Stash Busting Ear Warmers (For whenever winter finally arrives in the South)

While it is currently 64 degrees here in TN (in freakin' January), I am certain winter will eventually arrive.  So I decided to whip up an ear warmer for those early morning walks with the pup on the days that it's chilly.  The received a skein of grey speckled tweed silk Called Stormy Day, from Darn Good Yarn's month subscription box back in November, and looked for an ear warmer pattern that I would have enough for.  I found the Irving Ear Warmer pattern, and tried it in the grey silk, only to discover that 50 yards was really not even enough for 2/3 of the pattern!  So I frogged it, and dug through my stash for something I might have more of.  Turns out I had 2 skeins of the same yarn in Oceanic Blues that I bought from their sample sale a few months ago.  Plenty to remake the Irving pattern.  It's chunky and soft.  :)

It's somewhat hard to see in this picture, but by using front post dc and back post dc, the pattern creates ridged stripes. 

Since I really had my heart set on making something in grey, so I decided to see if I could do anything else with the Stormy Day skein.  I ended up making up my own pattern.  I simply chained enough stitches to go snugly around my head.  Then I added 2 more chains, and started doing rows of double crochet.  I managed 5 rows of dc, and ran out with just about 7" of yarn left, just enough to stitch the ends together.  Then I used the leftover Oceanic Blues to add 2 rows of decorative slip stitching through the first and 5th rows.  Yay for 2 quick and easy projects, and for busting some stash!