Striped Beanie w/ modifications

Knitting with my beloved Felted Tweed is time well spent indeed. Any respectable inventory of this fair yarn's qualities would have to include mention of the unbelievable array of colors from which to choose, the springy-sproinginess of its hand, and of course, the felt-in-your-hand workability of it. If it were a sailboat, Katharine Hepburn would certainly describe it like this:

Yar. Yes indeed.

The Specs:

Pattern: Striped Beanie by Martin Storey

Yarn: Felted Tweed: 'Rage', 'Avocado' and 'Treacle', bits and bobs of the first two, about a third of a skein of the latter.

Needles: size 3 and 5

Mods: So many that they are included in several paragraphs below. A departure! Usually I'm a go-with-the-flow-it's-all-good type of knitter, but there were many ways to make this pattern work better.

First off, knitting this hat in the round was absolutely essential. Back and forth and then seaming this mother up? Martin, please. So not happening around this joint. Doing it in the round just made much better sense to me and made for an all-around pleasant knitting experience, which is how I like my hobbies.

My next modification involved the jogless seam technique à la Brooklyn Tweed's Turn-a-Square, which if we're going to get real for a moment, should be acknowledged as the all-time most clever way to ever deal with the Stripe Problem. No jog. Problem fixed. Next.

Since we are cannibalizing BT's Turn-a-Square, we might as well also borrow with super awesome crown decreases, because let's face it, they just work. Please note: I am not the first person on Ravelry to come up with these ideas by any means, many other more intrepid knitters then me have done them to great effect. Just go and check the gallery and you will see the magic all in one place.

A word about the book in which this pattern is published: Knitting for Him: 27 Classic Patterns to Keep Him Warm. Now, given the title, it could have easily been one of those odious books that trots out the tired clichés about fickle men and the needy women that risk relationship stability by knitting them sweaters. But I am very relieved to say that but it isn't. It doesn't press any of my major gender buttons and that's a good thing! The projects are super-stylish and worn by semi-hot English fly fishermen and country gents. At least in my fantasy they are...

Well friends, I have ridden this hat wave just about as far as she'll take me. I might have one or two in the pipeline for 2010-2011, but we are gradually transitioning over to something more seasonally appropriate: shawls. Stay tuned!

Good Golly

Several weeks ago, before I became a virtuous knitter who made do with her (quite abundant) stash, I was a slovenly, undisciplined knitter who bought many random skeins of Madeline Tosh yarn with no particular project in mind at all. And boy am I glad that I did! Because now that I've made a deal not to buy yarn without much discernment and a solemn sense of gravitas , I am so glad that this is the yarn that I chose to buy. MadTosh has colors to beat the band! Just ask Babs, she patiently stood by while I spent what must have felt like an eternity dithering as I made my choices [wait...do you like Terrarium or Ginger better? What about Faubourg?]. Of course in the end I bought all of the colors I wanted. I'm sure she's wishing she could get that half hour back....but luckily she is a lifer like me, so she played along. *Take it away, Dionne*

The Specs
Pattern: Molly by Erin Ruth
Yarn: Madeline Tosh DK in 'Glazed Pecan', .75 of a skein
Needles: size 3 and size 6
Mods: Because the cable and stitch pattern rows don't match up, you are keeping track of two things at once, and I have decided that I no longer willing to do that. Nope. Life's too short, knitters! So I made the cable row match up with the pattern row. And no one died.

I am extremely happy with this pattern. I was a bit dubious at first because a busy stitch pattern combined with cables has the potential to be quite loud and even maybe a little vomit inducing, does it not? I mean, the potential for this to go way off the rails is indeed quite high. We're talking Shetland Triangle-in-Koigu off the rails. Luckily that didn't happen here and everything comes together in a way that I find quite pleasing.

This yarn is truly everything it's made out to be. Not only gorgeous but ultra-sproingy! It's the perfect yarn for a slouchy hat. My pal Carolyn joked that I am a hat machine. What can I say? It's my perfect project. It's small. It will probably fit. You can put it in your purse. And if you muff it up, who cares? It's just a hat!

Strago Mittens

About 17 seconds after first seeing this pattern I had not only downloaded the pattern but also sent my young one up to the 3rd floor to retrieve the yarn which was at the bottom of a tupperware container desperately screaming STRAGO! STRAGO! Babs and I both bought this yarn, Jamieson & Smith Natural Shetland, at Rhinebeck 09 for a colorwork project such as this. Hip hip hooray for pre-buying!

The Specs:

Pattern: Strago mittens by Jared Flood

Yarn: Jamieson & Smith Shetland Supreme, 2-ply Jumper Weight, 'Yuglet' & 'Katmollet'

Needles: size 3, Magic Loop

Size: L

Mods: None

This is an exceedingly satisfying color work project in that after a few rows you completely get the logic of the pattern and can visually predict what is supposed to be happening. If you haven't tried stranded knitting, this might be a very nice first project.

Although I truly loved this project, knitting these mittens gave me a little insight into why I might have such a pronounced aversion to socks. Simply put: there are two of them. Somehow my addled-1980s-teenage-former-stoner brain can't deal with the second _______ (sock, mitten,what-have-you) as it just feels like a do-over. Don't make me make that again, I've already made that and I want to make something else now! So you can see that I require a good deal of mental gymnastics to be able to finish a project like this as I just lose steam. Where is the knitting equivalent of a fluffer when I need one? Viggo, are you available?

Several people asked me about the whole knitting-iPad intersection. WOW is it a game changer. It is the perfect pattern keeper! If you use the Goodreader app you can also annotate the pattern and mark your place, leave notes, as well as connect directly to your Ravelry pattern library. No more emailing the pattern to Gary at work asking him to print it out on his color printer and subsequent withholding of affection when he forgets the pattern in his office. So economical! I'm saving so much money!

Baltic

After all the pay-attention-to-your-chart color work knitting that's been happening around here, I've been in serious need of a plain jane zone-out knit. This is a first of a series of unimpressive yet satisfying plain knits that you'll be seeing up in here over the next several days. You'll be forgiven if you're not bowled over by them and wonder to yourself "...is that what knitblogging has come to?". Why yes, yes it has.

The Specs:

Pattern: The Big Easy by Vivian Aubrey

Yarn: Tosh Vintage in 'Baltic', .75 of a skein

Needles: size 7 & 9

Mods: None. I'm all about following the rules.

Sometimes, like when you're watching hockey or have blown out your adrenals playing Angry Birds for three+ hours, you just need a pattern that you can knit and knit on without checking your new iPad(!!) to see which row you're on, you know?

I have been longing to use the MadTosh color 'Baltic' for a very, very long time. I am not even a blue person but wow I love this color. It has a touch of silver and edges in different directions toward teal and green at the same. In other words, you can stare at it a long time and it will mesmerize you...

I am a huge fan of this pattern, mainly because of the fact that the end result is a plain hat with an interesting shape. There's a slouchiness here that seems a tad old fashioned yet still modern. The proof? The model you see pictured here didn't throw the hat at me in disgust after our bathroom photo shoot. She is in fact-sshhh-still wearing it...

Ida's Kitchen: Addiction Alert!

For all of you thinking about doing the recently released Through the Loops pattern Ida's Kitchen, please beware that you will be undertaking a project that is 100% addictive and may very well be one that you want to knit over and over again in a dizzying array of combinations (think Chevron Scarf and BSJ). Luckily if you've spent the last several years randomly acquiring skeins of yarn with no purpose at all, this won't be a problem for you. Yep.

The Specs:

Pattern: Ida's Kitchen by Kirsten Kapur

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpaca Mélange in 'Cornflower' and 'Pomegranate'; Random skeins of Brown Sheep Naturespun Sport in various shades (see below).

Needles: size 6 and 8

Mods: Say what?

This was one fast knit people. Two days tops. And so much fun to watch the colors change! This project has scrap-buster written all over it because you could easily adjust the pattern to accommodate the bit and bobs of sport weight that you have.

Virtuous Knitter Alert: For this hat I used yarn 100% from stash. Go me! I had some BSA Mélange on hand that I'd been dying to try. I also had a mitten kit composed of Naturespun Sport that I'd purchased a while ago and knew that the likelihood of making the mittens was become dimmer by the day, so I repurposed it and put it into service for this project.

But of course me being perpetually stuck in a two-steps-forward, one-step-back mode, on my way to the airport last week ago I picked up more* BSA Mélange to make an even bigger and better Ida's Kitchen! So yeah, I'm a lifer.

*to people keeping track of my StashPact 11 avowal to cease and desist from yarn gluttony, this purchase was made BEFORE I signed on, ok?

Caller Herrin

Not much to say really about this pattern, you know, except HOLY TOLEDO IS IT EVER AMAZING. I mean, when I saw this pop up on Kate's blog I knew within a nanosecond that I'd be making it as it has all the hallmarks of a happy making project: intriguing, heretofore unimagined bands of color + tam shape that on me is a beanie but whatever + ability to raid my own personal cache of Shetland Spindrift + stretches of time during winter break when no one will be bugging me! In other words, Caller Herrin has KISMET written all over it.

The Specs:

Pattern: Caller Herrin by Kate Davies

Yarn: Jamieson Shetland Spindrfit---> Ecology Pebble, Atlantic, Titanic,Bracken,Lichen and Eesit. About .30 of each skein. For real!

Needles: size 2.5, which gives the perfect gauge in my opinion.

Time to completion: Let's say about a week of interrupted/distracted knitting.

I'm going to say that this project was slightly more challenging than the Tantallons were from a memorization perspective. Kate noted that you had to 'think in 6s' while knitting it, and I feel that this was correct. If you've done patterns like this, you know what I'm talking about. Many other versions of this hat are popping up around the blogosphere, I particularly like this one posted by THE Cocoknits, a.k.a. my fave Ottawa Senators fan and all around unbelievably talented knitter. Her version is done in the yarn called for in the pattern, Starmore Hebridean 2-ply. This fact of course makes me insanely jealous, but she indicated to me that ordering it from the UK isn't really that expensive after all...so watch this space for some unbridled spending! Except no, I made a pact and promised I wasn't going to do that anymore...damn you accountability and mutual honesty!

I guess I've been bitten pretty hard by the color work bug. I'm currently working on the pair of Isidora mittens you see below. This pattern is from my other colorwork maven, SpillyJane, who was recently featured on the Yarn Harlot's blog, meaning that she now has to either hire a PR agent or enter the witness protection program on account of all the (well-deserved) attention she's getting!

Two Hats

I know I've said it before, but I am such a small accessories knitter. Cowls, hats, shawlettes, mittens, not-too-complicated scarves? I am so there, with bells on. Sweaters--ok, I'll give them a go once in a while just to keep it real. Please note that I DO NOT consider socks to be small accessories. They are the work of Satan himself their own category, mmkay? And I will never knit them again. Got it? Right.

These two hats were completed right before the Junior Texting Dream Team hit the skies on a flight to Dublin that when it left, was headed to an airport that was open but then closed like 5 minutes after it took off. Nothing like being told by a nonchalant, callous airline employee that your kids are on a flight that "...might be diverted to another European city, or circle the airport and land somewhere else." Commence plotzing in 3...2... [...]. Luckily the airport briefly reopened and their flight managed to land but not before I learned the joys of real time tracking of trans-Atlantic airline flights combined with copious amounts of vodka.

The Specs
Pattern: Star-Crossed Slouchy Beret by Natalie Larson
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in 'Pearl'
Needles: 10.5 + 11 addi turbos
Mods: None

Pattern: Hineri by Olga Jazzy
Yarn: Rowan Cocoon, 1 skein in 'Lavender Ice'. Perfect yarn of this project!
Needles: 8 + 9 addi turbos
Mods: None, but I ended up ripping it out at least three times due to my inability to read all the way through a pattern.

For all the colorwork knitting I do (and OH MAN do I have something to show you very soon), I still love a good solid colored hat as much as the next person. So stylish and easy to match with a variety of coats, right? Both of these hats were easy and can thus be classified in the 'knit while watching the idiot box' category. My only word of warning relates to the Hineri pattern--the cables are BEYOND tight, so if you have a larger head, this garment might be a tad too snug for your big Irish noggin'.



While the girls have been gone, we've taken to throwing their shit out rearranging. After an hour or two of gathering the family hand knits, I had amassed this gigantic box. I must say it was a thrill to see some of these again. Ufserud! December Lights tam! Such a pleasure to see you again, I hope your time behind the cookbook shelf wasn't too dusty and unpleasant, welcome back to permanent rotation. The large collection here requires desperate measures, so yesterday I went to Ikea (i.e. where previous lower back injuries are reactivated) and got a storage bench for these beauties. So this is what I'll be watching The Curmudgeon do on New Year's Eve. I hope you all have similarly thrilling plans!

Insert 'Terra' pun here: _____________.

As you might know, I never do anything by half-measures, especially when it comes to participating in land-rush style buying of new brands of yarn. I have a tendency to go, oh what is the expression....whole hog. So yes, a month or so ago, back before the Vikings hadn't thoroughly ripped out my heart and put it through the ritual wood chipper known as tanking on national television, I got a skein or two more of the Shelter than I initially let on. Like, at least four-more-colors-in-multiple-skeins more. See photo above.

After making Habitat, which I recently gave to my favorite Norwegian bachelor farmer, I knew that I was destined to have a long, protracted relationship with this yarn. I wanted to make something more substantial than a hat but not as commitment heavy and pocketbook unfriendly as a sweater, so I set about Ravelry to see what others in my situation had come up with. Several keystrokes later I had my answer: Terra!

The Specs

Pattern: Terra by Jared Flood

Yarn: 4 skeins of Shelter in the color 'Almanac'.

Needles: Size 9

Mods: see below

The main body of this shawl is done in a garter ridge pattern which is easy enough. You make a lot of progress in a short period of time and can easily do other things while knitting, like watch the team you've loved since your childhood implode before your very eyes on national television. Once you get to the lace portion, it's also smooth sailing, because it's easy and quite intuitive. It's only after you really get into it that you realize wow, one row is taking for-ev-er. Sadly once you realize this, you are then immediately obsessed with the fact that it's taking for-ev-er and can't shake the feeling that you're indeed not sitting on the couch watching your QB get a head injury on national television, instead you are in the Knitting Bermuda Triangle, a place where the normal laws of time and space are suspended, as several hours of knitting only seems to leave you back where you were when you started...

Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close up...

I credit the above-described sensation as the reason for my early retreat from the full experience of Terra. Many intrepid knitters on Ravelry had indicated that they only dipped into the fifth skein of Shelter for the last few rows, and since I personally hate the idea of that, I decided to forego the final chart, thereby leaving off the final repeat. The FO is no worse for it as far as I can tell as it's a rather large shawl.

For this pattern I got to try a new technique. I know, another one! The directions would have you finishing the shawl by kitchener stitching the first 12 sts of the provisional cast-on, which for the life of me I couldn't figure out. To me, kitchener stitching had always been a way of joining two edges, so the idea of using the technique to join stitches in a row was about as crazy as a 40+ year old QB who hadn't practiced with his team for 2+ weeks starting a game in less-than-ideal weather conditions. Instead I consulted my Tweeps and the Hungry Knitter herself suggested that I do a sewn bind-off instead, which is actually the bind-off recommended for the main edge of the shawl. One excruciatingly boring Youtube video later and I was in business!

I must say that Shelter has other similar yarns beat, not just in regards to the twee names (Button Jar? Embers? Hayloft? Yes please...) but on the basis of the colors. 'Almanac' has got to be the most gorgeous shade of blue-that-is-almost-black I've ever seen, and I'm not even a blue person at all.

Needy Mom Alert

Something happened on Friday afternoon that hasn't happened in ages and ages and may never happen again, so I am choosing to view is at a star-crossed moment: one of my kids actually gave me a specific request for a hand knit. Not 'willing to wear around the house something I knit'. Not 'wear to bed a pair of socks I made'. But actually 'mom will you knit me a slouchy beret?'. Knock me over with a feather!

The Specs:

Pattern: Star-Crossed Slouchy Beret by Natalie Larson

Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted, .70 of a skein of 'Paris Night'

Needles: size 9 and 10 1/2. If I were making this for a full-grown adult, I'd certainly go up a needle size. This hat is slouchy beret on her but on me it's skull cap material!

Mods: none

Of course I jumped to and cast on in a fit of motherly neediness. Oh you want me to knit you something, you say? Yes right away, I'll try to have that done for you asap so you can show your friends. Maybe you could have them over and I'll make those little Totino pizza rolls and I can serve them to your gang, along with some hot chocolate maybe?

The above interlude brought to you by the needy, pathetic ramblings of a middle aged mom. Ahem.

This is indeed a nice one-day pattern. You know that feeling of blind rage when you see knitters comment on their projects listed on Ravelry and say "oh I finished this in an evening" and for you it ends up taking a week? Yeah, this is not one of those. It's actually a one-day knit. You can bank on it!

I haven't used my beloved Malabrigo in a while, and am pleased to note once again that it is ever the soft luscious fiber to knit with...although I am praying so hard that it won't end up pilling like a mofo like several other of my other Malabrigo knits. Yes, it's the dark underbelly of this yarn for sure, here's hoping that this one will be different because the Paris Night colorway is especially ooh là là magnifique.

This project is a milestone for me for another reason as well, as it represents the first time I have done a particular knitting technique that it likely old hat for most of you. Steeking, you wonder? Cabling-without-cable-needle? No, I am talking about the very pedestrian long tale cast-on. Hmm mmm, you read that correctly. I've never been able to do it before, but this time I was determined to learn how. So I scheduled some special alone time with me and my computer (YOUTUBE, let's keep it PG-13, please!) and after much pausing and replaying, I am now a full-fledged practitioner of the LTCO. And so proud! I'm amazed at what a superior cast on it is, the stitches are perfect and make such an impressive edge. So even if the momentary good will on the part of the junior set directed to me and my craft disappears and we return to 'you and your knitting are embarrassing', at least I'll have my LTCO!