From blanket to neck warmer

I have a confession to make - I'm a bit scared of knitting. The language of knitting patterns seems alien to me, too many abbreviations and special codes. It's like some sort of secret club. I can do your bog standard knit, purl, cast off scenario, but anything other than that and I get the fear.

So when I found out I was pregnant with Munchkin, I came up with a form of knitting therapy to help me resolve my issues and transform me into a confident and prolific knitter, churning out matinee jackets and bootees by the day.

I took some lovely soft chunky wool, and knitted practice squares using different stitches. The idea was to sew them all togther at the end to make a snuggly blanket. I managed to do quite a few, but then couldn't find any more patterns that fitted in with my square size - I was doing some complicated thing whereby the sequence had to be 17 stitches long plus or minus 2 stitches or something. Anyway, the squares were put in a bag and stuffed in a cupboard.

I recently retrieved them and was determined to find a use for them. So they have been very cunningly (if I do say so myself) been turned into a neck warmer. I took four of my squares and sewed them together into a scarf. I then overlapped the ends diagonally and stitched them together. Hey presto! It's a bit like a bandana shape, which I'm loving. And it felt really quick and easy and satisfying because I did all the hard work about two years ago :)