New Beanie

Not too long ago I ordered a skein of hand-painted sock yarn that I thought looked pretty awesome online. When I got it, it was much less impressive in person than it had looked online. Ravelry to the rescue, I just went to the Knit Picks board (it was one of the Knit Picks handpainted colorways) and offered up my skein for a comparable amount of sock yarn in a different color. I was offered one of the discontinued kettle-dyed colors and made the swap.

Ryan was around when the new skein arrived and fell instantly in love with the color. Basically as soon as it was out of the envelope he was asking me if I could make a beanie for him using it. This is the result.





Ryan is blog-shy so only his forehead is appearing today. The pattern is Ski Beanie by Terra Jamieson and is in the Son of Stitch 'n Bitch book. The yarn is Knit Picks Essential Kettle-Dyed (discontinued) in color Jay.

Ryan flips the bottom of the hat up to have a folded brim. I would wear this type of hat like this to get maximum ear coverage:



Please excuse the crappy webcam photo, the angle makes my head look huge, and the lighting is terrible, but the point is, the hat also works as a no-brim beanie as well.

I altered the patter quite a bit since it's written to be knit flat and in DK weight and I wanted it to be knit in the round in fingering weight. I cast on enough stitches for 5 extra pattern repeats (as the hat is decreased in 5 sections) and dropped my needle down to a size 1 for the 1x1 ribbing and 1.5 for the body of the hat. (Side note: it takes FOREVER to knit a hat out of fingering weight yarn on size 1 needles. At least it feels like forever when you're used to the speed of a worsted weight beanie that can be worked up in an evening.)

Since this is a super simple two-row pattern is was easy to change the rows that originally would have been wrong-side rows into right-side rows for knitting in the round. I followed the decrease directions as written except that I had one extra pattern repeat between each marker so I had to do more decrease rounds.



This in-progress picture really shows off the kettle-dyed nature of the yarn. I was worried at first because it looked like I hadn't made it wide enough, but I blocked it over a balloon (the BEST way to block hats!) and it loosened up nicely and fits wonderfully now. Ryan has confessed that on the 1-10 scale of warmness it's only about a 3 (um yeah, it's fingering weight) but on the 1-10 scale of looking-good it's an 8. I know most of the credit goes to the awesome color of the yarn, but as the knitter I'm claiming that 8 for myself.

Hardly worth mentioning

Today I am sick. Apparently a super nasty flu has been floating around Portland. Right now, I just feel like I have a head cold, but I have been feeling increasingly worse as the day goes on... let's hope that now that I am in bed with some good tea that this is as bad as it gets and it doesn't escalate into the death-bug that so many others have had this winter.

That is why this will be a quick post to show you a little project that doesn't need much explanation (or deserve much praise).



It's a crocheted pot holder. It's made from di. Ve Fiamma which is a super bulky think-thin wool. I didn't use a pattern, just the instructions for crocheting in the round from the Stitch n' Bitch Happy Hooker book. It's felted a bit. I put it through one wash cycle which shrunk it about 15%, though most of the stitch definition is still there. Now it is slightly firmer making it more suitable for it's purpose. Here it is before felting/shrinking... Can you see the difference?



My brother has been using an old t-shirt as a pot holder/oven mitt for a while, so I gave this to him when he moved to his new apartment as a housewarming gift. He said the blue made it a sufficiently masculine pot holder to warrant a place in his kitchen, though he expressed his desire that if I make another it incorporate dinosaurs in some way. If I didn't have so many other projects on the needles right now, I might step up to the challenge.

What's on the needles Wednesday

Possibly by participating in Kerry's What's on the Needles Wednesday I will be sufficiently kicked in the butt to finish something. Therefore, this Wednesday, the project on my needles is this:



That is Ryan's blanket. Right now it's just over 4' x 4' but it needs 20" more of black before it's finished. I try to devote one hour to it a day, but some days I just can't bring myself to garter for that long.

It's based on the golden ratio rectangle. When it's finished, it will have a big red spiral surfaced crocheted onto the top.

Lotus

I have recently been expanding my hat wardrobe. I have decided that hats go with most of my casual day to day wear and are a great way to 1) stay warm and 2) cover up a bad hair day. My newest addition to my hat wardrobe is this.





It's the Lotus Hat by UptownPurl and it can be found free on her blog. It's a very simple 8 row zig-zag lace repeat that makes beautiful vine-like motifs running up the hat.

I made a few changes to the pattern as written but they were so minor and mostly based on other ravelers' suggestions. I did the 1x1 ribbing as twisted rib instead of normal. I did the ribbing for 10 rows instead of 6. I knit 4 repeats of the pattern before decreasing instead of 3 to make it come down over my ears. That's all. Not minor changes, but worth mentioning if you want your hat to look "just" like this one.



This is the hat blocking over a balloon... my new favorite way to block hats. A bag of balloons was less that $2 at Target (in the area with the birthday wrapping paper) and it's so much faster than blocking by laying flat. I just blew up a balloon to 21" circumference and put the hat on it. No having to constantly flip the hat to make sure both sides are drying, no having to rotate how the hat is laying so that it doesn't dry with a crease, AND it drys 3x as fast because the wet layers aren't sitting on top of each other keeping the moisture in.



The best part of the hat is the crown where the decreases make the vines spiral together beautifully.

I used Malabrigo Merino Worsted in colorway Black Forest. According to my yarn scale, this took 50.5 g of yarn, so just a bit over half a skein. This was leftover from my earlier Botanic hat, where I used it as the secondary color, and even after both hats I still have 33 g left. I'm thinking I will just be able to squeeze a short pair of fingerless mitts out of it.



Action shot! Also, a picture of my fuzzy mitts from last post where they can be seen in actual use... and in sunlight no less. Much thanks to the Portland weather gods for sending a bit of sunshine our way.

Warm hands, warm heart

My grandma always says "warm hands, warm heart" which I think means that having warm hands is proof that you are a "warm-hearted" person. This does not bode well for me because my fingers are always cold. Recently I've been craving a pair of fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm and still allow me to use my computer (my school says they're being "green" by keeping the classrooms freezing cold, but I suspect is has more to do with being cheap...) I was in my LYS, and they had a sample of this simple pattern, and it stole my heart.



This pattern is Brushed Suri Mitts by Merri Fromm. I used the exact yarn called for Blue Sky Alpacas Brushed Suri. The yarn is 67% baby Suri alpaca, 22% merino, and 11% bamboo. It's a halo yarn like Kid Silk Haze from Rowan or Suri Dream from Knit Picks. There is a "core" to the yarn that fuzzy alpaca fluffs out from. The pattern only takes about 75% of a skein.



It's not super clear from my bad photos (we had a week of gloom w/ no natural light at all when I took them, now that the sun has returned I should go outside and take some more) but one mitt is actually about an inch shorter than the other. That is because after you knit the thumb gusset you are supposed to knit straight for 10 rounds before actually separating the thumb... I forgot to do this on the second mitt. I love this bunches, so I bought another skein and I will make one long (correct) mitt and one short (leaving out the 10 rows) then then have a pair for myself and a pair that I can give away (or a backup).



This photo is blurry, but it shows the halo coming off the gloves well. I was worried that I would find them itchy because of the high alpaca content and because of the halo, but they're pretty much the softest most comfortable thing ever and I wear them all the time.

You've been flashed

You've just been stash-flashed. That is a giant pile of all the yarn I own as of the new year. Actually, it's not all the yarn I own because there is still some at my parents' house in New Mexico that has never made it up to me...

I decided that my previous stash organization of "shove yarn in closet or under bed" was not working so well because when I wanted to work from stash I had to comb the apartment looking for the skeins I wanted all with added uncertainty because the yarn might actually be in the New Mexico stash.

I decided to take action. I pulled out every skein of yarn in my apartment and piled it on the floor to survey.



Then I organized it by weight into big plastic tubs. In the end I filled four 66 gallon tubs plus one and a bit of two 45 gallon tubs. I would like to say that this experience has staved me off of ever buying yarn again, but it has not... There is a Knit Picks order on its way to me as we speak... In my defense, two of the skeins coming are needed to finish a project that I underestimated yardage needs for (and the other 15 were being clearanced.)

If you would like a detailed accounting of what exactly is in my stash, my ravelry stash is completely up to date as of last night.

Adam's Hat, part 2

Before Christmas, I showed you the hat that I was working on to give to my brother Adam, but it wasn't very far along. I managed to finish it, even with law school finals happening all the way up until December 23rd and my family arriving and needing entertainment on the 23rd... (that is a rant in itself that you're likely uninterested in.) The 24th I finished the last of the seaming, and voila:





One silly hat for Adam. The hat was a kit from Knit Picks called "Into the Woods" and it's still available as of this post, but is "last chance." The yarn used is Red and Bittersweet Heather Wool of the Andes for the main colors and Oyster Heather Wool of the Andes and Natural Suri Dream for the inner ear flap. The Suri Dream is carried along with the Wool of the Andes to make the ear flap fuzzy and soft.



Like most of the Knit Picks patterns I've encountered this one has, what I would consider, too many spelling, grammar, and technical errors for a pattern that is paid for. Also, for the earflap, the pattern is completely unhelpful. The ear flap has to be knit back and fourth. Rather than cutting the yarn and moving it I just used it from where it was. Sometimes this meant knitting a row with the red, then needing to do a bittersweet heather row but the yarn wasn't on the end of the fabric to set up a purl row... in these cases I just went back to where I started (you must have a circular needle to do this) and knit a second row rather than cutting the yarn and moving it to the other side to do a purl row.



The pattern makes a huge hat (I knit to pattern gauge) that sits up really high, sort of like Elmer Fudd's hat. I could never see wearing this hat for anything other than using it as some sort of prop, or trying to win a silly hat contest... Adam is all dressed up in these pictures because they were taken Christmas day and we're about to go to a dinner party. He wore the hat through most of the party.