Secret Santa

I don't know why I do this but every year I participate in the annual secret Santa gift exchange at work. I hate it. I usually get someone I don't know very well and it is so difficult to get a decent gift for a work colleague that you don't know very well. And let's not forget that the gift has to be in the price range of 20$ - 25$. It's not easy. 

This year I nearly cried when I saw whose name I had drawn. At least it was someone I know very well. I picked my BOSS!! Don't get me wrong. He's a wonderful man, but he is a man. He is well into his seventies. And he is pretty well off so anything that he needs or wants that falls into this cost bracket, I'm pretty certain he is well equipped to get it himself. 

So what's a girl to do?? I decided to do something that I know he can't do himself. I decided to do something that I don't think anyone in his immediate family could do for him.  I decided to make him something unique - that wasn't mass produced and couldn't be purchased in a department store. I decided to knit him a hat with the logo of his favourite NHL hockey team. 

Here it is with the knitting all finished. There wasn't a pattern online that I was satisfied with so I used the graph for the logo from a scarf pattern that was published on Ravelry. 

As you may be able to tell, I didn't knit the logo into the hat. This technique is called duplicate stitch and it makes for a much neater design.

I must say that I used to hate to do duplicate stitch until very recently.  Remember the little knitted birds from a few posts back?  They made me competent in duplicate stitch and as a result they made me fall in love with the technique. 

It's hard to get a decent photo of the whole logo because it is so big.  I decided to add a pompom too. 

Overall, I'm very happy with how my gift turned out. I think my boss was happy too.