxury delights left and right (as well as the occasional non-craft-related item).


So, like last year, this marked the time to get a start on some Christmas knitting. Although I have decided to make fewer presents this year, I thought it would be good to at least get a few done early to avoid the mad rush in December, and also to lift my knitting spirits, which have been destroyed by my inability to finish the sweetheart sweater (it has not been touched since I last blogged, obviously intarsia is proving to be some sort of nemesis for me).

First, I decided to work on the Vanessa headband, for a friend who wore a very similar one all of last winter - need to give the girl some choice! This headband comes in two widths and has a wide cable running through it that I think makes it look really pretty. It is knitted with bulky yarn and 8mm needles, so a very fast knit indeed, especially if you choose to go for the narrow version.

Apologies for the colour, the sun has left the country

And here is a close up

 The yarn is Mirasol Kutama (naturally bought at the Knit and Stitch show), and I think you will agree is a beautiful bright blue, even if my crappy pictures don't capture the colour very well. It is 100% wool but very soft, and was nice to work with, ie not too unwindy or sheddy. I wish I had bought more of it to be honest as it was a bargain! The narrow version of the headband used around 30g of yarn, so there is a little left that could be potentially combined with some of my numerous scraps to make another headband.

I also made another High-street cap - being such a fast knit and using so little yarn makes it the perfect gift. The yarn here is James Brett Chunky with merino (a brand I have only ever seen at the Knit and Stitch show) and is a very decent wool mix. In fact I bought it last year to make a bow scarf for the recipient, so now she will have a matching hat.

Just as a note, I decided to knit the first pattern repeat with 6mm needles to make sure that the hat sits a little more tightly on the head, switching to 8mm needles for the body. And did an additional pattern repeat, so now it does cover the ears more. I am much happier with this one than the one I made for myself, but I guess this is why it is usually good to experiment with a pattern before making one as a gift!

Healthy chocolate treats

Last month I went on a yoga retreat that was also meant to be a detox weekend. The food was not really detox for me, as it was fairly similar to how I eat at home, bar the lack of cheese and gluten. However, we did have some delicious chocolate balls as dessert one evening; they were yummy and apparently semi-virtuous as they had no sugar and were instead sweetened with dates.  Now, I personally don't like most dry fruit (and dates in particular kind of freak me out, I think they look like bugs!) but it must be the texture rather than the flavour, as in this case the dates are mashed up and give the dark chocolate a lovely sweetness.


I got a rough recipe from the retreat teacher, and then looked all over the internet for something more specific, and today I finally decided to give them a go, by amalgamating bits and pieces from the different recipes I found. (Note that when I say cup, I mean small mug.)

Base recipe:
1 cup of dates
1 cup of ground almonds
2.5 tablespoons of cocoa (I used Green and Blacks)

Place all the ingredients in a blender and blitz until the dates are completely broken down and the mixture has an even consistency. This was one of those occasions when I wished I had a food processor rather than a hand blender, as this made quite the mess in the kitchen. But I promise, it is doable!

I thought it looked a little dry at that point so I added a splash of almond milk, although any liquid would probably do.

To make cocoa-orange chocolate balls, add the zest of half an orange to half the base mixture. Then roll into balls (around one teaspoon of mixture per ball). This will make around 10 cocoa-orange chocolate balls.

To make coconut chocolate balls,  roll the rest of the mixture into balls (again, around one teaspoon of mixture per ball) and roll each ball onto desiccated coconut. As above, this will make around 10 coconut chocolate balls.

These will then need to sit in the fridge for a bit to solidify a little more, and then you can eat them, yay! The texture is almost like raw cookie dough weirdly (kind of soft and cheewy), which is probably another reason I liked them so much. For me, these are sweet enough, although the other half said they could have been sweeter. I guess if you do try them you can experiment a little with the amount of dates added.

Cocoa-orange in the back, coconut in the front. And yes, some are missing!