Jollyoly Hat

A couple of weeks ago, my HLM realized it's autumn.  Soon after, he realized that his Opie Hat has gone missing, and requested another one.  I told him that I'd get around to knitting him one, soon, and then, as I was motoring through the mall on the way to an appointment, I came upon a little craft store that had some yarn in the window.  I popped in and grabbed a ball of some nice-ish acrylic to make his Opie Hat.  Then I spotted a ball of lovely soft silvery nylon/acrylic sportweight and fell in love with it.

I decided it needed to be a hat, and once I got home I started scrolling through the patterns on Ravelry to find something great.  I found the Jollyoly hat and thought that it would marry up well with this particular yarn, so I started it as soon as I was done the Opie Hat.

I got gauge right away and began to knit, only to discover after a few inches that it seemed a bit tight.  Now, if you look at the original pattern photos, they show a loose, slouchy, chic hat.  I scrolled through some of the finished projects and found a lot of snug toques.  Not exactly what I wanted.  So I improvised.  I ripped it all back to naught and cast on again, this time for one size bigger, using a size bigger needles, as well.  This time, the hat seemed loose enough for the fit I wanted.  I added an extra repeat of the design, as well, to add some length, and was mostly happy with how it fit.  Then I added the pom pom (made from a bunch of leftover madtosh tosh merino light, a pretty posh pom pom for an acrylic hat) and the weight of it helps the hat to hang just right.

Ready for autumn.

Red Kathleen

I've had this hat (called Kathleen) in my queue for a while.  I loved the cables and the giant tall ribbing and the funky little slouch.  When I started thinking about fall/winter knits, a few months ago, I grabbed a lovely fluffy ball of red wool from the shelf and began this one.

I knit practically the whole thing at the recommended gauge, with my hands getting stiff from all the tight cabling, before I faced the fact that it really wasn't going to fit my big head.  I ripped it out, back to the end of the ribbing, and went up a couple of needle sizes to reknit it.  This time my hands didn't get as stiff, and I found that it fit better.

Although I do enjoy the look of it as a slouchy chic hat, this week it's been bloody cold, here, and I found that if I fold the brim double, it still looks cute, in a different, Steve Zissou sort of way, but will also keep my ears warmer.

Win.

Lilac Canuck

The second of the knitalongs was of course the first one I finished, since it's just a quick little hat.  I love the lilac colour so much, and think it really works with these cables.

The skein of Green Label Aran had plenty of yarn in it to do a third repeat of the cables before closing the top, which makes the hat just a bit longer - long enough to cover my ears in the cold, which was the idea.  I probably could have made it with a bit of a looser gauge, so it wouldn't be so snug around my big ol' head.  It's ok as is, but I feel like a bit more give would be more comfy and give more of a slouchy fit when I don't pull it all the way down.

Either way, I'm happy to have a bright spot of colour to cheer me up on those cold winter walks to work.

Winter Knitalongs

While many knitters are probably tearing their hair out trying to finish all their knitted gifts for the holidays, I'm not one of them.  There are a few reasons for this, including my general assertion that the holidays should not be about gifts so much as about spending time with loved ones, and the fact that I don't knit a lot of things for other people, being quite unabashedly selfish about how I spend my limited knitting time.

The end result, of course, is that I have time right now to join some knitalongs.

The first one I decided to indulge in is one at Hazel Knits (ravelry link) - this one is a Mystery Sock knit, with the option of knitting other patterns by the same designer if you don't want to knit the mystery sock.  I was excited about the mystery, so I started that sock cuff, but decided I didn't love it by the second clue.  I ripped them out and picked another pattern by the designer (called Lambda socks) and began that one instead.  This is the toe of the second sock - it's a really quick knit and the socks are quite lovely, too.  I'm using Hazel Knits Artisan Sock in an old club colourway called Twilight.  It's a very dark teal, nearly black, and very difficult to photograph!

Once I was doing one knitalong, it seemed easier, somehow, to fall into a second one.  This one is over at Tanis Fiber Arts, and is simply a chance to knit some accessories from TFA yarns.   I could always use another hat to brighten up my winter doldrums, so I decided to do Tanis' Cabled Canuck pattern.  Ever since I knit my Colour Affection shawl, I've had a hankering to knit something else with the Lilac colourway, so I used this chance to do it.  The pattern calls for two repeats of the cables before closing the hat at the top, but I think I'll try to squeak three out of this skein.  That will make the hat longer, to cover my ears (the project photos make it look a bit short for that) and also give me a chance to fold the ribbing up to double it up over my ears.  Get the feeling that I'm planning for some cold weather?

There's still time to join either or both of these knitalongs, if you're feeling inspired...

Crazy Hat Lady

A while back, I knit a hat for my HLM (which never got a photo on the blog since he is shy of cameras) based on the hat that Opie wears on tv's Sons of Anarchy.  He loves it and wears it a lot.

Recently, one of my friends, who is quickly progressing through the basics of knitting, decided she wanted to knit herself a hat in that style.  We decided to do a hat knitalong, and both bought yarn and measured our heads and got to work.

The end result is a really simple slouchy hat that I love.  Sorry about the crazy eyes.

After finishing that one, I had the hat bug, and pulled out some yarn and a pattern that I picked up at the knitting store in Jasper on our girls' vacation.  A simple pattern by Wooly Wormhead, it knit up in a couple of days.  I added a half-inch to the length, and am I glad I did - it's still not really as long as I'd wish.  It's also a bit snug and wants to pull up, so it might be a donation hat, rather than one I keep.  The design uses a reverse-stockingette background with a travelling twisted knit stitch across it.  If I knit it again, I'd probably do a YO & SSK combo, instead, which would be easier on the hands and would give more-or-less the same effect.  It would also have more stretch, so it might even stay on my head a bit better.

Striped Cotton Hat, Redux

Many years ago, I saw a hat pattern by British designer Kim Hargreaves, which was a little reverse-stockingette striped slouchy hat, in cotton yarn.  Even as a new knitter, I knew it wasn't worth buying the $30 pattern book for it, so I just went out and got some cotton yarn in natural and charcoal and faked it.

The hat turned out super cute, but the band (since it was also in reverse-stockingette) curled like crazy.  It made it really hard to wear, since it tended to want to curl up my forehead and disappear.  Despite loving the hat, I barely ever tried to wear it because it was kind of frustrating to try to make it work.

Flash forward to yesterday, when I saw the hat sitting in the closet, all cute and springtimey, and was sad (again) that I don't wear it much.  Then I had an insight - knit a lining for the hat band so it won't be able to curl anymore!  A couple of hours and a bit of knitting later, and my hat band has a lining and actually works as a functional hat!

This one will be getting a lot of wear this spring & summer, to make up for all those years it was neglected.

(p.s. upon taking another look at the Ravelry pattern page, it appears that she has re-released this hat pattern, in bright colours and in regular stockingette, rather than reverse (which I feel takes away a bit of the charm but hey) and it mentions that the band is in garter stitch, which obviously wouldn't curl.  So if you decide to fake this hat, too, do the band in garter stitch and save yourself some heartache.  Just remember to go down a needle size (or two) since garter stitch is wider than stockingette.)

Two Friends are Better Than One

One of my most awesome work friends (hi Kate!) is super fun and crazy and always makes me laugh.  She isn't a fiber-crafty lady, but she good-naturedly puts up with my own craft insanity.  Recently she pointed me toward a cool crafty blog by another friend of hers from BC, Fig Cottage.  Turns out the lovely lady who writes this blog recently posted her first published pattern, a cute little toque called Kitimat.  I decided it might be a neat idea for me to knit one for myself (newbie knitwear designers gotta look out for each other, after all) but then I had an even more brilliant idea: why not knit one for Kate, then it's like a crazy mashup of two of her fibery friends, one who designed it and one who knit it.

I used Patons Classic Wool - when I saw this fantastic greeny yellow colour (called Lemongrass) I couldn't say no to it, and I thought it looked pretty awesome (dare I say "modern"?) with the dark grey mix.  Of course a huge pom pom is a must.

What matters most is that Kate loved it.

Pretty in Pink

Last winter, I made myself a pretty blue hat from SweetGeorgia's superwash worsted yarn, and I've worn it a lot this year.  It has a great drape, and hasn't lost its charm one bit.

With the holiday season coming, I had an idea to knit another one, as a gift for someone who would look great in a cool slouchy hat.  I thought that pink would be a good colour for her, so this time I chose SweetGeorgia's Orchid colourway, in the same round and lovely yarn.

I didn't change a thing about the hat, since I think it's pretty perfect as it is.  Once again, it was a super-quick knit and I had it done in no time.

Perhaps it's going overboard, but then I decided to make a cute pair of matching mittens, in Orchid and Charcoal.  I wanted to do this herringbone mitten pattern (free on Ravelry) for years, and now was my chance.  I chose superwash dk for this one, and somehow got gauge and made the loveliest mittens.  I have tons and tons of this yarn left over; I bet it's even enough to do a second pair.

I think a chevron might have been more aesthetically pleasing (especially since chevrons are so in, this year) but with chevrons, the floats in back would be up to five stitches long.  With this particular herringbone, they are never longer than two stitches long on the front or back of the mitten.  This means they will be super warm stranded mitts, but not so snaggy as something with longer floats.

I love the look of the thumb, the most - especially the way the stitches grow out of that center black column.  If it wasn't so awkward to get a photo of the inner thumb, I would show you how they disappear into a black column on that side of the thumb, too.  The biased knitting makes the thumb nice and snug and comfy.

The only thing that makes these less-than-totally-perfect is that the two yarns took the Orchid colour slightly differently, so the hat looks just a bit more red and the mittens a bit more pink.  Even so, they're beautiful, and I think the giftee will agree on that.

North Wind Hat

Before I got all excited about my rainbow scarf, I mentioned that I'd recently made a couple of new hats...


This one happened simply because I fell in love with this colourway (Sweet Georgia Yarns' Saltwater.) When I saw this glorious vibrant blue colour, I was totally enamored of it, and once I saw Felicia's North Wind Hat pattern (which only takes one skein of her Superwash Worsted weight) I was reminded of Oscar Wilde: I can resist anything except temptation.

It's quite a different yarn than the worsted weight yarns I'm used to, very dense and round, but lovely. Every stitch of this project was a labor of love, since it's so darn pretty. I am only sorry it didn't last longer. It's very comfy to wear; I think the folded-over ribbed hem is the best part. The colour does nice things with my eyes, too, which is always a bonus. Supporting another Canadian yarnista by buying yarn and patterns is the cherry on top.

Rosebud

No longer just a clever reference to Citizen Kane, Rosebud is also a lovely wooly hat designed by Jared Flood for his Fall 2011 collection. (Making that link just reminded me how many other lovely pieces were in that collection. As if I didn't have enough projects queued.)


I knit this hat in a day, back in November. I don't have any of Jared's lovely Shelter yarn, so I used some wool/mohair Peace Fleece I had buried in the stash. This was a skein of Kamchatka Sea Moss, which is a really nice spearminty green with flecks of white and a brighter lime green. This colourway is so beautiful in the sun, and never ceases to make me smile. As for the style, I love it - the cable isn't my favourite for some reason, but it really works, especially with the slouchy garter-stitch body.

I've been wearing this hat pretty much all winter long, and it has kept me warm and smiling, although in recent days I made a couple of new hats, so I have a bit more selection, now.

On the Needles

Although time may pass by without me posting, it is usually because I am working on so many projects that I don't take the time to blog. In January, I was pretty monogamous with my TFA knitalong project, the Ombre cardigan (pics soon) but once I finished that, I was anxious to get back to everything I'd put on hold while I worked on it.


First of all, I've been slowly plugging away on this alpaca cardigan for a long time - I've knit a plain brown stockingette body, and finally got to the more exciting bit, at the sleeves. The stranded work turned out pretty well, and I'm sure it will tidy up more with a good blocking. One more sleeve to go and I can knit the matching yoke and finish this up. Doesn't the colour combination make you think of Neapolitan ice cream?


Also in the pink vein (it must've been Valentine's Day) I have started a complicated pair of socks (i.e. my usual) with a lovely soft pink from Tanis Fiber Arts. Well, I started and restarted (and restarted) them, really. It took a few tries to get the fit right. I also finally got a better sense of the pattern by the third try, so now I can knit it without painstakingly following the chart, stitch by stitch. This is still the first sock, so I have a way to go with this pair.


Then there's a hat - not much to see yet, but just look at that fantastic yarn from Madelinetosh. So perfect and round and soft... and what a colourway! It looks so grey in some lighting, and so blue in other lighting. As my eyes also shift a bit from blue to grey, I think it will be a good hat for me. Because I need another hat.


Lastly, not really on the needles, but soon to be on the loom, another scarf. Because I also need another scarf. As you can see, it's going to be all rainbows, offset by navy (because one can't always go with black.) You can't really tell from the warp how complex and awesome the finished scarf will be, but it's going to be pretty cool, once I actually get to it.

Also, I just realized that I also have another cardi and a blanket that I didn't take photos of... so you'll have to imagine those, for now.

In the meantime, photos of finished projects coming!

Unselfish Hat

Despite my generally selfish crafty nature, every once in a while I get a soft spot in my heart for someone who requests an item from me, particularly if it's a quick and simple project like a toque.


A year ago, one of my coworkers asked me for a hat. I asked for specifics, and he said he'd think about it. A week or so ago, he finally sent me a photo of a hat and said he wanted that one. I got some appropriate yarn (elann's Peruvian Highland wool, one of my staples for worsted weight wool) and knit it up.

It's just a really basic hat, with about an inch of 1x1 rib at the bottom and then stockingette stripes: 4 rounds natural, 4 rounds green, 4 rounds natural, 1 round brown.

Simple, easy, done.

A Cabled Hat

When I was in the mood for a hat, last week, I found a couple of potential patterns that I really liked. One was the Brimmed Hat, which I had stash yarn for, and the other was a little cabled watch cap from Drops, for which I didn't have anything quite suitable.


As you know, I knit the lovely green brimmed hat, but I still couldn't get the Drops hat out of my head. Fortunately I still had one unused gift certificate from my birthday, so I made a trip to the yarn store the other day, and bought a couple of balls of Sublime Cashmere Merino Silk DK -- it is very nice round yarn, which makes it perfect for cables, and it's super-soft, which makes it perfect for a hat, and what a lovely cool grey colour, yes?

I started it the morning before I blew out my knee, and finished it the morning after. I haven't been out of the house much, so I haven't had much of a chance to wear it, but it feels lovely, and I do like the look of it, too.


The only thing I would change is that I would add two more stitches to the cast on: you can see on the right side of the cable in the photo (that is, if you click for a close-up, you might be able to make it out) that there is a little chunk of 7 purls in a row, without two knit stitches between to break them up. It didn't bother me enough to rip it back and add two stitches, once I'd begun, but if I did it again, I would add two more stitches in, so the ribbing would be balanced in that spot. Or at least recenter the cable so there is one knit on either side of it, instead of two knits on one side and none on the other. Or am I being too much of a perfectionist about this?

Brimmed Hat

Sometimes when I'm working on a lot of projects at once, it feels like I've been working on them forever. I suppose the solution would be to be monogamous with my knitting, and then they would be done quicker. I prefer to have a lot of options, to suit my moods. It always helps to throw together a little something for instant gratification, once in a while.


A couple of days ago, it was raining (again) and I really felt like making a hat. I found a cool hat pattern on ravelry that I had stash yarn for, and cast on. I finished it the next day and now I have a hat for the rain. Of course, today it's not raining.

This one is made from some Cascade 220 in Como Blue, so it is wooly and warm. The brim didn't quite turn out as expected -- in the original pattern, it stands out more, rather than clinging so close to the head, but I sort of like it. It is like a 1920s cloche and is very comfortable.

I think that blocking the brim might help it to stand out more, or maybe knitting it with another row of increases (or a larger needle size?) to make it wider as it extends further out. Further experimentation is needed...

Hat Fail

The Best Laid Plans: A Lesson in Colour

Long before I finished Lizard Ridge, I was looking at the leftover bits of the Noro Kureyon and thinking what a shame it would be to just throw them away. I came up with an ingenious plan for how to use them and began to plot out a brilliant blog post that would delight everyone who read it. Unfortunately, the best laid plans, as they say...

I was going to start out with this lovely photo of the leftover Kureyon, wound into little balls. As I was knitting the blanket, I found that oftentimes the loveliest colours would be left behind when the block was finished. It seemed like, because of the way the ball was wound (and because the block was knit with yarn from either end of the ball, working toward the middle) the colours that seemed to predominate were often positioned in such a way that the knitting was over before I got to them. It seemed a shame to not use them, but how could one use randomly coloured lengths of yarn in some sort of reasonable project?

I thought of this hat from Drops, which I've been wanting to make for a while. What if I figured out the length of yarn needed to do a round on the hat, and then measured out lengths of the Kureyon that are consistently one colour, and then arranged them in such a way that it would make a beautiful fair-isle design on a solid background? Wouldn't that be stunning hat, worthy of praise for how complicated and well-planned it was? So I proceeded to swatch for the hat with some Cascade 220 in my beloved Sparrow Heather colourway, and test what length of yarn would be sufficient to do a round. Then I sat down with my balls of Kureyon and began to measure out lengths of single colours. It made a lovely rainbow of little tiny skeins, and I was pretty excited about how this project was going to go.

Then I started to knit it. Obviously it was a bit of a pain, since I had so many ends -- each round of colour being a separate piece of yarn. But I carried on. Then I realized that I hadn't accounted for the increases in the length of a round (since the hat is cast on at 120 stitches but increases after the ribbing.) D'oh! I soldiered on for another round or two, thinking I might get away with it, without any lengths of colour being too short (since I had made them long enough for all 120 stitches, and the rows of fair isle weren't ever solid in colour but would have some background stitches, and therefore hopefully wouldn't ever take up all 120 stitches worth of yarn.) Then I decided I was being overly optimistic, and that it would be best to save myself the stress and worry. I elected to frog back to before the increases and try making it without the increases, since then I would be assured that the yarn would be long enough. Besides, I had tried on the initial swatch I had made with the Cascade 220 and decided it was big enough for my head. (Did I mention that the pattern is designed for DK weight and I am using worsted, just to add to the complications?)

So I began the colourwork again, this time on a steady 120 stitches. I got about halfway through the flower motif and realized that something wasn't working. The design wasn't very cohesive and it wasn't standing out from the background very well. This was probably partly because the colours varied from round to round, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it also had to do with the value of the various colours.

Colour value is a hard thing to pin down. You can't really eyeball it as easily as you might think, since the brightness or saturation of a colour might make it look like it's a different value than it really is. The best way I know of to check colour values is to look at it in black and white. Before photoshop, a person would probably have to use a photocopier for this sort of thing, but I just changed the photo I took of the hat into black and white to check it out.

As you can see, the values of most of the colours are pretty similar to the value of the background colour. There are a couple of ways I could have tried to fix this: I could reknit it with a new background colour (something very very light, like white, or very very dark, like black) would probably make the fair-isle stand out better than the Sparrow Heather background I chose. I went with option two: make a blog post about the failed experiment in fair-isle and knit the hat in two solid colours that have more contrasting values.

I picked up the leftover magenta from the blanket edging and frogged the hat back past the colourwork to start again. It seems to be working better this time. The lesson? Take a photo and check the values of your colours before beginning a fiddly project. Or live vicariously through my mistakes and stick to solid colours.

A Grey Hat

You know how hard it is to get a good photo of yourself wearing a hat? I have a lot of photos of parts of the hat, but couldn't manage anything that showed the whole hat successfully.

You get the idea, anyway. It is a very basic hat, invented out of my own brain, on request from a coworker. I don't usually make things for other people; it must have been a moment of weakness on my part, when I agreed to do it.

Nonetheless, it has been a simple and mindless project, which I mostly knitted while on breaks at work, so it didn't really cut into my own projects very much. Also, despite it being quite large and roomy, it only took two balls of Elann's Peruvian Highland wool. Simple, fast, and inexpensive: just what gifts to non-knitters should always be.

Hat With Braids

I decided to grow my hair long again. It's a cycle I go through every few years: get bored with it being short, grow it out, get bored with it being long, cut it short. Well, right now I'm in that awkward phase that makes it really hard for you to remember that you want it long, since you want so badly to get it cut so it doesn't look like a disaster all the time. The only thing to do is try not to think about it, and make yourself a cute Norwegian hat with braids, that will remind you how awesome it is to have long hair.


I've been craving one of these hats for months, since I first saw it on the Drops site. The other day I was searching for something in one of my storage boxes when I found some Woobu left over from my Jengu Woobu Aran. I immediately thought of how great it would be for this hat.

Turns out that the hat called for a heavier weight of yarn, so I held it double for the pattern, and ended up using a different gauge, which meant I had to recalculate all the numbers, and I didn't make it quite as long... but really, it's still essentially that hat. (Plus I used a lot more yarn than the pattern suggests, to make the braids, so they would be as thick as they are in the photo -- and as thick as they will be when I have finally grown my hair long.)

Don't you love it?

Another Koolhaas Hat

I was informed the other day that my HLM's Koolhaas hat was stolen. I think this is his way of saying he lost it, while letting someone else take the blame. One of my coworkers suggested that maybe it was his way of saying he didn't like it, but since he asked for a new one, I don't think that's the case.


He wanted a black one, but I had a nice deep charcoal skein of Cascade 220 in my stash (left over from my blankie) and it got a nod of approval. Thank goodness I kept good notes for modifications on Ravelry, so I knew just how to modify the original pattern to fit his head. In just a few days, I am done and barely in time for a cold turn in the weather. Unfortunately the dark colour doesn't show off the pattern as well as the lighter grey did, nor is the pattern readily apparent when it's unstretched. You'll have to trust me that it looks as nice as the first one.

This is a Hat

I am telling you that because no one in their right mind would look at this firm little tube of ribby knitting and think they were looking at a hat. Nevertheless, it is one, and it even fits my big head. I've checked. Several times.

All will become clear when it is finished, little grasshopper.