Tag Archives: Knitting and Crochet

Diagonal drifts

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Nicky in a travelling rib patterned hat

Nicky in a travelling rib patterned hat

grey and white diagonal pattern

grey and white diagonal pattern

There are some pattern stitches which move diagonally.  I think this gives the hat a nice dynamic quality.  Here are two hats that use this diagonal movement.  I was happy with both of these hats when I made them.

As with most of my hats, I was again using Patons classic wool.

I follow another blog that has some really nice hats with diagonal movement in her photo gallery, in case you are interested in other (possibly better) examples.

Decreasing differently

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from the back

from the back

Surya and the boys (Sam and Jay)

Surya and the boys (Sam and Jay)

This shows three very simple hats made with knit 1, purl 1 rib.  One has no brim, the other two a simple folded brim.  The difference lies in the decreasing at the top.  The one in the middle uses the simple spiral I explained before.

The hat on the right uses a stacked double decrease.  In this one, you do a slip one, knit 2 together, pass slipped stitch over, or slip one purl 2 together, pass slipped stitch over (depending on whether you are getting rid of a k1, p1, k1, or a p1, k1, p1) in the places that you decrease.  Every 4th row, you do a decrease, using the same middle stitch each time.

For the hat on the left, I unfortunately did not make notes (because I thought it looked like a mess and didn’t think I would want to repeat it).  This one has double decreases which, instead of staying separate, converge on each other further up the hat.

Simply by changing the placement of the decrease, you get very different looking tops on the hat.

Happy (American) Thanksgiving

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oops...there's a turkey on my head

oops…there’s a turkey on my head

We had ours six weeks ago, but I have often thought it must be good to have a holiday to slow down the advance of Christmas.  We are already starting to have Christmas music in the stores.

Heather was trying to stop me from making this hat for ages… ‘It is going to be DUMB, it is the WORST idea you have EVER had…’  She finally decided she wanted to model it so she could instagram a picture of it with ‘my mother has finally gone crazy’ as the caption.

I assembled the bits then put it together.  So far the pieces are only pinned into place because the base hat is too flimsy.  I have decided to make a felted base so it will be more solid.  I didn’t have time to finish it yet.

crocheting the tail onto a coat hanger

crocheting the tail onto a coat hanger

I knitted the tail then crocheted it onto a cut and bent coat hanger.

For the head, I started with 30 stitches for the base, then reduced to 15 for the neck.  I increased to 22 stitches for the head.  To turn the corner, I did 3 sets of 8 short rows across the back of the head which took me up and around.  I finished the head with the beak, which was only 6 stitches.  I then crocheted a waddle under the chin.

make 2 wings and put quilt batting between

make 2 wings and put quilt batting between

For the wing, I made two wings then stuffed them with quilt batting and sewed them together.

I will retake the picture of the finished hat when I have the felted base ready.

Let it snow…

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Jane with snowflakes

Jane with snowflakes

We had a LOT of snow overnight and all of a sudden we are living in a winter wonderland again,,,until the snow gets dirty anyway.  I love seasons.

This is a hat I always thought worked out OK.  I was waiting for snow to show it.  I like how the variegated adds a bit of interest.  I also think the i-cord rose is nice in the variegated.  See instructions for rose.  And of course you can’t go wrong with off white to show off the cabling…

Top view

Top view

Elegant fireworks…i-cord ropes

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Heather in Elegant Fireworks...i-cord edition

Heather in Elegant Fireworks…i-cord edition

This, the 3rd edition of the elegant fireworks series. (see the first and second) (and I STILL haven’t finished the balls of eyelash yarn!).  This one uses i-cord to make a rope effect around the bottom and top.

I knit the basic hat casting on 104 stitches and doing a k2, p2 with a fake cable every 4th row (k2tog then knit first stitch again on each of the k2’s).  I stopped when I had decreased to 18 stitches to make the top

To make the i-cord rope along the cast on edge, I used the eyelash yarn and with the first colour, I picked up and knit into the first 3 stitches along the cast on edge, then used them to make a 3 stitch i-cord for 12 rows.  I reduced to one stitch with a  slip one, k2tog psso. I left this while I worked with the other two colours.  I used the next 3 cast on stitches to make an i-cord with the second colour, then reduced to one stitch and left it too.  I used only 2 stitches from the cast on edge and picked a stitch up between them for the third colour and made a third 12 row i-cord

attach third colour into place

attach third colour into place

I then took the first i-cord and brought it in front of the other two and picked up into the next two cast on stitches and made a new I-cord.  I then brought the second colour over and in front and picked up two stitches…I continued until I had gone around and joined into the beginning,

For the top, I did the same technique, using live stitches instead of picking up from the cast on edge.  For the first i-cord of each colour, i used two live stitches and picked up a third between them.

More twisting and twirling

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Meg in one with frost flowers

Meg in one with frost flowers

Here are two more hats I made with Bernat Twist and Twirl.  My mum saw me making the other hats.  She thought this meant I really liked the yarn, so she bought me two more balls…gee, thanks mum.  I made these hats then I made a scarf to use up the rest and wear with the hats.  The nice part…hardly any frills! …lol

Sarah in the other hat

Sarah in the other hat

Flags

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Meg had the right t-shirt to go with this one...

Meg had the right t-shirt to go with this one…

I had a very short-lived phase where I was going to do flags.  I did the Union Jack first.  I then did the Quebec fleur-de-lis.  I had big plans to go on to other ones, but I got sidetracked after these two.

Jay with the fleur-de-lis

Jay with the fleur-de-lis

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Just the hat…union jack

Here comes Peter Cottontail

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Sarah in a fluffball hat

Sarah in a Bunny Tails hat

This yarn is called Bunny tails by Loops and Threads.  I couldn’t resist its weirdness…and it was on supersale … it may be discontinued…go figure!  This is the best I could do with it and I couldn’t really think of anything else to try. I remember that I did try putting them closer together, but it didn’t look any good either so I ripped it out to get my normal yarn back.   I used virtually none of the ball, so I have lots left  if I ever want to try again.  These novelty yarns often go on for hat after hat.  I remember a spinning instructor saying “really good knitting can sometimes hide really bad spinning”.  I think that bad hats can sometimes appear not so bad with a good model like my niece Sarah.

No frills allowed

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Heather in another unwearable hat

Heather in another unwearable hat

Heather seems scared… it has been more than a week since I have produced, in her opinion, a wearable hat…she came down this morning and saw this hat which I started last night,,,the third one with frills in a row.   She said “could you stop with the frills…they are awful” (don’t hold back honey, tell me what you really think). She also had a very valid point that this hat needs more peaches and less cream.   I guess we will call the frill experiment over and I will go onto something else for a while.

back view

back view

Another frilly one

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picot edged frill and lots of colour

picot edged frill and lots of colour

from the back

from the back

I thought this one wasn’t turning out well at all, but I was finishing it at lunch with a friend who said it is her favourite of all the hats she’s seen of mine.  I guess there is something for everyone, and as they say, variety is the spice of life, etc.  Maybe it was the juxtaposition of the pretty picot frill with the Sons of Anarchy marathon I was watching while knitting it that caused me to think it wasn’t working out.  It doesn’t exactly scream biker mayhem, does it?

It would be good for using up lots of ends of balls, because there are only 8 rows total of each colour.  I just kept pulling out colours I thought would work, then repeated them each once.  Some of the colours would not work together if you only had a few, but with more colours, they blend together and its all good.