knitting = hand art

The academic life is only rarely tinged with glamour. But on occasion, even a graduate student will get to jet off to a cool conference. And that's how it came to be that I had a splendid long weekend in Zurich.

In Switzerland, I found things like Swiss people:


And lambs. And garden gnomes.


And even though it was a solid work trip, I did get to wander around the city for most of Saturday. The very first thing I did was track down a gorgeous yarn store called "Hand-Art" on 10 Neumarkt in the old section of Zurich. It was visually stunning, with all the yarn organized by color, floor to ceiling, around one tidy room. I got my heart set on a ruby-hued silk/wool yarn, only to be told rather curtly (ah, cultural differences) that they didn't have any more of it. So no purchases, but it made for a pleasurable hour of browsing. And I had a fascinating conversation with another shopper there (Swiss, but working in Chicago) about the youthful, hip spirit that pervades the US knitting scene and how it has yet to blossom in most European countries.

As for my travel knitting, I dug out a long-abandoned cashmere lace scarf to work on. Although boring, it required very little space in either my bag or my brain. I made some good progress -- here's a glimpse now, and hopefully I'll have it finished and blocked within the week!

Hob II

Cue the Tarzan calls! We've got a crazy new Hob here, swinging through the marigolds!!

But it's a nice Hob too. Can be sweet and tranquil too, sitting among the flowers.

Details: I knit up this little fellow with Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran, in a deep, saturated red. It took me a while to figure out the hair -- first I was going to do some beads but was told it might choke the baby it's intended for. Next I tried some black mohair, but it looked kind of devilish! Finally I used a bit of DK merino that I'd dyed with marigolds, and it makes for a fun and colorful creature.

I also managed to finish up the body of the Tuscan terracotta sweater. I fully intend to knit up the sleeves at some point, but I might leave that until the autumn. I think I could get some wear out of it this summer with short sleeves...

third time is the charm

I wanted to create something super special with the yarn that I'd brought back from Tuscany this spring. I'd picked it for the color, to remind me of the warm hues of the roof tiles, stone walls, and painted doors. Fortuitously, it also matches the pansies that are flowering now (aw...)

The yarn is a fingering weight merino with a bouncy spin. I first envisioned a fitted tank with with a deep U neck, bordered by ribbing, to be worn with heavy white bangles and white linen trousers. The second idea was for a more bohemian tank, with no waist shaping and a square, smocked panel underneath a deep, square neck.

I swatched up all kinds of patterns on teeny needles (1's and 2's). And then my sister informed me that, by the way, you could still see through the fabric. Always good to get a reality check from non-knitters, who aren't so blinded by infatuation with the yarn and concept! My design-rich ideas were abandoned, and I started a design-as-you-go, top-down sweater on biggish needles. Mountain Man snapped a few photos of my progress last night.

I know, it's a funny photo. But I kind of liked the energy in it. And I know, it's borderline flashdancy. But knit to the hip, with 3/4 sleeves and rolled edges, I think it'll be just right.

Hello world!

Meet Hob.
I knit this fellow up this weekend, when we were on Cape Cod with Mountain Man's friends. I made it for their sweet, playful 2-year old daughter, who promptly and inexplicably named him "Hob."

The pattern is "Little Sit-sters," from The Natural Knitter. It's a clever and adaptable pattern, which I'll definitely be knitting again and again. It was a simple way to learn double knitting (a very cool technique that I'd love to experiment with for socks and sleeves). And it's an excellent use for leftover bits of yarn. For this one I used some worsted silk/wool yarn that's been in my stash for at least six or seven years and, for wild hair, Fleece Artist mohair.
I was so taken with this pattern and so gleeful about using up this yarn and so excited about the little poseable person that I'd created, that I'd say it made me happier than it made the two year old recipient. Or maybe I just don't know how two year olds show their love. Hob spent the afternoon being thrown around the house - off the bed, off the couch, down the stairs. There were plans for throwing him into the mud puddles, too, but somehow I got the message across that Hob doesn't like to swim!

but how do you wear it??

Remember that lace leaf shawl that I took as my travel knitting? The one that was started in Italy, nearly confiscated at numerous airports, and torn in the rush to escape a Kathmandu strike? I was pretty well sick of it by the time the trip ended, and I fully expected to never finish it. I do have a history of abandoning my lace). But I knit my little heart out last week and triumped!


(Just because it's small doesn't mean it wasn't a triumph)

Pattern: Leaf Lace Shawl, by Evelyn Clark
Yarn: Knitpicks Shadow in "sunset heather", 1 hank. (note: this makes for a $2.50 project)
Needles: Size 3 Inox Express circular

My main problem now is figuring out what to do with the darn thing! My sister and I had a campy photoshoot over the holiday weekend and came up with a few options. What do you think actually works?

As a headscarf: Tied snugly and worn with sunglasses, for driving in a convertible? As a babushka?

Tied around the neck: Folded a bit, doubled 'round the neck, and loosely tied. With the point in back or front?

At an angle: Around the hips, like some strange knitting gypsy? Or around the neck, sort of askew?
On a dog: very fetching indeed!

Forecast, finally

I was going to start off with a sarcastic comment about finishing this sweater in time for summer. But with cool days last week and chilly evenings this week, I've actually been able to wear it. Take that, global warming!!


Pattern: Forecast, by Stefanie Japel
Yarn: unnamed, heavy worsted wool from a farmer's market. It's wool of the scratchy, stiff variety.
Needles: 8's for garter stitch portions, 6's for the ribbing and neck
Modifications: oh boy. This deserves a fresh paragraph.

I would say that I followed the spirit rather than the letter of the pattern. I did the garter stitch by knitting every row instead of purling, as is specified in the pattern. I swapped in a horseshoe cable for the bobbled cable. At some point I'll probably slice off this odd collar and add something more subtle. My most significant modification was with the button band: rather than doing buttons all the way up, I did short rows in garter stitch so that I had a minimal edging alongside the cables (top) and a wider, buttoned band alongside the ribbing (bottom).

(click photo to get slightly more detail)
I'd started experimenting with an asymmetric band because the strategy of decreasing dramatically under the bust (changing to smaller needles and ribbing) wasn't suited to my straighter proportions. It yielded a well-fitting top but a too-tight waist, and I didn't much feel like reknitting it. I realized that I was going to wear it half-buttoned most of the time anyways. And I liked the clean look of the cabled border.

I also whipped up a little baby sweater last week. It was an incredibly simple and quick knit, and the organic cotton is such a pleasure to have running through your fingers.

Pattern: on the fly top-down swing cardigan.
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas organic, color-grown cotton in a light green (1.5 balls) and a sand color (a smidgen for edgings)
Needles: 8, bamboo, 16" circ and dp's

I have a bit of life-changing news to close this post. Fear not, it has nothing to do with doing lots of baby knitting this year. No, the big change is that Mountain Man and I will be moving from my beloved Vermont to the Phoenix area next year. I recognize that this is a good move for us in lots of rationally-calculated ways. I am distressed, though, about how this will impact my knitting!! If you have any advice on how to adjust one's knitting to a hot climate, or can point me towards blogs of any Arizona knitters, I'd love to hear!

WIP it!

I've been a knitting dilletante this fortnight. WIPs galore. I was in the mood for exuberant progress, not the fiddly finishings on the Forecast sweater. I finished up the knitting on it, then bailed and started a baby blanket. I finished up that knitting but didn't feel like addressing its fiddly extras either, so I bailed and started a baby sweater. In between these projects, I've fit in a few rows on my alpaca scarf. I have so many projects going on that I had to pack all of this just for a weeks' trip:

I carried it all along because I'm planning to have a massive finishing session after I complete the sleeves on the baby sweater. So there's FO's on the horizon, and you can expect a more exciting entry in the near future.

In the meantime, it's been a while since the kitty cat has made an appearance here. Here she is, trying to hide under the hosta in my parents' garden:

Rivendell

Rivendell is up!

Edited to add:I want to share a few reflections about the initial feedback that I've gotten on this pattern.

First - reflections on the pattern itself. I realize that not everyone is crazy about staghorn cables, but I want to stress that a wide cable is key to the structural integrity of this hat. The slight flare of the brim is only obtained because of the way that the cable pulls in the fabric (you'd have to play around with post-brim decreases if you want to get rid of the cable). The brim also depends on a good, stiff fabric, so you might want to take that into consideration before going for a a soft, lux yarn.

Second - reflections on the experience of publishing a knitting pattern. It's been largely a gratifying process, but once has been enough. I'd failed to appreciate how publishing in an online magazine opens you up to a different quality of criticism than publishing on a personal blog. As harsh and non-constructive as criticism can be in my professional life, at least academic reviewers don't laugh to the world about how bad you look!! : ( Anyways, I thought this side of the experience was worth mentioning for those of you who, like me, have been curious about testing the waters of publishing patterns.

Travelogue

This past month was a rare gift, a time to step away from usual life, steep myself in other experiences, and reinvigorate my vital energy. Less profoundly, it made for an excellent fiber journey. One anecdote captures it well: while flying to Kathmandu, Mountain Man started pointing out the snow-capped Himalayan peaks in the distance, which I could hardly distinguish from the clouds. "My eyes are trained to see mountains," he explained. "My eyes are trained to find yarn," I replied. And so it was.

Chapter 1: Tuscan colors

Mountain Man's cousin had the brilliant idea of a spring wedding in Tuscany, so the first week of our trip was spent in the charming hamlet of Castello di Gargonza. I was taken with the silvery greens of the landscape of budding olive trees, rosemary and lavender bushes, and grey stone villages. But it was the rich, warm tones -- ancient roof tiles, terracotta pots, red wine, sunsets -- that stuck with me. They resonated with the knitting project that I'd brought for this part of the trip, which is the Little Leaf shawl in laceweight merino (Knitpicks Shadow in 'Sunset').
And I wanted to capture those colors in a souvenir of Italian yarn as well. At first, my dreams seemed to be out of reach (we asked the hotel proprietress about yarn stores and were met with weird looks and a 'no'). But I proved my comment about finding yarn. While strolling along the cobbled streets to the town hall, where the wedding ceremony was held, I spotted a yarn store. And I skipped out of the champagne reception early to go back to it!! I found a simple fingering-weight merino yarn in the right rusty hue. Here is one small ball, photographed the next morning next to a stone wall in the gorgeous, early-morning sun.

Chapter 2: Adversity

The trip wasn't always so smooth, although every problem was eventually resolved. The first hiccup came at the Florence airport, where a security officer tried to confiscate my needles. My hysterical, almost-in-tears response raised even more suspicion - "What is it about this that means so much to you?" the bewildered office asked. Oh, how does one explain to the non-knitter?!

(As an aside - I found that the major airports didn't blink at the knitting in my carry-on, while only the more rinky-dink ones made a fuss. Be warned if you're travelling abroad. Unless you want to run the risk of a ten hour flight with nothing for your hands to do, you may want to think about crochet.)

In Kathmandu, there was a hairy moment when a monkey at the Swayambunath temple grabbed the bag of yarn that I was carrying. And another hairy moment came when a rally of protestors charged into our guesthouse courtyard. My lace leaf shawl was slightly torn in our rush to get out the courtyard, but the protesters meant no harm to tourists - they were striking and trying to get the hotel employees to join them. If anything, those monkeys were more of a threat!
The real trouble came during our two-week trek in the Annapurna region. I had to pack light, and I only brought only one ball of lightweight alpaca yarn and stripped-down instructions for the Shetland Triangle. It was the wrong yarn to bring, since I could hardly see it by candlelight/headlamp. And it didn't look good with this pattern. I followed the lace chart scrupulously, but it looked like messy, holey black fabric rather than shapely, organic lace.

To make matters worse, since we were only passing through remote village, I didn't have access to other knitting resources but had nothing to do during the long, quiet evenings but knit. I was stuck with that one ball of yarn and no other patterns. There was a lot of drama - ripping out that shawl, trying to recreate other patterns from memory, all with my brain slightly debilitated from heat exhaustion, altitude issues, etc. Eventually I settled on a travelling eyelet pattern. And this is what I knit for the next ten days. I'm not super happy with it, but it kept me busy, and the zig zags reminds me of the mountains. Here's the scarf, protected by a bronze guard lion:

Chapter 3: Yak Yak Yak

I'm slightly obsessed with yaks. The higher we got into the mountains, the more anxious I became to do two things: one, pet a yak, and two, find yak yarn. I finally got to do the petting when, after eight days of trekking, we made it to a village called Yak Kharka, meaning yak meadow. The village is four stone buildings, with herds of yak grazing on the high, steep slopes above it. Here's me, finally encountering one of these amazing animals:
One 18,000 foot pass later, we descended to a town where I finally found yak yarn. It was such a relief, since I'd been asking during the whole trek and had not found yarn anywhere else. We still had to search for it, since it's handspun for local consumption and was not sold in any of the shops. But it was worth it. I will knit something very special with this yarn and remember the rugged landscape, the strange beasts, and the wonderful, wizened women that created this yarn.

Chapter 4: Extra luggage

By the end of our month, I'd accumulated quite a cache of new yarn. In addition to the small amount of terracotta wool from Tuscany and the yak yarn from the Annapurna region, I'd found excellent yarns in Nepal's cities. In Kathmandu, I dragged Mountain Man halfway across the city to this yarn store for wool yarn (that's what the monkeys were after) and colorful silk yarn. The yarn was all sold by the kilogram.
I also found some scratchy but interesting nettle yarn, which I'll probably use to knit a mesh shopping bag. Then in Pokhara, I picked up a gorgeous red hemp-silk blend. Here's the hemp-silk, the silk, and the wool, overlooking the garden of the Kathmandu Guest House on our last day.

Peace.

pause button

I've been putting off my posting for the last several days because I keep thinking I'm just on the cusp of finishing something cool. A sleeve of forecast (not quite yet). A beret to match the peppermint twist scarf (gone awry). A tussah silk scarf (four inches left). And so forth.

I do have one finished object to show -- only I can't quite show the whole thing because it's going to be a baby shower gift. Here's a slice though:
It's a tinkered-with version of my sprouting tree of life baby blanket, this time in a soft, earthy color. The knitting was smooth as can be, but at four a.m. I learned a valuable lesson: when you're sewing in the ends of the Blue Sky Alpacas cotton, don't try anything fancy! Just take the whole, bulky strand of yarn and do some duplicate stitch. Unfortunately, I tried to make it more subtle by separating the plies and sewing them in separatedly, but once separated, they disintegrated beneath my fingers, leaving me -- to my horror -- with a scant two inches to try to sew in. And yes, I did say this was at four a.m.

And why the late night, you may ask? It's been a mad dash around here, as I'm leaving in an hour for several weeks of travelling with Mountain Man. We're traipsing around the Himalayas to rejuvinate our spirits (seems like sweet georgia and yarnmonster are starting a trend!). I'm bringing two lace projects with me, in an effort to economize on weight while providing hours of alpaca happiness. So please excuse an extended pause in this blog - I'll try to blog once or twice from the road, not to mention finally replying to your comments (much appreciated - sorry to be so delayed) and I'll be back and hopefully happier next month!

Forecast progress

This is a dash of a post with an update on Forecast. Here it is as of this morning (note: in real life, the sleeves are the right size. It's just the fact that they can spread out in this unfinished state that gives it a 'flying nun' kind of quality):

Figuring out the yoke was a pain in the neck, since it involved numerous iterations of knitting two rows, placing the 200+ stitches on scrap yarn, trying it on, thinking it's close but not ready, and moving it back to the needle. Blah. It sapped me of my knitting excitement, so that I had to drag myself to do it instead of happily grabbing every spare minute to knit. But once that was passed, the rest of the body has gone quickly.

I'm headed off to a conference for a couple days, but I think this is too ungainly a project for travel. So I'm taking a break from it and starting in on another organic cotton baby blanket -- seems like those babies are sprouting up everywhere these days!

Cabin fever strikes

My to-do list was oppressing me this weekend. I wanted to accomplish something that felt authentic and significant. I had a little conversation with myself:

Me: (inspired, out of the blue) Why not start a sweater?
Me: A sweater?! That's not something you just start. You have to plan for that.
Me: No you don't! Loosen up. Be spontaneous!
Me: (moaning a bit) But I have sooo many projects that I should be finishing....
Me: You have enough real-life responsibilites oppressing you. Knitting should be a space of unencumbered freedom!

I had to admit that I was right. Ten minutes later I was swatching with a pine green worsted wool that I'd picked up years ago from a local farmer's market. I'm making a Forecast sweater, switching it up with a size 8 needle and a horseshoe cable. It's incredibly satisfying. Goes perfectly with snowy cabins and steaming mugs of lapsang souchong tea. I worked steadily on it this weekend an have almost finished the yoke.

As it's all squashed on a 32" circular, it's rather hard to photograph in an informative way. The needle is too small to fit around my shoulders. The fabric collapses into a blob when it's on its own. But I managed to find someone with smaller shoulders to show you:

And repeat

That's how my watchcap pattern should have ended, because apparently that's what I'm doing. Not long after finishing up Mountain Man's rusty one, I've made myself a black one. It's marvelous, and I'm happy to have one for myself, but now I've had enough (it's a rather tedious thing to knit three times!). I photographed it on Wednesday in the midst of the snowstorm.
And a glorious snowstorm it was!! Almost two feet of beautiful, sparkling, powdery snow (check out the picnic table in the photos below). Although my back and shoulders are killing after spending 6-7 hours shovelling over the last two days, I'm amazingly happy to have snow like this.

But there's a wisp of heartbreak in all this snowy joy. What makes it more precious, but at the same time harder to purely delight in, is the fact that this is a despairing fleeting experience. We have to move this summer. Chances are good that we're going to a hot and sunny climate, which is so against my nature that I'm afraid I'll wither and die. That's the real, unsaid reason behind all my blues lately. And with that, let me preserve some of this snowstorm in a few snapshots:

keeping warm

Gorgeous sunset this morning, with a spectacular, warm, tangerine glow behind the mountains. It took me a minute to run and get the camera, and the glow was already dissipating by the time I snapped this, but I wanted to remember this beautiful moment.

In other news, it's been very, very cold here! And I've been trying to keep my man warm with a new hat:
Pattern: Cambridge Watchcap
Yarn: Berrocco Ultra Alpaca, "Redwood Mix," 1 skein
Mods: Mountain Man likes his hats on the shorter side, above his ears actually, so I only knit 8.5" before beginning the top decreases.

The fact that I'm blogging only about the finished object means that I've already broken my resolution to blog more about my incremental progress. But it went quickly and would've made for terribly boring blog fodder. Also, I've only got dial-up now that I'm back up in Vermont, which has proven to be a bit of a disincentive for blogging.

twisted!

Mountain Man recently told me, in a not-really-joking and not-very-complimentary way, that I was a "knitting fanatic." It's true that in the face of academic misery and the semi-isolation of moving back to Vermont, I've increasingly focused on my knitting, relying on it for solace and release. So I can't say that he's wrong. But it does mean that I should yammer about it to the blog instead of to him!

In the spirit of blogging more about my incremental progress, here's the project that I'm currently focused on:
It's a Clapotis-style scarf, knit out of a wool yarn that I'd dyed with cochineal insects. The base yarn is Licorice Twist, so called because one of its three plies is absorbs dye more readily. The shocking pink color and the curl of the scarf make me think of this project as Peppermint Twist.

The Clapotis pattern is easy to modify for size, but it turns out that the 'size' is a moving target. This scarf is 5.25" wide before dropping stitches, broadening into 6.5" with dropped stitches, but then eventually twisting into a 2" diameter tube. The good thing about a scarf, though, is that all of these sizes would work. And while my full-size Clapotis (the only picture is on my very first blog entry) took me a-g-e-s, this is flying by.

baby saves drowning woman

I've been in a bit of a bad mood recently, largely due to the existential woes of coming up with a dissertation topic. I'd even run into a bit of rocky ground with knitting, with lots of mis-fittings and rippings out (didn't quite feel up to blogging about it). In the midst of this, it was a special treat to receive this unexpected and wonderful photo:
Remember the rustic baby sweater that I'd knit in September? This is the darling baby for whom that sweater was intended, and the sweater actually fits now!! It's incredibly gratifying to see my handknits in action, so to speak (I actually remember Veronique saying that getting a photo of a baby wearing your handknits is the holy grail of knitting). This photo came out of the blue, and I am so appreciative of the thoughtfulness behind it. Thank you Morgan, and congratulations on your beautiful baby!

Natural dyeing and 'secret projects'

Although I was reasonably pleased with my most recent natural dyeing experiment, I was left with unresolved questions about why the cochineal dye didn't work. So I tried again under more controlled conditions. I still can't quite predict the colors I'm going to get, so it still feels like alchemy, but this time felt like a success.
The madder gave an unbelievable carrot-juice hue. And the cochineal yielded deep raspberry colors on the unmordanted wool, a soft lavender on an unmordanted silk/wool blend, and a crazy barbie pink on a mordanted wool several days later (pictures of that another time).

I quickly put the cochineal-dyed wool to use in a hat with staghorn cables. It might be appropriate to call this a 'secret project,' but I think instead I'll just say that I'm using the wool in a pattern that I hope to be published in a month or so.
I've been thinking recently, you see, about blogging about 'secret projects' (which I usually interpret, except during the holidays, as indicating a to-be-published pattern). The first time I got to say that, it was somehow pleasantly ego-boosting. But after seeing it a lot recently, I've come to think that it's too close to the self-important "I have a secret and won't tell you!!" proclamations that you hear from kids. I appreciate that people talk about 'secret projects' for reasons that have nothing to do with bragging, like explaining why there hasn't been much to blog about lately. And anyways, a bit of showing off is part of the nature and pleasure of knitting blogs. But somehow the term 'secret project' seems designed to put distance between a blogger and a reader, rather than connecting them. It seems like there are other ways to talk about these projects - for example, saying "a pattern I'm trying to get published" or "my cabled hat" instead of "a secret project" - that are informative and personable enough to draw people in, but still vague enough to make the final project a surprise.

I'm not trying to criticize anyone. I'm just spinning out some thoughts about this to provoke thought and conversation...

tree of life

I've been rather quiet lately because I've been working on secret projects (shhh....), but now that this has been gifted, it's fair to post.
This is a baby blanket and hat with a leaf motif that I knit out of organic cotton. The yarn is marvelous. It's color grown, which means that the cotton itself grows in this soft, sage green. And it's amazingly silky and soft.

Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton, "sage," 2 balls
Needles: Size 9 circular and dps, with H crochet hook for the blanket edging
Pattern: my own! very proud.

As you can see in the progress shot, below, the embossed leaf pattern leaves quite a sharp curve at the bottom. But I evened that out by using triple crochets for that section of the border.
There's a whole saga behind this blanket, since I'd initially started a terribly complicated intarsia blanket instead. After many, many hours of working on that blanket, though, I'd decided it looked too amateurish. It was with no small regrets that I bailed and started this leafy blanket.

It all gets back to the value of not being afraid to abandon projects that aren't going well. As one of my professors says, you have to be willing to throw things away rather than getting too invested in something to admit that it's not working out. And in the end, this leafy blanket was such a pleasure to knit, and was received with such praise, that I'm glad I took that plunge.

Cambridge Watchcap

Knit in a cozy alpaca-wool blend, this watchcap is basic enough to keep a guy satisfied. But there's just enough styling - twisted stitches, biased fabric, asymmetric ribbing - to satisfy the knitter, too, and to give the hat a unique, handknit hipness.
Yarn: 1 skein of Berocco Ultra Alpaca, color 6207 'salt and pepper'
Needles: #6 Inox metal circular, with dp's for the top
Gauge: 7 st/inch, unstretched or 4.5 st/inch, slightly stretched.
The hat is stretchy enough to fit heads from 21-23" in circumference.

Cast on 96 stitches.

Join in a circle, and knit in [K2 tbl, P1] ribbing, which is just 2x1 ribbing with twisted knit stitches (tbl = through back loop). Knit in this ribbing until piece measures 10".

Decrease for the top in 8 sections as follows:
Row 1: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, {K2 tbl, P1}3x] around (i.e. 8 times)
Row 2: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, K1 tbl, P1, {K2 tbl, P1}2x] around
Row 3: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, P1, {K2 tbl, P1}2x] around
Row 4: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, {K2 tbl, P1}2x] around
Row 5: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, K1 tbl, P1, K2 tbl, P1] around
Row 6: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, P1, K2 tbl, P1] around
Row 7: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, K2 tbl, P1] around
Row 8: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, K1 tbl, P1] around
Row 9: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl, P1] around
Row 10: [K1 tbl, K2tog tbl] around
Row 11: K2tog tbl around

Pull yarn through the remaining 8 stitches, weave in ends and enjoy.
I designed this for my sensational friend Gustavo - please check out his splendid food blog, "The Dinner Bell". We've had some cold days in Cambridge, and I trust that this hat will keep him warm!

And I was so pleased with the hat myself that I've started to make a second one for Mountain Man. Please let me know if you try the pattern too!

little knitting

First FO's of the year! Here's a bundle of small knitted items. Weirdly, there's an unintentional theme here: sister-related and red. Please excuse the drab photography.

First, while my sister was visiting, I knit her a pair of short wristlets and a flower from the Malabrigo yarn that was left over from her hat. The flower pattern was from Handknit Holidays - the "Morning Star" pattern, adapted to be done in the round on dp's. The wristlet pattern was made up on the fly - K1,P1 over 24 stitches (#7 dp's), with garter stitch over a slightly expanded number of stitches. In retrospect, I didn't need to be so conservative with their length, as I ended up with enough yarn to make them a few inches longer. The Malabrigo can go a long way, I found.

Second, my sister actually knit a hat herself!! For years I tried to force knitting on her, and she totally resisted. Now it's just tacitly understood that I'm happy to help if she wants, and -- lo and behold! -- she actually wanted to knit something! It's a beautiful, precious baby hat for her friend, made out of Debbie Bliss alpaca/silk, color 19. It has a garter stitch border with bobbles and big pom pom at the top. Our own pattern, although the design was inspired by a hat we'd seen in some catalog.

Lastly, I made a Calorimetry headband, with the leftover cashmerino from last year's cabled hat. I added some royal blue mohair here and there to make it more interesting. The pattern as written is huge, and it's still a bit big even though I downsized to size 7 needles, only cast on 90 stitches (80 would've been sufficient), and did only half as many repeats of row 5 and 7. It's soft and fun to wear but a bit...well... garish. I think I know someone who could pull it off, though. I'm sending it my sister : )