FO's: Birthday knitting

colorway: peach melba

A couple months ago I agreed to help a friend teach 18 7-year-olds how to knit at a birthday party.  I am not sure how successful we were, but many of the girls seemed really happy with their introduction to knitting - my daughters included.

As a thank you my friend gifted me a very generous gift certificate to the store that hosted the party, a local yarn/fabric shop Stitcher's Crossing.  My girls, excited by their brief introduction to knitting, eagerly picked out a couple skeins of yarn for themselves.

And then the skeins sat.

I am not one to push knitting on my kids - it wouldn't end happily for any of us - but the lovely skeins they picked out (they have very good taste in yarn) were eating away at me.

As it turns out, their own birthday is coming up in a few short days and I convinced them each to let me knit up a quick project with their special yarn.  We talked it over and daughter #1 wanted a cowl and daughter #2 asked for a hat.  Easy peasy. 

colorway: royal

And, as I promised them, there is half a skein left to practice their knits and purls if they so choose.  Now if that yarn sits for another month I may try to convince them that they each need both a hat and cowl...they are such easy and gratifying projects I'd love to knit those up for them too.

The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Maxima - the cowl is 75 sts in the round with single purl rows at 5 rows in from each end, and the hat is the Vanilla Twist Hat, substituting cables for a rib edging.