Even though spring has officially arrived, the weather here hasn't exactly reflected that. I'm getting good use out of my reliable Clapotis and my new Fiddleheads. But something was still missing. A nice hat. Much to my dismay, I seem to have lost the Koolhaas hat that I made - it probably got tucked away in our massive clean up of the place when we were trying to sell it. So, what to do?
Say hello to the Tempest Beret, from the Winter/Spring Knit Scene. It was a really fun knit. I made it from the Malabrigo that Adrienne sent to me way back. I was originally hesitant to knit a beret because I was afraid that my ears would be cold, but this hat covers my ears nicely. It also takes the award for most fun blocking. You put it around a big plate! How fun is that?! Uh...okay...maybe I'm the only one who finds it fun (haha!).
Also got a package from Knit Picks today containing yarn that will be fashioned into more baby items. I'll post about those when I've actually started them. I just got some superwash merino since I figure new moms and dads don't have the time to hand wash.
I love Malabrigo yarn. It is super-soft and smooshy, one of the most pet-able yarns out there. There's a reason why it's the 3rd most popular yarn used on Ravelry.
A few years back (June 2005, to be exact!) I bought 2 skeins of Malabrigo in the Loro Barranquero colourway, a gorgeous mix of maroons and reds with some pinks and yellows and greens and white thrown in. I originally used the yarn to knit a hat and scarf set, loved how the colourway knit up, but hated the actual finished products themselves. Here's a photo of the hat-that-didn't-really-fit, see all the pretty colours?
Earlier this summer I decided that the yarn was being wasted as never-to-be-worn winter accessories, so I frogged the hat and scarf and cast about for something else to make with the yarn. I only had 2 skeins worth (~420 yards), so it definitely wasn't enough for a sweater. I couldn't find any coordinating solids that would have matched well. Eventually I came across the Scoop Neck Vest pattern from Blue Sky Alpacas, which only required 400 yards or so of yarn for my size.
Making sure I didn't run out of yarn required some reworking of the pattern on my part. I cast on provisionally and knit the top parts of both the back and the front first (i.e. the stockinette portions), then joined both pieces together and knit the bottom ribbing in the round. Then I picked up stitches around the neckline and armholes to knit the ribbing there. I have a very small ball of yarn left.
I'm not sure how I feel about the finished product right now. It hasn't been blocked yet, but currently the fit is a bit off, and I feel like the scoop is too low, especially given my lack of, um, assets in that area. The straps are rather curly and the neckline is a bit wonky, but that will probably (hopefully) go away after blocking. In the photo below, I'm wondering where my waistline went, and why plain white shirts are flattering on everyone else except me.
In general, I think I've realized something about Malabrigo. It's very pretty yarn, but there's something about it that feels a bit....off to me when I knit with it. Maybe it's that it's too "floppy" when knit up, I always feel like I like it better in the skein than as an FO. In this situation, I'm sort of feeling like the vest doesn't do justice to the gorgeousness of the colourway, and that it didn't necessarily live up to the promise of the original skeins. I mean, aren't these prettier than either the hat or the vest?
So, who knows. Maybe blocking will "fix" everything. Or maybe this will go into the pile of knits-I-never-wear. In either case, I am NOT knitting this yarn up again for the third time. =)
When I was younger my mom once bought me a beret. I think it was purple, or maybe red. I think I wore it to school, but I always had the vague sensation that it looked sort of dorky. Not that berets themselves are necessarily dorky, just that they look dorky on ME. In fact, I firmly believed that ALL hats made me look like a fool, so I switched to wearing earmuffs. Huge, neon pink ones (remember those?). Clearly I'm not that bright. =)
I've since resigned myself to wearing hats since the cold gives me headaches, but I still harboured a slight beret prejudice. So imagine my surprise when I fell in love with Gretel. I'd seen a bunch of them around blogland/Flickr and didn't think too much of them. Then suddenly I woke up one day and HAD to have one. Immediately! So I ordered some Malabrigo (Pale Khaki) from the Personal Threads sale and cast on as soon as the yarn arrived.
I knit the "normal" size, and I assumed that I would have enough yarn since the pattern called for ~200 yards, but as soon as I started the crown decreases I realized that I didn't have nearly enough. I didn't want to buy another ball of yarn, so I totally fudged the pattern and eliminated most of the rows between the decreases, which included a cable.
I think the hat still looks ok, despite the fact that it's missing maybe 8 rows of the pattern. I definitely want to make this again though, the "proper" way so that it's just a bit slouchier. It was a super-fun knit, pretty easy, and involved lots of cables containing both knits and purls. =)
This is how much yarn I had left at the end. Looks a bit like a tapeworm, huh? Eww. =)
So, Lettuce Knit is re-doing their floors this coming week, so this weekend they decided to have a store-wide sale in order to minimize the amount of yarn they'd have to move in and out of the store. Of course I had to take advantage of this. Here's the list:
1 Tulip kit
4 skeins Malabrigo worsted (for another Clapotis)
2 skeins of home-made cotton tape (for a lace wrap skirt)
5 skeins each of two different colorways of Silk Garden (for an Entrelac shawl)
1 skein of Dream in Colour Smooshy (for toe-up toe socks)
2 balls of dishcloth cotton (for dishcloths)
1 skein of Ultra Alpaca (for wrist warmers)
Yup. It was a very productive shopping trip. Photos of pretty much everything are on my Ravelry account in the stash section. Photos of everything would seriously have made this post really picture heavy.
I also finished off my Koolhaas hat today.
The suggestion from the lovely Adrienne to try cable needle-less cables was a life-saver. I still had to use the cable needle for some of them because the physics of doing cables that are both knit and purl don't really work with that technique (and I could be completely wrong about this, but when I tried it a few different ways, I got weird stitch wrapping action happening). I had a little bit of trouble with the decreases owing to the fact that I read the pattern incorrectly. Thankfully, I put in a lifeline after I finished all the lattice repeats, so after 2 rounds of decreasing when I realized my problem, I didn't have much to rip back in order to get where I needed to be. In the end, I only needed 3 lattice repeats using the Malabrigo in order to get the hat to fit my head.
I absolutely love how warm and squishy this hat is. I haven't blocked it or anything, and I have a feeling that I probably won't bother. It looks fine as is, and I just want to wear it already!
I have quite a bit of yarn left over too, and I think I could probably even get another one of these hats out of it. I might leave it for now, and then make another one when I feel the need for some more or less instant knitting gratification.
Sorry, but I wasn't able to get a photo of the commission that I finished. I showed it to my co-worker who requested it on what was quite possibly our coldest day here, and she said it was perfect and that she'd use it right away. So, I didn't have the heart to tell her that I wanted to take it home to photograph. Oh well. I'm considering knitting one for my mom, so I may still get a photo of it up yet.
In other news, I've started my version of Koolhaas in the Malbrigo. Here it is in its unfinished glory.
Excuse the odd yellow cast to the photo. I wanted the stitch definition to show, so I turned the flash off. As per my comment to Adrienne's last post, I'm not going to build any fancy contraptions in order to take better photos, so I think all my pictures will forever more have that yellow tint to them. I might play with Photoshop later tonight to see if I can cook up a formula to get rid of it, but for now, I'm going to leave it. In case you're curious, here's what it looks like with flash.
So, what do you think? Flash, or no flash?
The Malbrigo seems great, except that it knits up a bit taller than gauge. For the record, I didn't knit a gauge swatch. Why not? Well, they the gauge in terms of the lattice pattern, and since the pattern is written in the round, I was too lazy to convert it to flat. Also for the record, I'm a believer that gauge swatches should be standardized to stockinette. So, I didn't really notice the gauge difference until I was reading the pattern and it said 10 rows of k2 p2 rib should be about 1-1/4". I had knit about 7 rows in order to get that height. In conclusion, I think I'm going to do one less repeat of the lattice pattern before starting to shape the crown. I don't know if that will leave me with a hat that fits, but again my laziness prevails. I don't want to figure out how to alter the pattern if I only wanted to half a repeat less. I'm just going to toss my lot with the knitting gods and see what happens. Even if the hat doesn't fit me, I'm sure there's someone out there who has a head just that size, so I'm not going to worry about it.
I know this seems like a super long-winded post already (this should totally be considered two posts), but I just wanted to write a little rant about my thoughts on cables. I'm a little torn about what I think about cables. I love the way they look, but find the whole process of having to deal with the cable needle a bit cumbersome. I don't know I'm feeling this way because this hat requires you to use that cable needle, like, every other stitch, or if this is how I will always feel about any and all cables. It might just be this hat in particular because I don't remember being this annoyed when I was knitting that black cabled hat for Jamie. Or maybe I'm just forgetting any annoyance I might have had because the project is done. Also, I'm still wrapping my head around the 'physics of cables', if you will. Somehow, it doesn't seem as intuitive to me as lace knitting, but I'll probably get it after a while. Maybe at that point I'll feel more confident, and able to alter the pattern so that I can do 4.5 lattice repeats instead of 4 or 5.
Guess what I did this afternoon (before meeting up for dinner)? I knit a hat! I had two skeins of Queensland Uruguay DK that I bought on super-sale at Webs, and I'd always wanted to try the fair isle part of the Cheesylove pattern (without actually knitting the whole sweater of course!), so I thought I'd use the opportunity to put the two together.
I've knit enough plain stockinette hats now that the recipe is pretty much automatic, so I knit a small gauge swatch, cast on 96 stitches, knit some K2P2 ribbing, switched to stockinette, knit the fair isle pattern (bordered by some stripes), and decreased for the crown.
After my experience with the Main Street Fair Isle, I figured that I should probably knit the colourwork fairly loosely as I expected the hat to have to stretch a decent amount (my head is 21-22 inches around, the hat was knit to be 18-19 inches around unstretched) and I didn't want to risk the fair isle part being too small. So I knit VERY LOOSELY. The floats were VERY LONG. Too long, in fact. Why is it so hard to get the tension just right? The inside of my hat now consists of a lot of loopy bits. And there are a lot of loose stitches on the outside. Not the most attractive.
Another thing was that I decided that the ribbing was too long after having completed the entire hat, so I had to cut the yarn and unravel all of the ribbing so I could do it over again (from top down). Not a horrid thing, but a bit inconvenient.
Will I wear this hat? Who knows? It will probably be relatively warm due to the brim and the fair isle floats, but I may not be brave enough to wear this in public with all of its imperfections. Maybe a good blocking would fix it some?
Sophie doesn't really have an opinion, she pretty much hates hats in general.
Earlier this summer, I knit a Shedir cap for a friend's mom who was undergoing chemotherapy. The first time around I knit the chart completely wrong (i.e. backwards, I don't know what was wrong with me) and it looked like utter crap. But after some ripping and reknitting, the pattern started coming together, and even though it looked super-complicated it was actually really easy to get into a groove. I love knitting cables, the Rowan Calmer was a dream to work with, and after it was done the hat looked so lovely that I really wanted to keep it for myself! Of course I couldn't have done that, so naturally the solution was to knit another one for myself:
Does the yarn look familiar? It's this yarn reclaimed from the swatches I knit 3 years (!!) ago. Since that time I had bought some more Calmer in the same colour (totally unimaginative I know, but they didn't really carry any other flattering colours at the time, mostly pastels, and I CANNOT wear pastels) for another pattern (Nothin' But A T Shirt from Magknits), so this hat was knit out of two half-skeins. Probably different lot numbers, but I can't tell the difference yet. =)
Here is a looking-in-the-mirror shot! Ignore my bathroom crap in the background please. =)
I knit one fewer repeat of the main cable pattern (4 instead of 5) to make it a bit shorter, and I like it (maybe it could use a few more rows of ribbing, though)! This will make a fantastic fall hat. I may need to make yet another one....
