This weekend I went to my mum’s for a birthday party for my niece Laura.  A couple of years ago I had started this shawl for her because she loves skulls,  so I finished it up.  It was modified from a Ravelry Pattern by kungen och majkis.  I decided to put the picture up because I thought it was a nice panorama of my mums house too.  The photo was taken by her boyfriend Andrew and I thought he did a nice job.

The Tweed Knot Stitch, pg 68 at the bottom of this hat was another with huge lateral spread.  Barbara didn’t warn me this time, but maybe I should have known.  You purl one round, then knit 1, knit 1 in the stitch below in the second round.  This knitting in the row below loosens things quite a bit. Tensions got back to normal with the Broken Diagonal Rib, pg 24.  I continued with the dark blue until I thought I would run out, then I finished the top of hat off while trying to stay as close to the pattern as possible. I had about ten inches of dark blue at the end so yeah me.  At this point it looked like a hot mess, dogs breakfast, pile of pooh, whatever your favourite negative phrase is.  

I went inside the hat and picked up a round of stitches from the back of the transition between the Tweed Knot and the Broken Rib and did an inch of k1p1 ribbing, then joined back to the cast on edge as I cast off, simulating a three needle cast off without one of the needles.  I think it is OK, given how bad it was at one point,  but it is pretty standard in shape for me.

I have done a count. I took a highlighter and went through my blog posts and the table of contents of my very adulterated copy of A Treasury of Knitting Patterns to make sure I hadn’t inadvertently missed anything. I had actually done a couple of stitches twice but c’est la vie. I crossed off 135 stitches. I started in February, so I think I am doing ok

This uses just one stitch, Grecian Plait Stitch, pg 131.  It was a very interesting stitch to do.  You switch needle sizes each row.  You knit round with a needle 4 sizes larger than normal (6mm), then use the regular size needle for the yarn (4mm) to lift one stitch up and around the other as you knit it.  It was pretty slow going for quite a while before I developed the knack.  In the variation, you stagger the stitches that are pulled over as they are knit.

This is a two stitch repeat, so I decided it was easiest to do a double decrease.  I did a slip one, knit two together, psso for the decreasing.  I used 6 points of decrease and decreased every second row on top of the last decrease.

If you have more than 500 patterns in a book, some will have to be also rans.  I have been avoiding the Arabic Diamonds, pg 22 and Double Woven Stitch in two colours, pg 95 for a while.  I did manage to use the arabic cross a hat or so ago, but this one seemed even worse to me than that.  

I had a bit of fun playing with the top.  I used 6 points of decrease and did an ssk on every other row until I had 30 stitches left from the 120 I started with. I cast off and then cast back into the back of each stitch and did some swirls and some spikes.  For the swirls I cast on 17 stitches, then knit back 12 of them.  I turned round and did k,p,k in each stitch back up, then cast it all back off to the base.  For the spikes, I cast on 15 stitches and cast them right back off.  I picked up and knit the other half of the cast off stitches and did a couple of roll backs where I garter stitched 8 rows and joined back into the base,  I decreased from 30 to 20 between the rolls so the second one was smaller.

I was walking with my friend Jen who I went to pottery school with a couple of decades ago.  She said all my hats are the same shape.  Looking over my Pinterest page (gillianknits on Pinterest), I can see that I do tend to make a lot of hats with a similar shape.  I do a smaller percentage that are quite different, but I definitely have a comfort zone.   I have decided I am going to try to be more “creative”, a term she actually happens to dislike.  She claims artistic people are often called upon to be spontaneously “creative” and demands are then made for the creative person to make a silk purse out of an available sows ear.  I am no artist, I leave that to others, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to leave my box once in a while.  I realize this isn’t too far from the box, but I will try to keep the box exterior in mind in the future.

I cast on the usual 120 stitches and did a few rows of garter stitch to make the bottom behave before I did one and a half repeats of Hexagon Pattern, pg 67.  I then increased to 152 stitches and switched to Basket Cable, pg 274.  In the last row, I decreased back to 120 and did an I-cord rope cast off.  I then did a 31 stitch square of  Plaited Basket Stitch, pg 118 and sewed it inside, one repeat of the Basket Cable down.

I have a group of friends that I have been meeting for coffee once a week for a very long time.  Originally, we were all quilters, most of them still are.  At this point, I don’t see myself ever sewing little pieces of fabric together again, but I am not willing to get rid of my very expensive stash yet just in case.  Who knows, maybe the quilting bug will strike again.  There is a joke in the group about brown because one of our members, Albertina, hates brown.  She loves nature in all its forms but I guess not plain dirt.  She loves all the plants growing in it and the animals that live amongst the plants.  When we get together for coffee, often people peruse quilting books and magazines for inspiration.  Whenever there is a predominantly brown one we say it is for Albertina and have a laugh.

For this hat, I again started with 120 stitches.  I did one repeat of Woven Transverse Herringbone, pg 96, then one of Arabic Cross, pg 22 before returning to the herringbone pattern.  The herringbone was a lot tighter than the other pattern, so the crosses stand out in relief.  I was originally just going to do the herringbone all the way, but I am glad I changed my mind.  This hat has a lot of yarn in it because the herringbone is so dense.