Monthly Archives: November 2013

Cables in the Dark

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cables in the dark

cables in the dark

Sometimes, for me, knitting seems to be a biological imperative.  A while ago, we were driving to Toronto and it started to get dark.  The only knitting I had was this hat, and I really wanted to keep knitting.  I decided that I would keep going and if I screwed it up, I could rip it out when we got there and there was light.  I was amazed that I could actually tell when the cables were ready and that I could still manipulate the stitches on a dark highway in the middle of nowhere.  It turned out that when we got there, it was all OK and I only had to do the decreasing and the topper.  Granted, they are pretty simple cables.

I was again playing with how the colours come out from the variegated yarn.  This is another colourway in Patons Classic Wool.  In this hat, instead of separating out like they did in the hats in the  Playing with Variegated Yarn post, they overlap in swirls  According to my notes, I cast on 10 fewer stitches for this hat (100 stitches) than the ones where the colours separated.

less stitches (too few) makes wider swirls of colour

less stitches (too few) makes wider swirls of colour

I tried this other hat with yet fewer stitches (96..so more overlap), but it is getting small for an adult.  You can see it was too small for the bowl we had used to display all the other hats.  It would be fine for kids though. You really are limited in how many stitches a) will work for your hat and b) will give you the effect you want.

I was trying to branch out a bit on the topper, so I used an idea which I modified from (I think) Knitting on the Edge, but I can’t find my copy to double check. It makes spirals.  I started the topper when I had decreased to 21 stitches. I started with the first three live stitches, did a slip 1, k2tog, psso, then cast on another 11.  I then knit all 12 back to the base and then, on the next row out,  I did a k1, p1, k1 in each stitch.  Finally, I cast off as I returned back to the base.  I went down to 1 stitch at the base, picked up two more live stitches did the s1, k2tog, psso and cast on another 11, etc.  I kept doing this, picking up stitches until I ran out of live stitches (10 swirls). The whole thing was corralled to make it hang together in a similar manner to the i-cord rose. I find you may have to play with the arms so the spirals will straighten up and fly right…oops I mean curl up and lie right.

Variations on a theme…Aran knit hat

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Heather read my blog the other day and said that I was probably giving the impression that most of my hats are weird and made out of novelty yarn.  That is why I finished the top down hat for yesterday and I have decided to show a series of Aran hats today.  I worked on these back when I had aspirations to writing a hat design book,  The challenge I gave myself in this exercise was to make up a basic Aran pattern for a hat, then change the appearance of the hat by making different brims and tops.  These are what I came up with, 6 worsted weight hats and one hatband out of Patons Classic Wool, and a stripped down chunky wool version (can’t remember what it was)–okay, I admit, some of them may be weird.

Top down hat

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top down hat

top down hat

top down hat...detail

top down hat…detail

I made just the top of this hat a couple of weeks ago so I could demonstrate the i-cord rose that I like to use (see Technique: I-cord rose (aka go big or go home)).  I only had the crown of the hat, so I picked up from the original cast on and built the hat downwards from there.  Unfortunately, I had only a few feet of yarn left of the variegated I had made the rose with…not even enough for one row more so I couldn’t reintroduce it further down for balance.  I think it is ok anyway.

In order to keep things consistent, I cast everything off and picked up all the stitches again twice further down the hat, once at each place I changed patterns.  I used Patons Classic Wool, yet again.  I always use a 4 1/2 mm needle with this yarn,  For the cast off, I wanted it loose to match the tension on the cast on edge near the crown, so I went up to a 7 mm just for the middle cast off.  Looking at this line,  I thought it could be even looser, so for the final cast off, closest to the ribbing, I used an 8 mm needle. I think I will go with 8 mm in future if I do this again.

Teletubby Puke

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I used to have a clipping on my fridge with a list of encouraging phrases you could use to praise your children.  Good job, that’s great, fantastic, etc.  I kept it there so I didn’t sound too repetitive when I was expressing myself to my children, Jacob and Heather.

Teletubby puke colours

Teletubby puke colours

Heather came home from school when I had a few inches done on the first of these hats.  I thought it was going well so I asked her what she thought. “It looks like teletubby puke” was the answer.  I thought to myself yo, bitch, what do you know? (I was in the middle of a Breaking Bad marathon on Netflix) …those colours are nothing like the teletubby colours…I did not say it…that would have been discouraging to my offspring… and who knows, maybe colours change in the stomachs of teletubbies?

Teletubby puke

Heather wearing Teletubby puke

I have come to realize that our children hopefully thrive on the encouragement we give them in their endeavours, but the mother of a teenage girl must carry on despite the discouragement. Heather does wear Teletubby Puke quite a lot and is proud of the name she gave it.  She is still my best critic and her (sometimes) derisive comments often help me think of new paths to take.

Three more because I liked the colours...

Three more because I liked the colours…