Lotus Hat

So I've been busy these last few days catching up on some knitting. I've made some good progress on the Little Minx socks and the zauberball is showing up the textured pattern very nicely but the horizontal stripes haven't made an appearance as yet. Hopefully a good night of knitting this evening will change that and I'll take some photos to show you the difference.

But I do have a finished hat to show you - the Lotus hat designed by uptownpurls. The pattern is free, knitted in aranweight and is a nice quick knit. It's charted rather than written but its very simple to follow.

The only thing to watch out for is when the decreases change slant - you can see the criss cross pattern in the picture? One ridge is created by a K2tog decrease shifting one stitch for about 4 rows or so, then it starts a new ridge in the opposite direction. You need to use an SSK decrease here to keep the new ridge definition. The chart is very clear and tells you this but I didn't notice at first and had to take back a few rows - which was a pain with all the lace YO's floating around. If you do make a mistake and have to rip back, check your needle count before carrying on;-)) It'll be a YO missed out somewhere along the row.

But if you are much more with it than me:-) then you will rattle through this lovely design. It's designed as a beanie but also has instructions to increase the length as well if you prefer a longer hat. When it says the beanie version will just touch the ears - it means exactly that! I was worried it was a little too neat for me but now I've blocked it and set it to dry on the dummy head, it's grown slightly - just enough to be a better fit. Some knitters on ravelry have said that the larger size is too big and have to turn the rib edging over to fit better so maybe 3 pattern repeats and blocking is the best answer for a small/medium sized head and 4 pattern repeats for a large?

Overall, I love the pattern - a simple lace knit with impressive results. The decreasing for the crown is very cleverly written and the pattern flows seamlessly. Well worth the effort this one:-)

Turn a square... or two

It always happens at this time of the year - the knitting rush towards christmas is on and the gaps between posts gets longer! So much making going on that I can't show you quite yet but for now you can get a peek at the hat I finished last night. The weather is so dull today I had to use a lamp for photos but you can see it's a stripey blue beanie from Jared Flood's 'Turn a Square' pattern.

The pattern is super easy to knit up and I finished this in an afternoon/evening. It's worked in worsted weight using one solid and one tonal yarn. The lighter stripe is my tonal yarn but it is very subtle in these photos. I think the contrast between the two yarns may be too much - it gives really definite stripes but the tonal subtleties are a bit lost. Maybe having the lighter colour as the predominant one would help.

I used two DK yarns  - which didn't seem the same thickness, go figure! -  so I had to make some pattern alternations. The pattern calls for stripes in 2 rows, then 3 row thicknesses. My thinner yarn was for the three rows but didn't look much thicker than my chunkier two row yarn so I ended up knitting 4 instead. Now this is finished I'm thinking it is an excellent beanie but a bit neat to be flattering for the people I have it in mind for as presents so I'm going to cast on a few more stitches for the next one to give a slightly looser fit.

And I've even got the yarn all ready waiting to be cast on:-) It has a slight yellow tinge from the artificial light but this should knit up to be a lovely soft tonal pink and grey hat. I may change the solid colour to a grey tone but it depends if I have any in my stash! Mmmm, I think there is a little angora left from the soft grey cornflower cowl....... I'm thinking that would work better. Keep you posted on how this works out. If there is decent light tomorrow, you may even get some colour accurate photos!

Oh, and there are some snowflakes in the wind this week I have to show you - metaphorically speaking:-) Now back to some christmas speed knitting....... see you soon!

Star crossed berets

After a little break, I'm back with some knitting for you. Not an intentional break, more one of those breaks where you suddenly go, I haven't blogged for week? No! That can't be right, but you double check and it is. Well, all I can say is time sure moves quickly when you start DIY! But I have a nice newly painted kitchen now. All the 'lovely' acid yellow paint is finally gone - not painted by us, I hasten to add. I like colour but even I struggled with this tone - bleh!

Anyway, after 4 days of DIY, I've been recovering from the knitting deprivation by knitting some quick projects - instant gratification:-) After I knitted the red star crossed beret in chunky yarn which turned out on the big side, I decided to drop down to aran weight and smaller needles to see if I could get the perfect fit for this pattern. And, voila! Nice weight, handle, drape and just enough slouch without drowning me in beret! If you want to try this smaller version, I used 5.5mm needles for the rib and 6.5mm for the cables and no modifications to the pattern. I did try cutting out some of the cable repeat and got a beanie look so I ripped back and knitted the pattern as is and it works just fine.

This yarn is a soft cotton mix from my stash, wendy fashion aran - long out of production I'd imagine - but it has a wonderfully soft feel and gives excellent drape. This pattern is very quick to knit up. I would say overall it took me about 3-4 hours watching tv so it could be knitted quicker if you were very focused!

I finally got some dry weather yesterday to get hat wearing photos taken. The red star crossed has been waiting a long time. You can see compared to the pale purple one the red beret is a lot bigger generally and has a LOT of slouch! But, it's still fun and being 100% wool is very warm. Being fuller, I can also get it to cover my ears for wintertime weather:-) This one is staying mine. But I don't think I suit the purple tones as well so I'll save that one for a present. Yes, I am starting to think christmas - well, the weather is definitely saying Autumn to me so I'm automatically looking for warmer, chunkier yarns to knit with, which is a bad sign when you haven't really had much of summer yet! (in the UK).

But looking on the good side, all this rain means I can stay in and do more knitting. I have also finished another hat - pics tomorrow - and I have been dabbling with a mini tote and some stripey socks - yup, more of them. But they are more experiments than definite projects. If I like them then you may see them soon!

Until then, happy knitting!

Urchin

Some knitting has been going on this last weekend. In fact I'm in the middle of two new projects, Urchin and the Wicked fushia vest:-) Today, I thought I'd bring you up to date with Urchin, a lovely super chunky knitted hat designed by Ysolda. It's designed sideways so you are knitting the wedges of a pie with short row Wrap & Turns (W&T) - which are more commonly found in short row heels for socks.

Have a closer look:-) the first time I saw this I thought, that yarn looks familiar, I'm sure I have something similar in my stash that would be perfect, but couldn't find it at the time so put the pattern into my file and forgot about it for a while. Recently though, I saw some lovely finished examples on Ravelry and thought hmm, yes, I never did start that, I'll see if I have any yarn that would work. And this time I did!

My first choice was Paton's blue super chunky Symphony. I used this a lot for some crocheted cloche hats and slippers a few christmases ago and I was experimenting with the chocolate colourway for my chunky glove pattern last christmas. I knitted a swatch to get gauge and it just would not work. When I reached gauge, the knitting was so loose that it was virtually lace! So back to the stash I went. Rummage, rummage. I pulled out a range of all thicknesses for this and eventually I got gauge with this super lovely Baba yarn from Adriafil - very yummy!

Yarn found, I plunged right into knitting the pattern. As usual, a lovely pattern that is very enjoyable to knit. I was steaming away with this and then realised that one ball was not going to be enough. Nope, not even with a very close margin! 5 wedges out of 8 knitted and the inevitable happened - yarn gone.

The problem with a stash is sometimes balls lose their labels and this one was label-less and bought 'somewhere' online. I thought it was a hopeless case and it was time to rip it all back and start again with another new yarn but the next day, I woke up and suddenly remembered what shop I bought it from. I had no idea the brand or how long ago I bought this, although I was estimating about three years ago? The way fashions and colours change, I wasn't expecting to be lucky but what do you know! There it was, Adriafil baba in multicoloured reds. Whew!!

So one multi-coloured red urchin can soon be finished when the postman decides to deliver my yarn..... Come on, come on! I didn't want to stop knitting this and I can't wait to start it again!

Cables, cables everywhere!

So the cabled Habitat is finished! And a grand knit it was too. I just realised today that the cabley mitts in the Vogue knitting Fall 2008 issue I wanted to knit before christmas - and ran out of time for - were designed by the same guy, Jared Flood aka Brooklyn Tweed. I seem to be finding his patterns everywhere at the moment. I nearly started his beret pattern Relm in the new Knit 1 magazine last night too. But not quite yet. I'll have to save that for later.

I knitted up the larger size for this pattern and it does snuggly cover the ears but if you don't like not seeing any of your hair to soften the pull-on look then I'd go for the shorter version! It's a bit big on me but fine on a guy. If I were knitting this for an average female head then it would definitely be the smaller version I'd use. I'd also like to see how this knits up in a nearly solid yarn. I like the tweed - and it seemed apt (brooklyn tweed) - but I think this yarn is maybe slightly too busy and fights the cables a little. I want to see the cables all merging and twirling together a bit more!

I think I may have cables on the brain for as soon as I finished this lovely cable creation, I have started another. Not another Habitat, yet, but a lovely cabled beret I found in Vogue knitting's holiday issue 2008. It's called cabled tam, pattern no 9 by Jennifer Hagan. It's full of cables, just full of them! At least the pattern is easy enough to remember, it just repeats 5 times in the round. But more on that tomorrow!

For now, I'll leave you with a last look at the lovely tweedy habitat hat in 100% wool, very snuggly and warm while I get going on my cables - the cables are calling me!

Cables and Costumes

New project on the go. This is the cable hat by Brooklyn Tweed called Habitat. It is a lovely complex mix of cables that is a joy to knit. The pattern is perfectly logical to follow and clearly laid out in charts so you can work away and see your progression. I'm not quite half way yet but that could be me trying to watch films whilst knitting. I don't really get much done as I have to keep referring to the chart, losing my place and waiting for a quiet bit in the film to count back and check my place.

It's aran weight, knitting up in Rowan tweed and the pattern comes in two sizes - basically you knit more length for a bigger head but the pattern has been designed to take both sizes into consideration - clever. This is a pull-on hat and although the pics show a man wearing it, this yarn isn't looking very masculine to me. Maybe it'll end up being for either.

For those of you interested, so far whilst knitting this hat I've watched Pride and Prejudice - 1940's version with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Aaah.

Moonstruck with Cher (this was because I was listening to Dean Martin's 'That's Amore' earlier this week),

and first two episodes of Torchwood - as I missed the beginning episodes and I'm catching up. So quite a mix. Next on the list is Beetlejuice - because I listened to Harry Belafonte's 'Day-o'. I found a clip on you tube for you to watch:-) Enjoy!

Also, An affair to Remember and probably The Scarlet Pimpernel. No reason for this, I always love it:-) But definitely the 1984 version with Anthony Andrews. Mmm, the costumes.... I found this pic here, and there are plenty more to peruse!

'Sink me, m'dear, ain't this snuff quite the thing, wat?'

But they may have to wait as Miss Marple is on this evening 'The 4.50 from Paddington' - the newer version with Geraline McEwan. I think I missed this the first time round so I'm looking forward to it. (The 1980's version with Joan Hickson is very good too.) But I don't expect to get much cable knitting done. Maybe I'll have to start another sock for some mindless knitting to keep me busy.

Yes, the opal socks are now finished!!! Just have to take some photos to show you. They fit well and look good on so - success:-)

Red Daisy

Red daisy has been sitting around waiting for the daisies to materialise and they have been a week or so in the 'getting-round-to' pile. Goodness knows why as they were fun to stitch and I enjoyed every minute - even though it probably took longer to stitch than knit the whole hat! The hat is now completely transformed....

From solid red to a field of friendly flowers.

This is a photo heavy post today so you can see the hat from all angles. You don't notice in all the pics but the back view seems a bit sparse in the daisy department - and there was me trying not to overkill as usual! I think I will add a few more and go for the full head of flowers:) Can't have a boring bit!

This pattern was a slight variation of the Classic Elite Daisy Chapeau - which did have big 3D daisies on a garter stitch brim. It did look very sweet on the little girl modelling it but I don't think I could quite get away with it these days! I've also changed the brim to a 2x2 rib but I think a roll top edge would look softer, don't you?

The idea for the hand stitch came from a little pin holder I made when I was young when I learned chain, daisy stitch and just playing with the threads stitch - see the pink little daisy? I remember making this and solemnly gathering pins to store safely in the four felt pages.

So I've adapted the flower motif onto the hat for the big little girls out there who still want a bit of daisy friendliness in their day!