Catch Up

Sorry I’ve been a little quiet over the holiday period but been a bit hectic here. Hope you’ve all had a good time.

I’ll try and catch up. There was a lot of knitting going on over the Christmas break; plus I have a few projects I couldn’t show you as they were Christmas presents.

Starting off…. Hats

I initally made a Kernmantle hat for my Mum for Christmas. The pattern is a Woolly Wormhead one. Being a green kind of girl, she got Rowan Creative Focus Worsted in New Fern. Ravelry project page

It worked out perfectly and it suited me so I thought I’d make myself one in the recommended yarn.

Unfortunately, I learnt a lesson about swatching, even if you’re using the same hat pattern and needle size. The Malabrigo Merino Worsted behaved very differently to the Creative Focus. I thought since they both had a good proportion of wool there wouldn’t be much difference. I was wrong.

Upon blocking, the Malabrigo completely relaxed and grew hugely. I’ve added shirring elastic to the inside of the brim, so that it is wearable but it does make the hat far more slouchy than intended. Ravelry Project page.

The third hat off the needles was the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL 2014 which I finally got finished. Ravelry project page.

The yarn is Deeply Wicked by easyknits in Cranberry Kiss. I really, really love this yarn. The colour is just so vibrant and just so happens to go well with my Pop Spots shawl. Plus it seems to match nicely with my purple Christmas hair.

I have a fabulous new camera, which is just heaven to use. I can even connect it to my phone and use that as a remote control which helped a lot with this picture.

Well, that’s caught up with the hats. I’ll come back another day for the next instalment.

Hats

The Woolly Wormhead Mystery Knitalong 2014 has started. I started mine as soon as it was out on Saturday morning – didn’t have a lot of knitting time Saturday but it was done by lunch on Sunday. I won’t post a picture, as I know some people like the surprise. If you are interested in seeing the progress so far then follow this link.

I think for a second there, I may have forgotten about the Mystery Hat Knitalong. It’s got a bit colder recently here and I was thinking about my winter wardrobe – so I thought I could knit a warm winter hat. Ahem… so bought yarn, then remembered I was already going to be making one! Oh well, they’re different colours, so I will have two new hats!

The pattern I’ve used is Kernmantle – another Woolly Wormhead pattern. I just takes one 100g skein of yarn for the largest size. I’ve used Malabrigo Merino Worsted in Vaa for this one. It's a beautiful deep bottle green colour which is quite hard to capture in the photograph.

FO: Black Mojitos

I finally got around to using my yarn that I picked up at the Big Coffee Morning yarn swap at A Good Yarn. Nicsknots brought this gorgeous Easy Knits skein to swap and I was lucky enough for my ticket to be drawn first.

The pattern is Rubbish Mojitos by Woolly Wormhead. I was very impressed with the pattern for the Mystery KAL this year and thought I'd try another.

I didn't realise the crown had such beautiful swirls on it before I started. So that was a lovely surprise.

The yarn ended up make spirals for the main body of the hat, which I thought was cool. Though being mainly purl stitch it hides it a bit.

For some reason I decided that I was going to knit the hat inside out; so I was mainly using knit stitches instead of purling. Not that I have any particular objection to purling. I think it was more an exercise to see if I could work out how to reverse the knitting.

I read the instructions from the end of the round and worked out what would be worked on the wrong side - swap knit for purl and vice versa.

The cable stitches were a little more complicated to work out. After a bit of playing about on my needles, it turned out that the reverse of the first two cables is the same as the original instructions. The cable decrease, on the other hand, was different. I cable without a cable needle and I just ended up moving the stitches around on my needle for it to work.

If I were using a cable needle then the instruction would be to slip the first knit stitch wyib, place purl stitch on cable needle held to the back, slip knit stitch back to left needle and knit two stitches together, then purl stitch from cable needle.

The moving of the marker is a bit hard to follow in reverse but as long as the single purl column lines up, then it doesn't matter too much if you're a stitch off.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

FO: Woolly Wormhead Mystery Hat KAL 2012

There are some SPOILER photos here; so don't continue if you want the hat to be a surprise. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've taken part in the Woolly Wormhead Mystery KAL 2012. This is the first time I've done this and I really enjoyed it. I normally steam through projects and I was kind of nice to be able to do a project in small portions; made me appreciate the experience more! Also, I'm not 100% sure I would have picked the hat had I seen it first. It's lovely but probably not something I would normally do. It's good to try different things.

It took an awful lot of effort to finally choose some yarn; I kept finding that everything I wanted to do would just go into a 2nd ball to fit the size I wanted. I finally found a yarn that would work with just 1 ball which is Louisa Harding, Amitola which is quite an unusual yarn. It's sold as a DK but it has 250m/50g which is an immense amount of yardage for a DK. It's a single ply yarn with long stripes.

My favourite part of the hat is the brim. I love a brim with a double thickness and it just fits great (well it did until I overblocked it!); I lost a bit of the negative ease with blocking but it still wears well.

Looking at the above photo, it looks like the brim is laying flat (which is what I thought when I sewed it down) but when I was picking up the stitches for the body of the hat, it started to twist. So I had to unpick the join and redo it.

I left the body of the hat a little shorter than recommended and waited to see what the final instalment would reveal. In the end I added an extra repeat (after a bit of frogging). I added some extra length in the crown too, as I had enough yarn left over.

So the finished hat, with my lovely stag button that I bought from Textile Garden and blogged about here.

Mustard & Yak

I've some finished objects to show you. I bought a new winter coat last week and thought it needed a new scarf to go with it. I chose a bright yellow to match the brass fittings on the coat.

The pattern is Hana Shawl by Kristina Vilimaite. The yarn is King Cole Bamboo Cotton. It's quite a different construction to other scarves and shawls I've made and I enjoyed the change. It's cast on a large number of stitches along the patterned edge and after the pattern, there is a section of short row shaping to give it a curved shape.

The suggested cast off is a Fake Tubular Cast Off which I've never used before and must say I'm enamoured with it. Very simple to do, not much more complicated than a regular knitted cast off and it gives an interesting edge. The instructions for it are from TECHknitter.

Also, I've finished my Yak hat. It's made from handspun yak/silk which I blogged about here. I just improvised a 2x2 ribbed hat. It's to fit a size 22" head with a little bit of negative ease. It fits me nicely and is lovely and snug. However, it's a christmas present for a friend. The photos might look a bit odd, the hat has a balloon inside it for blocking.

Baa

I seem to have been really busy this last week or two but not a lot to show for it.

I've been sucked into the enthusiasm of the 2012 Woolly Wormhead KAL. I really enjoyed the Orchid Thief KAL. I've been very good recently and there has been an embargo on stash acquisition, which accidently came to an end yesterday when I bought this:

I've a feeling one ball won't be enough as I've got rather a large head. There is 250m on the ball so I'm crossing fingers.

There's plenty of knitting going on but nothing finished.

Here's a sneak peak of my Rams and Yowes blanket:

Hopefully it'll be finished shortly but I had a minor disaster with it last night. I'd sewn the border down to the inside and blindly did the whole thing without checking the tension of the sewing. When I'd finished I did my usual thing of pulling it into shape and proceeded to snap all the sewing that I'd done. I'd done it way too taut so I'm patching it back up at a much looser tension.

There's also a very cute surprise present for Mr., which I'm loving. It's a fabulous pattern. Here is the link for it if you're curious

Spinning Yak

Among lots of other things, I've managed to fit in a little time for spinning.

Happened to drive past Wingham Woolworks a little while back (it was a 50 mile detour really!). Bought a few bits and on the way to the counter saw this gorgeous shiny fluff and it went into the basket. It's 50% yak, 50% silk and it really shines.

It changed from this to this...

It's  a 2ply, 178m, 12 w.p.i. DK. It's going to become a "Yak Hat"!

This is Shetland from Wheeldale and there's only 50g, 175m, 2ply and 18 w.p.i. So it's on the edge of being a fingering weight. I have another 50g in a light green in BFL to go with it and once that's spun, it'll be some handspun stranded mittens.

This is my first attempt at corespinning and I loved it.

141m, 10 w.p.i., Worsted Weight. Fibre mix: merino, BFL, sari silk, bamboo, baby alpaca and sparkle. My thinking at the moment it would make a lovely drawstring bag but don't really need one of those so not sure what to do with it.

This is the fibre on my wheel at the minute, it's Faux Cashmere (nice way of saying nylon) from FeltstudioUK 

It's super soft and attempting to make a 3ply quite thin. It tends to have a flyaway nature to it so it's sticking to everything but is quite interesting to spin.