Here's who wears the flower hat best

Taking a forced break

After a marathon knitting session while in self exile from remodeling work at my house, I have apparently messed up my ulnar nerve. Maybe I can start doing a few rows on each project daily. I will pay much more attention to ergonomics in the future.

Child's hat and scarf set

My new friend, Hattie, models a hat and scarf made from Bernat Blanket on US size 13 needles. I can get another set from a 300 g ball if I make the scarf slightly more narrow and shorter. This one is 4.5" x 46". I will make the next one 4" x whatever is left, hopefully about 40".

This is a prayer shawl group item, which the church will give to the Micah ministry.

The snowball hat

I finally finished this little pest. 

This is the one I've had to start over about four times. Here is the actual link to the pattern. http://www.allfreeknitting.com/Ribbed-Hats/Simple-Snowball-Beanie

So I finished it on Sunday, and despite some weird loose stitches in places, I wasn't too displeased with it. It's pretty simple, just a 2x2 rib for about an inch and a half, then slightly larger needles and a 7x3 rib for the body. Yes, after the decreases, you really do cinch together 40 stitches. They closed up pretty well.

I knew I never saw any 100% cotton hat patterns, but I never understood the reason why until I finished this. When I put it on, it was so loose it threatened to slide off the back of my head. Aha! Cotton stretches, but it doesn't spring back like wool or acrylic. Now I know.

I rescued the hat by stitching a plain old Goody elastic headband inside the brim. It's nice and snug now.

I am obsessed with this yarn!

These three hats came from one 300g ball of Bernat Blanket. I bought it on sale for about $7 at Michael's, and there will be several more brought home today, if they still have them. This is great for charitable knitting. I initially wanted to do chemo hats, but donation sites are inconvenient, and the prayer shawl group I'm joining also does hats for those in need--sick, poor, whatever.

The holey crocheted hat was featured in my previous post. It's done with a 9mm hook, and it's mine for bad/wet/dirty hair days. The pattern is at http://www.gleefulthings.com/blog/?p=3258 Others will be made.

The hat in the upper right of the picture is a medium sized slouchy stocking cap. I used 44 stitches, knit in the round on a 16" circular needle, US size 13 or 9mm. It fits me, but not Kent.

The hat in the lower right is a large sized hat from the same pattern as the medium. The only difference is I started it with 48 stitches and made it just a little bit shorter and less slouchy. It fits Kent.

The pattern for the two stocking caps is found here: http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/L32214C.html?noImages=0

They're both going to be donated at the first group meeting I will be attending next month.

The little square was knit with the remaining yarn from the ball. I wanted to see how it would behave with US 11 or 8mm needles. It's downright luxurious to feel, and it would be very warm. Knitting a shawl with this tighter gauge would be very cozy.

This yarn is 100% polyester, machine washable and dryable at low heat and delicate settings, and categorized as Super Bulky, or 6. The closeup shows the size relative to a penny and highlights the chenille texture. It's like knitting with pipe cleaners, except the core is a strong thread instead of a metal wire.

The yarn comes in big balls of 300g, approx 258 yards. http://www.yarnspirations.com/blanket.html

On this site you will also find Bernat Baby Blanket. It's the same yarn, just in colors more suitable for baby items. The baby shades also come in 100g / 86 yard balls, and there is also a Holiday category that comes in the smaller balls.

Slouchey Hat

I decided the cotton hat I had crocheted was too small. I've cleaned up the finishes on it, and I plan to give it a bath and donate it to a cancer center for some lady or child with a smaller head.

This morning, as I was wrapping my wet hair in a scarf to leave for work, I thought it would be nice to have a hat that is loose, made of quick-drying synthetic fibers, and full of holes. If arranged properly, it might just enhance some curls as my hair dries. I found this free pattern, titled Waffle Cone Slouchy Hat at:

http://www.gleefulthings.com/blog/?p=3258

It's made with super bulky (category 6) yarn. The pattern suggests Lion Brand Hometown USA or Wool-Ease Thick and Quick. It requires about 80 yards. At the store, they had a few unpopular shades of Bernat Blanket on sale for $6.99 for about 280 yards. This yarn is sort of like a chenille, and it's 100% polyester. I find acrylic to be itchy. Now that I've made it once, I could knock out another in about three hours.

Here's a close-up of the hat without the model.

With what I have left, I'm going to knit a unisex hat to donate. I think this yarn would feel very soft and nice on a tender head. It will need to be tightly knit, so a person with hair loss won't have their skin showing through. There are a couple of patterns I'm considering. I'll keep you posted.

Crochet hat from www.crochethooksyou.com

I had this huge ball of yarn I bought when I first started knitting. It's a fairly rough cotton, suitable for dish cloths. I'd like to start knitting or crocheting hats for people undergoing cancer treatments, so I used the scratchy yarn and made one for sport.

Using up the yarn from Elsa's hat.

I also finished off the yellow ball. Two yarns with three stones. I had toyed with the idea of using the yellow along with the variegated stuff in making Elsa's scarf, but I decided against it. I was having enough trouble with one color.  Kasia picked the hat yarn, and since she has some color blindness, I wanted to use yellow, because I know it's one she can see well.

I need to learn to incorporate different colors into my knitting and crochet. This is a scalloped edge I put on a garter-stitched wash cloth, following instructions from the Very Pink Knits Youtube channel. When I knit the cloth, I tried out the technique of slipping the first stitch on every row to create a nice even edge. Then I covered it up. I guess it would have been worth the trouble if I was going to leave it without a border.

Here's a little more detail. You do a single crochet, skip a stitch or row, then do five double crochets in one space.

Then I decided to try some stripes with a single-crochet cloth. I bordered it with double crochets all around.

Finally, I finished off both yarns by doing the old tried and true diagonal cloth. I overestimated what was left of the yellow, so I ended up ripping it back to the 39th row after completing the 66th or so. I used larger needles because I was trying to conserve the yarn. In doing so, I realized I ended up with a much thinner, lighter cloth (duh) that way. If the yarn isn't going into the fabric it knits up looser and thinner. Who'd a thunk it?

I looked around for a method to incorporate crochet into the inner rows that end up with some pretty lacy holes due to the way the stitches are increased and decreased in knitting the diamond. I didn't find any, and I messed around with trying to figure it out on my own without success. Here's a closeup of the holes.

One is supposed to crochet with a hook of the same diameter as the knitting needles. I tried various edges, but I ended up with a Goldilocks problem. My border was either too tight and puckered up the knitting, or it was too loose and created little ruffles. The striped crocheted cloth above has a slight ruffle problem.

This cloth was knit with 6 mm needles. I tried various combinations of singles, doubles, half-doubles, and chaining between the holes. I eventually settled on simply putting two single crochets in each of the large holes just inside the edge, leaving the next set of holes as they were. If I did this with a 6 mm hook, it was too tight. If I tried to loosen it up by chaining between each set of two singles, it was too loose. I finally finished it by putting the two singles in each hole with nothing in between, but with a few extra chains to turn the corners, using a 6.5 mm hook. I still got ruffles, but by then I was ready to go to bed, and my washcloth was getting pretty fragile from all the crocheting and ripping, so I declared it done.

I'm done knitting dish/wash cloths for now. For my bus projects, I'm going to bring along my giant ball of ivory and practice crochet stitches from a book of blankets for toddlers that I bought, so I'll be good at it when I start the pastel colored blanket. Remember my gauge swatch? I'm going to make several different 9" x 9" swatches, but all of different stitches.

I also have this cute little kimono planned, in a light gray cotton yarn. I need to get it started so she can actually wear it.

Needless to say (Needles to say?), nothing else is getting done around here.

I'm inserting another picture of the scalloped edge because I don't know how to tell facebook which picture to use in links, and it seems to want to use the last one.

Next up: Mobius Cowl FAIL

Update: I wore this once, decided I hate the way it curls up and the fact that it's too long and skinny. I intended to unravel it and use it again, but when I tried to make a cut to get the process started, I ended up with something that wouldn't unravel. It's in the trash now. RIP.

Here's what I'm making with the free yarn I got when I took a crochet class at JoAnn Fabrics. It has six rows of garter stitch on the bottom for stability, and I hope when it gets near the end I'll be able to top it off with another six. It depends on whether I can accurately eyeball when I have six rows left on the ball.  Actually, I suppose I could measure the next round to see how much yarn is used and mark the spot on the ball where there will be just enough for six rows and a bind-off.  Guess I'm a genius or something.

I read about this in a pattern for a kid's cowl. You make it Mobius by purposely giving the stitches a twist before joining. The thing that all knitting in the round projects warn you against. With this off-white yarn that is wrapped with tiny strands of brown, black, and grey, it gives a nice tweedy look on the purl side.

I'm not a fan of acrylic, and I would not have purchased this yarn for myself, but it's pretty easy to work with, and it should be fairly warm for this job. And it was free. Free is good.

This is how it turned out. I'm just going to have to quit improvising and actually follow patterns. I thought by cramming as many stitches on the circular needle as I could, I'd get a dense knit. Nope, it just makes for a bigger circle. This is not going to be a scarf. More like a fat necklace. It's still somewhat decorative.

Red Heart Sashay

Every needleworker needs to make one of these at some point, right? I picked up a ball of this stuff on sale for less than $3.00.

The yarn does all the work. It's actually a net that's a couple of inches wide. You simply knit it in rows of 3 or 4, or you crochet it. Instead of manipulating yarn between knitting needles or around a crochet hook, you use the little ladders that are along the top edge. Here's what it looks like off the ball.

To crochet, you catch up 10 of the ladders on your hook, and you pull the one closest to the hook end up through all the others. That's why it ruffles. Then you catch up 10 more until the whole ball is gone.

If I had knitted it, I would have put four of the little ladders on a needle and start knitting away. It seemed a little more complicated, what with having to manipulate the yarn all in a wad.

It's supposed to be about a 2 hour job. I'm sure I spent more than that.

Cheers!

It really did turn out better.

Grandpa delivered it today, and wonder of wonders, it fits! Our lovely model is detailing the purl side. You know, the one with all the woven-in yarny bits. She makes it beautiful.

Finished this one yesterday. It's definitely not going to be as loose as the rib knit one. I actually hope it's loose enough to comfortably go over her head and hug her neck just a little bit.

What I hope is a better neck warmer

Finished this one yesterday. It's definitely not going to be as loose as the rib knit one. I actually hope it's loose enough to comfortably go over her head and hug her neck just a little bit.

Pot Holders Are Hard!

It looks simple enough. Cast on 28 stitches, then knit it until it's a square. See those three strands of yarn coming out to the right? I'm knitting with them together, as if they constitute one strand. It's a good thing I chose to use straight needles, because manipulating these tight, tight stitches involves some bracing of the needle against something stationary, and that wouldn't be possible with the circulars. Each stitch requires some scootching of the stitches up to the ends so that one can be slipped off carefully. It takes some force, so I can't just trust that a simple swipe of the right needle will get only the one I want. The bad news is that it's very slow going. The good news is that it won't take nearly as many rows to get the length I need as it would if I were knitting with a single strand of yarn. The tightness of the the stitches is what will make it a good, thick piece of material that can be used for handling hot things.

I finally finished the little buggers. First and last set made with three strands.

A Tale of Two Hats (and Scarves) Part II

Kasia and I went to Michael's, and she picked out the hat and yarn she wanted for Elsa. She wanted it to tie on , because Elsa doesn't particularly like having a hat on her head, and she wanted 100% cotton to be gentle to sweet baby skin. Here is a picture of the selected pattern, and the cotton yarn is the same Lily Sugar and Cream that I use for all the dish cloths.  It's a pretty multi-color with blue, green, and yellow mixed in. I told Kasia I couldn't add the little pattern that is shown, but she wanted it solid, so we were good to go.

It has the little ear flaps to keep her warm, and ties to keep it on. The flaps are knit using a technique called wrap and turn.

Thank goodness for YouTube. I would never have understood this without watching someone do it. Let's get started.

First, you knit the ear flaps using the aforementioned wrap and turn. It's all knit flat at this point.



Then you knit a few more rows to get the back up to the right height and cast on some more stitches that will become the round part that frames her face. After casting on, I was ready to join in the round, so I switched to a long cable and set it up for magic loop. The orange stitch marker represents where each round begins and ends.

I've split the stitches in half at the point that will be at the top of her forehead and pulled the long loop out there, on the left, and I've joined in the round. In the finished hat, the point where the loop comes out (green stitch marker) ended up being a little bit wide, due to the constant pressure of the cable. I kind of coaxed it back tighter when I washed the hat, but I need to study up on how to prevent that.

I've knit halfway, to the green stitch marker, and done the magic loop do-si-do where you drop the empty needle, reload, and return the two halves to the starting position.



Now some more boring stuff happened and I kept knitting the stockinette stitch until it was as tall as it needed to be. This is a few rows later. Remember how I told you in Part I that stockinette rolls? On this hat, it has been stabilized because the ear flaps and the first nine rows of the body of the hat are in garter stitch.

There are no more interim pictures. I have done the decreases according to the pattern. In this one, there is one round of continued knitting at the smaller circumference before the next decrease. I like that. I think the sudden decreases on Kent's hat made it a little bit pucker-y. Here it has been decreased to four stitches, and it's ready to cinch up.

The final steps were to add a pom-pom at the top and knit icord ties. Yay! An excuse to buy a pom-pom maker! I'll toss in a couple of videos about those items here. I didn't take any progress pictures as I added them to this hat. The icord was pretty neat in that it's not sewn on, but just knit into the stitches at the edges of the ear flaps.

I had lots of yarn left over, since we bought three balls, not thinking that two of them were for other colors in the original. So I decided to knit a cowl. I squeezed it onto a 16" cord and knit it all in a 2x2 rib stitch. It came out much larger than I thought it would, so right now I'm working on another scarf that I intend to knit flat and then sew the ends together into a neck warmer. Here's our lovely model.

See how loose the cowl is? Nathan couldn't get her to keep the hat on, but he had the bright idea of adding a hoodie, and she was OK with it then. Here's the other scarf in progress.

Just a little stockinette, bordered by some seed stitches. I really should concentrate and get it finished, now that the weather's getting colder. I have a set of pot holders going for Jason, a headband for myself, a constant dish cloth for bus knitting, and I'm making "plarn" from plastic Target bags to I can knit or crochet shopping bags from it. But, I'm all hot and bothered about crocheting a blanket for Elsa, so I'm probably going to get that going, too. Here is the selected yarn, Lily Sugar and Cream Pretty Pastels. I have crocheted a gauge swatch using a solid yellow of the same yarn and the pattern I chose from the book I bought. We'll see which project gets completed and added to the blog first. Happy Knitting and Hooking!

A Tale of Two Hats (and Scarves) Part I

OK. I knew I wanted to make a hat for my sweet Elsa, but I needed to knit an easy one first. Enter Kent The Guinea Pig. We went to the store and shopped for yarn together. He chose an 80% Acrylic 20% Alpaca blend in a nice, manly brown color. I decided to use the easiest possible pattern, shown here:

All the scribbles are where I decided how many stitches to cast on so it would fit his head. It had to be a multiple of 8. I decided on 104, and I placed stitch markers every 8 so I could keep track of them.





This is maybe the third time I have started this hat over. The first time, I had the yarn coming from the left needle, as usual, and I was surprised that I was knitting a flat sheet, instead of a tube, as I intended.

The next time I started it over, I tried to use the magic loop method. (More later.) I got my halves mixed up, and after a while, I kept adding length to one half, while the other half remained short.

Then, I decided I'd work at knitting in the round and ignore magic loop until I got ready to decrease the stitches. So, I cast my 104 stitches on again, and started knitting away using a 24" circular set.

Remember I said the locking of the tips to the cable would become important later? Let's back up to the post about my purchase of the interchangeable needle set. Here's a picture of a cable ready to connect to the tip, with its little key sticking out.

The tip screws onto the cable threads, and the key gives you leverage to tighten it up. On this hat, somewhere around 4" in length, one of my tips became disconnected from its cable. I lost everything, because I was unable to pick each of the stitches back up when I tried to insert a lifeline after the fact. I kept getting off by a row or something.

So, I finally had my act together. Knit in the proper direction. Actually join in the round, instead of knitting flat on round needles. Check the integrity of the cable and tip joints on a regular basis. Insert lifelines frequently. So, here's the final cast-on. We're ready to go!

What's wrong with this picture, you say? Could it be that I don't have any working yarn, but instead I have two tails? You are correct! After I cast on my stitches, I cut the wrong yarn. It kind of reminds me of Apollo 13, when Kevin Bacon put duct tape over the switch that would separate the command module from the LEM, because they were living in it at the time. He didn't want to accidentally eject Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton. But I digress.

It was easy to attach the working yarn and bury the joint in the rolled brim of the hat. Hardly a kill-the-astronauts sort of disaster.

Here we are, joined in the round, ready to add some height!

We have our height. See how the brim rolls? The stockinette stitch just naturally wants to do that. That's why, when you buy a sweater, there's usually a few inches of rib stitch at the bottom, to prevent this from happening. Here I have switched from the 24" cable to the 40" one so I can use the magic loop. I've also switched to my new wood tips because the set came while I was working on this project, and the metal tips are just too darned slippery.

So, what's magic loop? It's a method of knitting in the round without the need to resort to using double-pointed needles. When the circumference of the knitted item becomes much smaller than your circular needles, you have to switch to something smaller. Here's an excellent video that explains what's going on here:

MAGIC LOOP

If you don't do the magic loop, you have to use three or more double-pointed needles, and I obviously don't have the skills to keep track of that!

DOUBLE-POINTED NEEDLES

So, I finally got the hang of the magic loop and started decreasing stitches by knitting two of every set of eight together, until I had nine stitches left at the crown, ran the yarn through them, cinched them up and tied up the hat.

Kent models with his World Series shirt. I had some yarn left over, and the desire to learn crochet, so I found this easy pattern on the Lion Brand website. You simply do every row in a half double crochet, and it comes out nicely ribbed. I did take a crochet class at Jo-Ann because the books and YouTube just weren't doing it for me. The hat took one ball and part of another. The scarf used it up, and I also ended up buying another ball of yarn. It's still a little shorter than I'd like, but he's fine with it. The set:

Now I'm ready to rock and roll on Elsa's! To be continued.

Making the leap to interchangeable needles.

I wanted to make a hat by knitting in the round.

I tried out one of these circular needle affairs, but I didn't like it, because the connecting cable was way too stiff.  I decided to shop around for one of those circular needle sets, because they can also be used for straight knitting, and I wouldn't need to buy any more straight needles. I started by checking Amazon reviews, and narrowed it down to the Knitter's Pride brand.





Then I watched this review:

I didn't want to commit to a full set without knitting on a few of the different ones, so I ordered this little Comby Sampler.

It has cables to make 24" and 40" circles, plus three different tips: Dreamz, Cubics, and Nova. The Nova is metal, and it is the least expensive of the three. In this set, it's a US size 8. The two wooden ones are shown in close-up below.

The one on the left is a US size 7 Cubics, and you can see here that it is square in cross section. The one on the right is the US size 6 Dreamz.

I played with all three and decided the Cubics was nice, but since the Cubics sets have fewer sizes, I would go for the Dreamz. The Nova was out because a beginner has trouble keeping the stitches on a metal needle. They are slippery.

The tips are 4 1/2" long. I was concerned they might be too short, especially after trying the cheap bamboo ones. The ones in the set felt really good.

Each tip screws onto the threaded end of the cable. There is a hole that goes through the bottom of each tip where you can insert a little key to get some leverage and make the joint tight. This is a picture of the cable end with the key sticking through it.

As Amy points out in the video above, the hole also provides an easy method for inserting a lifeline.

Knowing how the pieces go together will become important when I post about starting to knit my first project in the round.




Today I ordered the deluxe set of the Dreamz. It contains nine  different sizes of needles, four cables in three sizes, and some little accessories for storing projects on the cables while you use the needles for a different project.

Knitter's Pride Deluxe Dreamz












I am working on the hat on the US size 8 Nova metal needles attached to the 24" cord. As I begin it from scratch for the fourth time, I will update the blog with progress notes and tell the story of each of the project's incarnations thus far.