Mothers day

Well for mothers day I think I bit off more than I could chew.
I decided I would make something for my Mum. My Mum always has cold feet, no matter where she is her feet are cold. So when I found the pattern in the magasine 'Let's get Crafting' for leg warmers/boot toppers I thought this would be perfect.

This is me thinking I was doing it right...

My first challenge was 'knit 2 purl 2'. The knit was fine, I just got myself a bit confused with the purl bit and was actually just knitting the whole time just making 2 stitches really difficult for myself. The worst bit was you cast on 50 stitches, so after about 10 rows I realise that its not looking very much like the pattern I realise I'm wrong. So I start again... another 50 stitches... still not getting it.

So I watch something on YouTube with the sound off, cast on another 50 stitches do 5 rows STILL NOT GETTING IT. What's wrong with me.

Failed attempts!

So this time I cast on 10 stitches. I watch the YouTube video over and over and over again with the sound on this time. On row 7 I get it. Thank goodness I was starting to go mad!
Turns out purl goes at the front and stays there. I was trying to move it over the the back where the wool was, not realising I had to pull the wool to the front. Also I wasn't getting I needed to alternate rows, so knit to start row 1, purl to start row 2.

Take 4
So I cast on 50 stitches again and give it another go. It's going great, got my stitch counter on and everything all working fine. Then I hit row 10 ish and forget if odd was knit start or purl. So I end up swapping by accident. It's ok I think I'll just do the same on the other one and tell Mum its a feature :) she'll never know! So I keep going as fast as I can, I end up doing a row in about 4 mins which really impressed me. As usual though I got bored and tried to cut a corner. The pattern says 50 rows, but I only did 30 because I knew my Mum wouldn't fold them over. So I cast off and made it up.

I thought phew! finished with a week before mothers day.. oh wait she needs two! So I try and speed knit the next one replicating my mistakes so they look deliberate. All knitted up finished on the morning of Mothers day, but she was coming over for lunch so my morning was spent cooking and cleaning and making the house mother proof. So it never got sewed up in time!

Once everyone had gone and the house was back to normal I finished the second one and here'd what it looked like.

Time spent so far 60 rows x 4 mins + 'all the faffing I did getting in a knit/purl mess' = 5 hours
Time remaining 45 hours :)