Finally it's cold and I can spend all my free time knitting all sorts of woolly things that I then wrap myself into or give them to people I know. These two projects were presents to friends. They were quite fast improvised things.

 

First I made "Couples gloves" to a friend of mine and her fiancee since they got engaged this year. It was actually a part of my project where I promised to make something that I made myself to any five people who replied first. She was one of the friends.

The weather is getting cold and you need to wear some kind of gloves. However you want to hold your significant other's hand. It's not the same holding hands with mittens on, is it? Gloves with fingers are a little bit easier, but still... no. But don't worry! There's a solution, couples gloves.

These gloves have one separate mitten for each person (make sure they're left and right, not both the same hand, otherwise it'll get tricky) and then a combined mitten for the hands holding with separate openings for both hands. I did not come up with the idea, but I came up with the pattern myself for my gloves. Genious, if you don't mind looking a bit silly walking around like that. And who should? I look silly daily.

Here are the separate mittens. There's of course his and hers. They are slightly different and obviously different size.

 

And here they are with their weird friend, the common glove:

 

I didn't have enough hands to take pictures of these things actually in action, but these pictures will have to do.

 

Next I made a purple beret for a friend of mine who's  leaving for an exchange program in France soon. I figured that you can't survive in France without a beret (this mental image was powered by my stereotype of all friends having berets) so I knitted her one. I found the perfect shade of purple from the yarn store. She loves purple. Sadly I don't think I quite could capture the color of the yarn with my camera.

I used SandnesGarn Kitten for this project again, I think about 2/3 of a skein. I started by casting on 90 stitches on 5 mm needles and after a few rows of 1x1 rib I changed to 7 mm needles and started a drop stich pattern that I've used before in hats aswell. This pattern looks nice of both sides so the hat is reversible. Before I've made for example these hats with the drop stitch design. The top I made with this simple garter stich as in this hat. Actually I first made a version of this hat but it wasn't quite suitable for this kind of yarn and I made it too big... I will surely try that kind of beret aswell though since it looks very cute.

Here are some pictures, even tough the beret suits my friend way better than me... It looks so big on my thin hair. That, and the fact that hardly any hats look good on me.

 

Parilapaset - Baskeri - Palmikkokuvio - Neulonta