Handspun Foliage

Yarn: Handspun by Frances
Needles: Size 9
Pattern: Foliage by Emilee Mooney on Knitty

The yarn (above) was a nice wool, fairly evenly spun at about a worsted weight. I enjoyed the pattern - it was really quick to knit up, especially after the shawl of doom.


Frances was a good sport and modeled the hat for me, despite the 90+ degree day.

I also finished another pair of the cabled gloves (in hot pink! I still need photos) and another hat out of handspun by Frances, which I will take pictures of and post soon.

I'm currently working on a pair of socks for my mom's birthday (which was in August...) and am hoping to have them done by October 16th at the latest. They're going alarmingly quickly so far, though, which is a good sign.

Arrr!

As one of the many gifts I made for birthdays and winter holidays this year, I decided I should make a pirate hat for my friend. I started this back in September, but just finished over spring break.

Specs:
Yarn: Knit Picks' Wool of the Andes in Coal, 6 skeins (I'm fairly sure this is the right yarn...) held double
Needles: Size 11
Pattern: From knitlikeapirate.com
I was kind of skeptical about this pattern, but it actually worked really well, and the yarn felted beautifully (I just stuck it in the washer on hot with a pair of jeans and hoped for the best. I can't open the dorm washers halfway through, so it was a little terrifying.)

And here's the progress on the shawl! Sorry it's a bit curled up at the bottom, I obviously haven't blocked it yet. It's growing nicely, though. Just finished the 7th repeat of the Yucca chart (the first chart.) Five more to go, and then I get to change patterns! Yay!

Pinwheel blanket

Project Details:
Knit with KnitPicks' Shine Worsted in Wisteria, Grass, Sea Spray (discontinued), Wave (discontinued), and Bachelor Button
Used 20 balls of yarn (roughly 1 kg or 1500 yards)
Used size 6 nickel plated interchangeable circular needles from KnitPicks
Pattern: Modified (heavily) Pinwheel Blanket
Lined with fleece
Blanket diameter is 50 inches (about 4 feet)

Started: February 2008
Finished: March 2009

This was by far the largest project I have ever done. Each piece took about 3 hours to knit up, another 45 minutes or so to seam, and about 20 minutes to stitch the backing onto (not that I did that individually - I'm not crazy! Oh, wait...) Plus the time to actually pin the blanket to the backing (harder than it sounds) it probably took the better part of 45 hours actual work time to complete. Plus it was all stockinette... fast? yes, boring? also yes. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

So I started off really liking the pinwheel blankets I kept seeing crop up. They were cute, I liked the swirl, and I liked the way you could play with colors on them. I did not like the fact that the color strips and pinwheel stripes were perpendicular. So I decided to do each section a separate color. Since knitting in the round would not be easy if I changed colors so frequently, I decided to knit each piece and then seam them together. (I could have knit it all together and just left one opening, but that would be a really big project to carry around, and I didn't think of it.)

I cast on two stitches, purled them, knit across to the last stitch, did a yarn-over, knit the last stitch, and purled back. it went on like this. And on. And on. Basically I decided that since I had 4 balls of each color yarn, I should use two for each section. Maybe a little less in case one ball was short. I wound up casting off when I got to 80 stitches. Eventually I wound up with 5 pieces. I decided that this would be a good time to start seaming, since I could lay the colors all out together and see the order I wanted them in. I also figured that this way I wouldn't have to do all the seaming at once. It was a good plan.

This is what the first five pieces looked like when seamed together:

It was a bit curlier than I wanted, but I figured that would go away when I finished. I was right. Here's a closeup of the fabric:


Miles of stockinette are pretty boring to talk about, so I will skip all of that. There was some excitement when, at the very end of the very last section (which happened to be in Grass) I ran out of yarn. On the last row. No lie. Everything else I'd had extra on, but not the grass, apparently. So I had to order another skein, wait for that, and then join so I could cast off. Another note about the yarn: It doesn't exactly pill, but quite a bit of the fiber will come off on your hands as you work with it. It will get everywhere. It doesn't seem to do this once it's knit up and washed, however. It's very soft and shiny though, which I feel makes up for the little bits of colorful yarn all over my room and clothing.

Finally I finished, though, seamed it all together, and wove in all my ends. I realized that I did not like how the backside looked, and it was not going to be very warm since it was cotton. (The reason I chose cotton in the first place was that 1) it's washable and 2) I really like heavy blankets, but often get too warm under them.) I decided to add a lining to the back of the blanket. The debate was between flannel and fleece, and fleece won out. I chose a nice neutral grey that will (hopefully) not show stains. I put them both through the washer (cold water) together, to make sure they wouldn't shrink differently once they were sewn together.

Keeping in mind that I am not a sewer, have never been a sewer, and probably will never be a sewer (straight lines are hard, okay??) It took me a while to figure out how to attach the fleece. Eventually I decided I'd just do a simple running stitch all the way around with one of the yarns I had some extra of (the Grass.) I set to work pinning the blanket to the fleece. The first attempt went badly and I wound up with a strange ovoid shape that I *could not* make into a circle. No matter how hard I tried. Then I got smart: I stretched the blanket out, measured the radius (25") picked a point on the fleece to call the center, and measured 25 inches out from there all the way around until I had a circle (I marked it with a permanent marker.) Then I pinned the blanket down. I still was having trouble, though, because I'd stretch out some of the sections and other sections wound end up squooshed. I realized that I knew the radius, could calculate the circumference, and could divide that by 10 to tell me how wide each section should be. I then measured these out and pinned. It worked beautifully.

Here is a picture of the pinned blanket, with a quarter on it for size reference:

After that, all that was left was to sew. So I started in. I started off just doing tiny little stitches and attaching to every stitch in the row I chose (about an inch in). This came out looking uneven, bunching, and took way too long. I pulled it all out, decided that stitches of half an inch each would do wonderfully, and proceeded to measure every single stitch as it went in. Again, I picked a row about an inch in, and I counted three knit stitches between each sewn stitch. This was tedious, but produced a really nice, even stitching.

Stitching!

Once that was done, I tacked the middle of the blanket to the fleece, and trimmed the fleece so it went bout a centimeter past the stitching.

It's done! And Mr. Bear likes it very much...

I'm still debating if I want to add more tacking, and if so, where. But for now, I'm very happy with my heavy, cozy, warm, colorful blanket.

Fetching

With some of the yarn left over from my star hat, I made "Fetching" gloves from knitty. These pictures are actually my second pair of the gloves- I made the first out of some of the blue yarn, and left them at home with my mom before I took pictures of them. I like stiff gloves (and I still like playing around with gauge) so these are made with Berocco Peruvia on size three needles. They were a bit stiff at first, but they're quite warm and as I have worn them they have gotten a lot softer. Because my stitches were a bit shorter than the pattern called for, I did increase the number of rows in the body of the hand- 21 instead of 18- but otherwise the pattern remains unchanged.

Shedir

For Christmas my college friends sent me the pattern, needles and yarn to knit Shedir, a cabled hat from knitty. I really like cabling, and the pattern on this hat is beautiful. It's also pretty complex, which is nice- I like it when my knitting makes me think, especially when it is winter break and I have plenty of time to knit when I'm not studying. Unusually for me, I didn't fuss with the pattern, other than the original yarn substitution. I've seen many versions of this hat online, and most people repeated the saxon braid 3 or 4 times instead of the 5 that the pattern calls for. I repeated it 5 times- the resulting hat is very deep- it covers my ears- but I like this in a winter hat. If you prefer hats that don't cover most of your forehead, I would suggest doing the repeat only 4 times- the hat was designed as a chemo hat, so the goal is to cover over people's hairlines.
This version was knit with Cascade 220 superwash wool, color 866. The pattern calls for size three needles, creating a nice, dense hat. Nice and warm to wear out in the snow. I also have a but of an obsession with knitting yarn on oddly-sized needles, if you haven't noticed- I like the resulting changes in texture.

The pattern, if you are interested, is available at: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEfall04/knittyF04surp.pdf. Happy knitting!

Star Hat

Sometimes, I enjoy a spot of color work. I'm particularly fond of fair isle, but I'm willing to try pretty much anything.

This hat is a variation on the "Sunny Flower Fez" from the book Folk Knits. I say variation because I'm generally incapable of following patterns and in this instance changed the color scheme, yarn choice, yarn weight in general, needle size, gauge, and embroidery pattern. (Don't worry, the hat still fits!) (To be fair, the substitutions were made in a calculated, planned out fashion. It fits quite well.) I knit this with Berroco Peruvia, which is a 100% wool yarn that I am quite fond of. The colors here are saddle brown (a dark brown heather), boysenberry (a purple heather), palomino blue (a turquoise heather) and abusar (a blue heather). I knit it with size seven needles (the ball band recommended size 10s, the pattern recommended 5s, I own 7s) so the fabric is a bit on the dense side, which I find desirable in a winter hat. Since the hat didn't remind me of flowers in the colors that I knit it (what kind of flower has a turquoise center?) I embroidered points instead of petals.

Because of the larger gauge, the hat knit up pretty quickly, and I can say from personal experience that it is quite warm and soft. And, most excitingly, I have a lot of leftover yarn...