20 Hats and a Blanket

Those who know me will not be surprised that in the last days of 2013, I finished a bunch of items for various charities.  OK, I know that in the past I have designated the week between Christmas and New Year's for "selfish knitting" = something for me, and I did mostly finish a crocheted bolero for myself while on my Christmas trip to North Carolina.  But I had a number of items OTN/OTH and decided to fill a box and.........

For the Children's Comfort Tote Project, which gives a lidded plastic tote to kids in shelters and going into foster care in Maine, each of which contains new pajamas, hat, mittens, scarf, and blanket, plus toiletries and a stuffed animal, I made an afghan:

I'd had ideas about making several, but time ran short for assorted reasons.  It's a simple granny ripple done in a multicoloured yarn.

I didn't find the chemo caps dropoff point at Stitches East (where I'd received a very soft ball of orange yarn, that they asked us to use to make chemo caps, last year) earlier this fall, so I decided to send the caps to my usual recipient, PatPat's Hats.  Then with one thing and another, hats being handy for carry-around knitting, I ended up filling a box:

It contains twenty hats, mostly knit but also crocheted.  There are five pairs, where a skein or ball had enough yarn for two hats:

The two orange ones are from the yarn I received last Stitches East.  I also have ten "singles," with just one hat of a particular yarn:

Here is a closeup of the two crocheted hats with ribbons.  I did the purple one second and made the row of stitches in which I wove the ribbon taller than on the orange one, where I learned that it needs extra height to not scrunch the ribbon as much:

This is the top of the other orange hat.  I did a random cabled pattern that I made up on the fly, and I really like how it came out.  Unfortunately the light orange didn't photograph well, this is the only one I have that shows off the cabling:

The packages are received, and I am taking a bit of a break from charity items so that I can finish the bolero and work on a couple other items.  My mother loved the crocheted vest I gave my grandmother for Hanukah so much, I think I will make one for her.  I'll post a picture of it and my grandmother's Christmas vest (this year, she received a bonus) in another blog post because I have to track it down.


Update:  I thought about adding the totals of items I have knit and crocheted for various charities this year.  These are my records, there might have been more because one record just said "wool hats" but not how many:

• 11 Sweaters
• 3 scarfs (and I finished one more but didn't get it mailed in 2013)
• 2 pairs mittens
• 2 pairs socks
• 39 hats
• 3 shawls
• One afghan