Pretty

Hats - almost as much fun as socks. Here's the latest, and quite lovely, I think.

Pattern: Selbu Modern
Yarn: Koigu Premium Merino
Needles: US2 and US0

Koigu's colors, especially the Painter's Palette blends, are just stunning. I have a bunch in my stash, two skeins per color, bought with the intention of making them into socks. Well, in the meantime, it's just not my favorite sock yarn anymore, mostly because without any nylon it doesn't wear quite as well. So, what to do with it? This hat is one solution.

Small needle projects are fun when you want a lot of knitting in a nice portable package. I cast on for this in anticipation of some quality waiting room time at my annual appointment with the ob/gyn; the last few years, I've had some seriously long waits because of someone else going into labor. Since I was prepared for that, of course I got to go right in this time. The small needles only bugged me at the very end, as in the very last two decrease rounds, working with one color on each hand on double points. That was a major pain in the a**.

I'm old school; I like my double points and just haven't found the love for magic loop. But I did have an epiphany on those last two hateful rounds: working on double points while carrying yarn on the right hand sucks. I normally knit continental (yarn on the left hand), but the second color has to go somewhere. Every time I made a stitch with the right hand yarn, I had to let go of the right hand needle to "throw" the yarn around the stitch. A minor annoyance when there are a bunch of other stitches still on it to hold it in place; a nightmare when there are just a few, and the needle wants to slip away or twist in the breeze or otherwise generally misbehave. So, yes, I now see where "double point desperation" might come from, especially if you knit English.

[Kitty is still here. I think Egg is in love, despite his allergies. We agreed though that I should post signs in the neighborhood today, because it is bad karma to steal someone's pet.]

Hat weather

Another cold front, another hat.

Pattern: Le Slouch (Wendy Bernard's Knit and Tonic blog)
Yarn: Plymouth Yarn's Baby Alpaca Brush in color 500 (black), ca. 160yds.
Needles: US7 and US8
Mods: Smaller gauge so I cast on a few more stitches, minor modifications to the crown shaping

Does this get me kicked out of the "Real Knitter Club"?

How do I say this? (long pause) I have knitted two things with super-bulky weight yarn, and I used Lion Brand Wool-ease Thick-N-Quick for one of them. A friend gave me the patterns from a German women's magazine and asked me to make a hat and a long cardigan for her. She wanted them for her holiday trip back home where it is wintry enough to wear something that heavy. So I grab the size 13 needles and dive into a sea of super chunk yarn.

First of all, some thoughts on materials: all super bulky yarn is not created equal. The Plymouth Encore Mega that I stranded with mohair and used for the hat shed much less than the Thick-N-Quick I used for the cardi. By the time I finished knitting and seaming the cardi I was covered with charcoal gray fuzz. So you do get what you pay for. It was an economically necessary compromise though, because the damn thing ended up needing close to 900 yards to finish. Two hundred yards more than my initial estimate - yarn substitution is sometimes not quite straightforward. Oh, and after having to go back to Mega Craftmart to get more yarn, I can confirm that the dye lot does matter with Lion Brand-type yarns too, but more on that in a sec.

The hat was a pleasant quick knit, done in about two hours while watching something mindless on TV. (Picture will follow...) Knitting the cardi also went fast; however grafting the top seam (sleeves and shoulders) and seaming up the side and lower sleeve seams took almost as long again as the actual knitting. Sewing up seams is obviously not my strong point. (Note to self: next time think ahead about modifying this sort of thing to be done in the round as much as possible.)

Back to the dye lot issue. The additional 200 yards of T-N-Q I needed to finish were from a different dye lot, but to my eye I didn't see any difference, and I checked under incandescent and fluorescent light. So imagine my surprise when I got out the digi camera to take a picture and saw this on the screen! Kinda cool in a way, but still NOT what one wants to see after battling all that fuzz. Serious "yikes" moment. I looked at the camera display and then at the sweater itself, back and forth, and the color shift was only visible on the camera when it was shooting without flash. So the dye lot change does matter, at least when photographing under artificial light without a flash. Do I warn the recipient about this?

Despite the "issues", I have to admit that I now somewhat understand the appeal of big needle/yarn knits. It does feel productive to get almost an inch of knitting out of every row - a finished item in a matter of hours instead of days/weeks/months! The low time commitment for a smaller item like a hat is such that it removes some of the emotional baggage of giving it away - it only took a couple hours, no biggie if the craftsmanship isn't fully appreciated. While I don't feel the urge to do another super-bulky sweater anytime soon, I can't pooh-pooh the concept anymore. Does this revoke my knitting cred?

Time flies...

Yep, Egg and I are looking at five years of wedded bliss. We tied the knot on the deck of a beachfront house on Abaco, one of the Out Islands of the Bahamas, after almost ten years of unwedded bliss. (Damn, we've been together a long time!) His mother had gotten tired of waiting for us to get married and had begun lobbying for grandchildren several years before, which we still haven't produced, but I digress...

So, we're off the the island again soon, and dear sweet "C" gave me this to protect my pastey-white, sun-deprived face from a wicked sunburn. She crocheted it in my favorite color, so sweet and thoughtful. Pardon the dorky, take-a-picture-of-myself-in-the-bathroom-mirror photo; I cropped it, but perhaps not enough. Isn't the hat just wonderful?!!?

Now, decision time: to bring knitting or not? Our original plan was going sailing with Captain Stepdad, which would have been not conducive to knitting. I'm prone to seasickness as it is - and no, I can't knit in the car either - so concentrated fiddling with sock yarn and size 1 needles would equal instant heaves. But plans have suddenly changed (too much backstory to go into why), we're going to be mostly shore-based, and I'm weighing how much of a nuisance it will be to shake sand out of anything I might bring. What impact does saltwater have on sock yarn? Oh, I know what I should bring: that lace shawl/stole I started back in 2001 (!!!), oddly enough with the intention of it being my "something blue", whenever we were to marry. Well, obviously I didn't finish it in time for that, but how about five years later? Hmm... Actually, it's just as well that I didn't finish it for the wedding, because I didn't even wear shoes, and an elegant lacy shawl would have looked out of place, and been hot as hell.

I finally got over myself and made the i-cord straps for the entrelac bag. Like most things that I procrastinate, it really didn't take THAT long... Into the washing machine with the bag and the straps tomorrow, and maybe I'll schlep it all damp to Knit Nite, unless the felting is a complete disaster.

Happiness is...

Today was one of those perfect days that we get here this time of year, when spring sneaks in a preview. I took full advantage it this afternoon (morning was spent with the neighborhood association cleaning up the common area planting beds and then giving the dog a much needed bath) and settled myself on the deck with the necessities. Please don't look too closely - I didn't bother to scrub the outside table yet of its winter layer of ick!

I started out noodling around on the current WIPs (entrelac bag destined for felting, socks) but picked up some new yarn from my LYS instead. It's the varigated green/blue/black stuff (Di.Ve Autumno) on the circ in the middle. Egg got a hat out of it yesterday, a top down variation on the Life O' Crime watch cap he got earlier but complained was too itchy. This was the manliest colorway of this yarn on stock, and it's soft soft soft, 100% merino. But what's in progress in the picture is mine mine mine.

I've loved traveling stitches from the first time I worked them and made the old classic "Celtic Cardigan" from Oat Couture several years ago mostly because the stitch patterns are all traveling stitches. This hat is made using the stitch pattern from the cardi's ribbing, worked in the round. For the crown decreases I wanted to maintain a semblance of the main pattern, so out came the graph paper, and I am really happy with the results! Yes, it looks like a mushroom on my improvised head model (a mixing bowl set upside down on a pillar candle), but just look past that.

And check out the close up of the crown!

The color of the yarn in the pictures is a bit off, though. It's actually a bit darker than shown, and what looks grayish is really a green and black melange. My mediocre photo skills notwithstanding, I'm so pleased with this little project. When the weather changes back to winter for a day on Tuesday (if the weather guys are right), I'll be able to wear it when I take the dog on his morning constitutional through the neighborhood.


P.S. I forgot to mention the one fly in the ointment with this: it took just a few yards more than one skein of the yarn. Doh! No big deal in this particular case because I had some left over from Egg's hat, but for it to be a true one skein wonder project, I suppose it would have made slightly smaller. (Sigh)