hats – Behind the Smile

January 15, 2018January 15, 2018

FO: XOXO HAT

Happy New Year! I spent the first week of the new year in LA and at home for a nice, cozy staycation. My first week back at work was busy and here it is another three day weekend already.

I finished a hat made with some yarn I got at Lambtown last October. I don’t think I wrote about Lambtown at the time, but it’s a local fiber festival in Dixon. They have yarn & fiber vendors, a junk/antique section, and 4-H events. They have a barn set up where you can see all sorts of fun breeds of sheep.

This year, to my delight, there were militant vegan protesters out front! When they tried to give me their pamphlet I just looked at them dead-eyed and said, “Sorry, meat is delicious.” Haha. Also, one of them got into a yelling match with one of the cops outside the gate. I did not see said protesters outside when I left around an hour later.

Anyway, so I bought this skein of yarn in basically what is safety orange, haha. It is Color Notes Yarn, which is a husband/wife team out of Antioch. It has a great hand and was a pleasure to knit with. I wanted to make an obnoxiously bright hat and attach one of the faux fur bobbles I ordered from Amazon – mission accomplished!

This is not any pattern from Ravelry or books or anything. I just looked up the XOXO cable online and charted out a hat. I think this would look really cute in hot pink and may make another one. I do, after all, have 11 other fur bobbles in various colors to use. Hah. With Stitches West coming up next month, I may try to get another skein of this yarn as I saw Color Notes will be vending at the show.

Coming up I am almost done with my On the Grass sweater, which had 4 million ends to weave in. I have a few of those left, and it needs to be blocked. It should be done by next weekend.

For my new project, I started Whitehorse by Caitlin Hunter. I love her patterns. I ordered some yarn from Knitpicks to make her Zweig pattern, and will be looking at yarn to make Sunset Highway at Stitches.

On another note, I saw that Ravelry has a new feature where you set goals for the year for your completed projects. I put ten down for this year. I think that’s reasonable. I have a couple of pairs of socks that need to be finished as well as some plans for sweaters and a couple hats. I use Goodreads goal feature for books as well (I try to read one per week, minimum) so I think this feature will be good for me for knitting as well. Since I’m definitely more in the mood to knit this year I think I can accomplish that pretty easily. I read one blog where she knit like 37 pairs of socks last year amongst other things and I was like, dude. I must knit hella slow. But, you know: #goals

November 22, 2009June 24, 2010

Stuff I Made That Is Awesome

The end of year crafting extravaganza has begun. I love making presents for people. “People” also includes myself. Okay, mostly myself, haha. Seriously though, I have started two of the three knitting gifts I plan on giving this year, one of which is about 75% completed. So I’m way ahead of my “OMG it’s December 15th??? I should get started on the present making!!” I usually wind up with.

So no pics on those till after Christmas. They’re awesome, though.

Hey, so I finished Liesl and I love her.

You can also get a nice view of my sassy wood paneling up in there.

She fits nice. Here is a crappy picture I took of myself in my “vanity” area, and it is a mess so ignore the laundry all over the place.

Not only is that a fairly crappy picture, but it’s an “in the mirror” picture, haha! But as you can see, Liesl looks super cute on.

Though I will fess up to the fact that even though there are six buttons they don’t all close. I should have stopped making button holes after four, but, whatever.

Basically I knit the 46″ size, but didn’t, you know, swatch, or use the right needle or anything, so it’s a miracle that I like it and it fits! And I did the picot bind off, which is kinda twee but I think works for this highly girly knit. The buttons are from the La Mode vintage reproduction line. I found them at JoAnn’s. They cost more than the Vanna yarn, heh.

The other thing I made is this awesome beret:

I made this out of Fleece Artist Merino 2/6, which is an awesome fingering weight yarn. Very silky feeling. I used a #3 US needle. I should have used a smaller needle for the ribbing because it blocked completely ridiculous. Like, too huge to fit. So, annoyed that all my hard work had been negated by a very necessary block, I bought some red elastic thread and sewed it into the cast on edge. You can’t even see it, but it salvaged the knit spectacularly! I noticed that a lot of store-bought berets have elastic in the edge, so it must not be that uncommon for the edge to be a little too big. But that would be my recommendation on this pattern (#24 lace beret in the latest Vogue Knitting Holiday mag) to not be lazy and actually knit the edge on smaller needles. I think the pattern actually tells you to do this, but, whatever. Now it fits great.

Anyway, so aside from the Christmas projects, I have also cast on for a sweater out of some gray wool-ease I had lying around. Much like the Liesl yarn, I suspect that I bought this way on sale. Here’s the initial design for the sweater:

graysweater

I’m winging it, as usual, so we’ll see A) how long it keeps my interest and B) if it even does what I want it to. Basically I want it to have a yoke of some sort, whether garter stitch or cabled I haven’t yet decided, sort of blousey sleeves with a narrow cuff and a sewn hem for neatness. Worked top down. I already have the top rib started and need to look in my stitch books for the yoke part.

September 29, 2009June 24, 2010

Hatapalooza 2009, an Epilogue

And so, we come to the end of my crazy hat making. I really have no particular desire to knit any more hats any time soon, though I did promise Sam I would knit him a hat in Redskins colors for his birthday. I will have to suck up the courage and fortitude in order to knit a boring man hat. I know the recipient will like it when it’s done, however… meh. Though, I do think I already have the yarn in my stash somewhere, so I don’t have to run around looking for it in a store. I am tempted to do some sort of colorwork on it to keep my attention. I wonder if there are any sort of terrible Indian motifs I could use? Haha! Well, they ARE the Redskins…

Anyway, so here is the hat I knit Stefanie at work. She paid me for it in February and I only just finished it, but she was cool with the delay and had a great reaction to finally receiving it. There were squeals of joy, so I have my suspicions that she liked it. I am hoping to get a picture of her wearing it at some point. But here are some pictures of the hat, which I designed to have cables going up the earflaps and in the front.

It’s super cute, if I say so myself. One of the things that I did differently for this hat was I tried out using applied I-cord for the edging. I’d never done it before, and it worked out just as I’d hoped – it smoothed out the rough edges and even flattened the stockinette areas of the earflaps which were popping out funny.

The color is very wrong in all the photos I took. It’s actually a deep periwinkle blue in worsted weight Malabrigo. Mmm, Malabrigo.

I must confess, I did buy some awesome brown Dream in Color Classy to make myself a similar hat with cabling and flaps but I have lost the will to knit hats at the moment. So, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I finished my Lacunae Socks I knit out of Miss Babs sock yarn in the Terracopper colorway. I love Lacunae socks (a knitspot/Anne Hanson pattern) and I think they may be my go-to “vanilla” socks, since they’re mostly ribbing. I still have to take a picture of those, though.