Category: hats (page 1 of 4)

What I’ve been doing

Ok, I could take a lot of time making excuses for not posting for so long…but really, who wants to hear my well-crafted excuses that will try to mislead you all from the fact that I’ve been lazy? So let’s just move on. With some recent inspiration from my sister, I’m hoping I’ve got my blogging mojo back.

Although I haven’t been blogging, I have been knitting. A lot. So I’m just going to dive right in and show you some projects I’ve made in the last 2 years…not necessarily in order though.
The Force Awakens hat

The Force Awakens hat

 

cooper

 

Above is The Force Awakens hat by Hanna L.  How cool is this design?? I’m not even a huge Star Wars fan and I still think I’d wear this hat. I love the colors together too…an R2D2 color theme. I’ve made 2 so far and now I’m starting a third. Then I have two more to go! They’re in high demand. You can find the Ravelry pattern here.

Baa-ble hat

Baa-ble hat

Here is the most popular pattern of the year. It’s the Baa-ble hat. I made 3 of them, 2 in blue and 1 in purple. I fell in love with the cuteness. I might make another for me.

Li's hat

Li's hat

 

And here we have the Greystone hat by Melissa Thomson that I made for my little sister. The Ravelry pattern can be found here.

Maiya's hat

Above is Sumner by Wooly Wormhead. This hat looks so cool when it’s actually on a head, but I forgot to get a picture of my friend wearing it. If you’d like to see it on a head, or many heads, you can see it on Ravelry here. This was not an easy hat. It took a long time and was super challenging. But the end product was worth it.

Fox hat

 

Harlyn

Then we have the Foxy and Wolfie pattern. I made two of these. One was for an Angelman Syndrome auction, the other for the super-cutie seen above.

The Triplets

image

The pink bunny

I made 4 of the bunnies above. The pattern is called Henry’s Bunny by Sara Elizabeth Kellner. Each one took me about 5 hours to make. The first 3 that you see together I made from yarn that I spun myself.

Emmet in Jodi's hat

Jodi's hat

Above is the Emma hat by Jennifer Thomassian. I made it for my friend Jodi. Above her picture it is being modeled by my Emmet. He is my favorite model.

Li's socks

I actually finished a pair of socks! Not this year though. I made these in 2014 for my little sister. I can’t remember which pattern it was, just a plain vanilla ribbed sock pattern. They actually came out too big, and I’m not sure if she’s been able to wear them.

image

Above…above is what I’ve been actively avoiding. So I’ve been working on this vest for my mom for a LONG time, and I’m so close to being done. She wanted a white vest that looked like the one she made for my Gram, her mom. This was the closest we could find, and it is very close. It’s called Caldwell and the pattern is by Stephen West. I chose to ignore the stripes, as I think they look weird and make the vest harder to match to things you’re wearing. I thought a vest would be easier than making a sweater….no sleeves, ya know? I was wrong. Tons of cabling. And I hate seaming. And there’s 3 pieces to seam together (which I already did) and then there’s this ribbed trim that has to be picked up and knit around the edges. And buttons. And button holes. And I don’t think I have enough yarn left, although I thought I calculated correctly in the beginning. Ugh…I don’t want to think about this one right now.

So there we go. I did it! My first blog post in almost 3 years. I’ve actually knitted more projects that I didn’t take pictures of or have forgotten about, I’m sure. But here’s some of what I’ve been doing. Happy New Year everyone! I’ll have more to say soon….I hope to make this a habit again.

Knotty but Nice hat #2

Hi All! I apologize for the silence, but work went from dead to crazy busy with lots of overtime, then I went away on a ski vacation in VT with my family (they ski, I knit) and now I’m back and work is dead again, for the time being. So I finally have a moment to post.

I knit a hat while I was in VT. While the rest of the family was skiing out in the cold, I was snug as a bug in the condo with a gorgeous view, knitting and reading A Clash of Kings (which I am loving even more than the first book, A Game of Thrones). The hat I made is for my friend Jason, and it’s the Knotty but Nice hat.  It’s my second go at it. You may remember my 1st attempt just didn’t work, and my son ended up with a new hat instead. Well, this time it worked for the most part.

I dyed the yarn myself, and it’s actually greener than it shows in the picture. This time I used the correct weight of yarn…worsted instead of bulky….and I went up one needle size for the cabling, as the cabling is very tight and not very stretchy.

My biggest mistake was taking the hat to my friend Maiya’s house for a Knit Night. We got to talking and drinking wine, having a great time….then the next day I pulled out the hat to keep going and noticed something didn’t look right. In fact, something looked very wrong. I realized I had knit about 5 rows of cabling and somehow was very off, and hadn’t noticed it at all that night. I have never ripped out ANYTHING to try and fix before…I tink back, not rip out. Well, let me tell you, I was NOT tinking back 5 rows of cabling. So in VT I decided to start over. I ripped and ripped and took apart half of the cabling and then thought, well, maybe I should just TRY to insert my needle back into this thing. And people, I can’t believe it, but it worked! I managed to rip back to a spot and reinsert my needle throughout the entire hat, and it WORKED!! Yaayyy me!

I’m very happy with the way it turned out but the cabling section is still a little tight, and if I were to do it all over again, I would go up 2 needle sizes for that section. I’ll see Jason on Thursday and give it to him then. He may not like it, and that’s fine, I’ll just keep it myself if he doesn’t. Personally, I love it and wouldn’t mind keeping it, or giving it as a gift. He didn’t give much direction as to what style hat he wanted, and gave me free rein, but I have a feeling he was thinking of something more simple.

And now for some Sugarbush VT pictures. These are my favorite ones:

Mike and Emmet ….my favorite picture from the whole trip.

Mike and Nana skiing with Emmet:

The view from our condo:

Emmet’s favorite part of the trip, the Snow Cat ride up the mountain! Here he is with his cousins, getting ready to go up.

Emmet in the Snow Cat…notice the hat? That’s the Knotty but Nice hat #1.

The view from the top:

Cousins in the loft:

Cousins watching a movie:

Swimming on our last day there:

Sigh…I really like being on vacation.

I’m still working on that gorgeous red pair of socks. And since I have no more commissioned projects lined up, I think I’ll see what I feel like knitting next, along with the hexipuffs (my pile is growing) and the sock. Maybe that shawl I mentioned before. Hmmm…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping busy

I’ve been keeping busy even though I haven’t posted in 12 days. You’d think I would have posted more, since my regular job is so slow that I’m feeling unemployed, but instead, I’ve found it harder to concentrate, and harder to motivate myself to blog. Odd, with so much time on my hands. I can’t explain it.

I have been trying to be productive in other ways though. I’ve now dyed 3 rovings using my new Eco Friendly dyes. The new dyes are worth every extra penny they cost. The dyes are vibrant, smell less offensive, and are less toxic to the environment…and my hands.

Here is Tie Dye T-Shirt:

And below is Applepicking:

This is the first time I tried “painting” the fiber and steaming it, rather than submersing it in a big pot of dye. I think it’s more fun, but a lot harder to make sure you’ve covered all the fiber.

I start by soaking the roving in a bath of water and citric acid for at least 30 minutes. Then I gently squeeze out some of the excess water and lay it on a large platter. I mix the colors I want and then “paint” the roving. I’ve seen that this can be done with an actual paintbrush, but I’m so afraid of felting the fiber, I figure the less touching the better, and so I squirt the dye where I want it using those plastic syringes you get with your child’s prescriptions. When I’m done, it looks something like this:

When I’m satisfied that ALL the roving is soaked with dye, I wrap it up in the Saran Wrap it’s on top of, and put it in a steamer on the stove. I steam it for 30 minutes.

I take it off the heat and put it outside where it will cool down to room temperature on it’s own (that happens pretty quickly in the winter) and then I bring it back in and rinse it. When the water is clear (and if you’re lucky, it’s clear from the start, right from the first rinse) then I drain it.

Then it dries on my clothes rack overnight and into the next day. When it starts to seem more dry than wet, I gently pull the fiber apart to make it puffier and easier for air to flow through. Here’s what I got from this colorway.

I put this one up on Facebook and asked for name ideas. My favorite came from my friend Breida. She suggested Age of Aquarium. And so it is.

After having so much fun painting the roving, I decided to try my hand at painting skeins of yarn. First I tried a fiery orange/red/yellow mix. I ended up with Inferno.

When I redistributed the colors, it looked like this:

And last night I finished with The Great Hall:

It’s a mix of purple, maroon, avocado, brown and blue. It looked very royal to me, making me think of kings and castles…hence the name. I painted this one too.

Sometimes I like them better before I redistribute the colors, like with Inferno, and sometimes I like them better after, like with this one.

I’ve also knitted 3 hats on commission, and am starting another. I was asked to make a hat for my friend Jason, and I picked out the Knotty but Nice pattern. It’s a free pattern on Knitty.com.  It calls for worsted weight yarn, but I thought it would work out fine, and be warmer, if I used the bulky yarn I already had in my stash, which was the color he wanted. Nope. Didn’t work. It ended up fitting my son, who is 4. It’s a beautiful hat, but not going to fit an adult male. It’s partly because of the yarn, and partly because I panicked and revised the pattern, trying to make it fit.

But, Emmet loves it and looks adorable wearing it, so I’ll try again with worsted weight yarn and use larger needles for the cabling section, as it turned out much tighter than the rest of the hat.

So, tomorrow’s another day, and I’m not sure if I’ll have work or not. If not, I’ll focus on more yarny adventures.  That is, IF I can pull myself away from playing Words with Friends long enough to do anything else. I’ve also been reading A Clash of Kings, the book that comes after a Game of Thrones. I am LOVING that series. I highly recommend it.

 

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