Author Archives: gillianknitter

A Not Unpleasant Hat…

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Nicky in a not unpleasant hat

Nicky in a not unpleasant hat

a not unpleasant top view

a not unpleasant top view

As I was leaving the Ottawa Knitters Guild meeting one night, someone was knitting with the fuchsia yarn in this hat.  I commented that I thought it was nice.  She said something like ‘here take it…I don’t like it and I was going to throw it out’.  I came home and started making this hat.  The next day my oldest sister, Jane, came to visit.  She watched the hat grow and when it was finished, she said (in a surprised voice)…’that’s actually not an unpleasant hat’….high praise, indeed..be still my heart!

Mentors I’ve never met…Meg Swansen and Elizabeth Zimmerman

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I am sure almost every serious knitter who read the title said to themselves ‘how original…they are everyone’s mentors’.  I love what this mother and daughter team has done for the knitting community.  I appreciate the intellectualism that they, together and individually, have fostered in the world of knitting.  My husband Alan bought me Meg Swansen’s book ‘A Gathering of Lace‘ for Christmas because I usually knit a couple of lace shawls a year, mostly from 1860’s patterns to put in the fall fair at work.  The reference pages and construction notes throughout this book are total gems.  Want to know how to knit backwards (entrelac anyone?)…its in there..pg. 164.  Want to know how many stitches you need to increase to keep your knitting flat?…its in there too..Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Pi Shawl Shaping..pg 38.  I used this math formula to keep the brim of my witch’s hat flat.  Worked like a charm…

lace hat from A Gathering of Lace.

lace hat from A Gathering of Lace.

This book contains the pattern for the only hat I have made from someone else’s pattern in several years. Here it is being blocked.  In case you are wondering, that is a 3″ high, 7″ diameter styrofoam cake form blocking the main part of the hat.  These would normally be used for fake wedding cakes and are available anywhere cake decorating supplies are sold. I taught cake decorating for many years and this was kicking around the house.  I thought it would work well for this purpose. This gives you a 22″ hat diameter, which is good for most women.  You could always cinch it in a bit with a decorative ribbon or a hatband if you want.

The hat in the picture and the witch’s hat both have real problems with floppy brims which I need to solve at some point.  But they both look great on a table….Maybe some old fashioned starch will do the trick.  I put some in this hat when I wet it for blocking, but maybe not enough,  The brim sagged almost immediately.

I thought I remembered, back in the 80’s, a show called ‘Knitting with Meg’ on PBS, but I can find no reference to it.  I used to organize my Saturday mornings around it.  I remember being totally psyched that there was actually a show about knitting on TV.  I hope it was her.

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…

Happy Halloween

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Heather's Jack-o-lantern

Heather’s Jack-o-lantern

Alan and Heather got the last pumpkin in the store yesterday.  It was a huge pumpkin for $3.99, but it was a bit moldy inside….can’t have everything and the Jack-o-lantern only has to last a couple of hours anyway.   Heather carved it a dusk and I think it looks great.

A while ago I was saying to Heather that I would like to do a Santa hat nearer to Christmas.  I got ‘MUM, Santa hats are NOT knitted, you might as well make a witches hat too!’.  Of course, this made the idea of a felted witches hat pop into my head.

...before felting

…before felting

I was making the witches hat till the last minute.  It still needs some work to make the brim stay up, and I will decorate it a bit more.  It is, however sort of the right size and shape, so that part is good.  The washing machine ate my tension square.  I made one.  Honest. We looked all through the laundry last weekend and it had disappeared without a trace.  I looked up what people said the shrinkage was for Patons Classic Wool then did the math and went for it.  Here are the before and after pictures.  Included in the picture is another hat that Heather calls ‘Penquin in a Hoop Skirt’.  I should have followed my own advice and ripped it out when I noticed I had put and extra stitch in the ghost’s belly, but the intarsia was causing me grief and I didn’t want to redo it.

Penquin in a Hoop Skirt and the Witches hat

Penquin in a Hoop Skirt and the Witches hat

So, to sum up, a bare pass and an epic fail….

Not a pumpkin

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The whole time I was making this hat Alan (this is him in the hat for those of you who don’t know him) and Heather insisted that it looked nothing like a pumpkin.  The colour was just plain TOO WRONG.  Alan thought it may end up being okay as a hat, and the colour was OK as a colour but it DID NOT LOOK LIKE A PUMPKIN.

not a pumpkin

not a pumpkin

not a pumpkin rear view

not a pumpkin rear view

I actually think it does.  So there.

More fun with novelties

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Don't they pull it off!

Don’t they pull it off!

rear view

rear view

I had fun making these hats but I am not sure they are for everyone!  I had long been looking at these novelties but the scarves didn’t really do it for me.  I am not sure if my hats will do it for anyone else.

I was playing with a ball of Bernat Twist and Twirl.  I put it together with some Patons Classic Wool Worsted. My daughter Heather is in the green hat and her cousin Laura Jean is in the white one,