You know how you do nothing for *months* and then all of a sudden you have a couple of weeks’ holiday and find yourself catching up on lost opportunities?  Well, that.

I went to meet a friend, last week, in Warwick.  I haven’t seen her for a while, and she’s an avid knitter and knew I needed a good local yarn shop.  There’s nothing in the town I live in, but Warwick’s where my daughter lives and there’s a rather fabulous yarn shop, Warwick Wools, which she thought I might like…

I did.  She is wise!

I wasn’t going to buy any yarn, as I’d just spent a small fortune in The Quilter’s Den (you just have to forgive the tag line).  But I am powerless to resist the urge to plunge my hands into piles of yarn.  It’s so smooth, and soft, and warm, and tactile… I could just fill boxes with it, and never make anything and be perfectly happy opening the boxes and stroking the yarn… Just me?

Anyway, I bought some lovely chunky orange yarn, which will – any moment now, in fact – knit up another cable cushion cover.  Probably to go into my office, where I’m attempting some orange integration…  It’s ok.  I know what I mean! And as I went to the till to pay for it, my eye lit upon a pattern for welly toppers, printed on a postcard at the till. 

The pattern was free if you purchased the yarn, which turned out to be from a British designer (all the clues are there, really) called Erika Knight.  So I dutifully trotted back to the racks, and chose a skein of fur yarn in mulberry and a skein of chunky maxi yarn in artisan.

And that evening, I sat in bed with my needles clickety clacking, and made these (right). 

I have to confess, I wasn’t entirely sure what welly toppers are *for*, functionally speaking.  I thought they were just a frippery.  But I wore them, today, when out walking the dogs, and they were wonderfully, wonderfully warm.  They took just a couple of hours each to make up, and if I’d read the instructions correctly, there would’ve been enough yarn for two pairs.  But I didn’t, so there isn’t (the total length of the green ribby bit should’ve been 12cm, but I made the length of each topper 12″).  But there’s enough purple furry yarn for something else.  So I’ll have to think of something to do with it…