2 - Newborn Swirl Hat

Ravelry Links -- Pattern: Swirl Hat | Project Page

Can I just say how much I love how this picture turned out? Finishing this project coincided perfectly with all the trees going into bloom around here, especially these perfect pink and yellow ones.

Oh yeah, and the hat is pretty adorable too ;)

I've had this pattern downloaded since February 2012!! This was way before I ever started knitting! I actually think I must have gotten it off Ravelry in the idea that I would either try to replicate it in crochet or learn to knit since it looked easy. It's multi-sized so it's a great hat for literally everyone. I made the newborn size and it looks so teeny tiny! It is pretty stretchy though.

After finishing my socks (which were a disaster and a half - I'll have to take pictures and write up a whole thing about them), I was left with this little tiny bit of yarn, and a baby hat seemed like it was the perfect way to use it up. Of course I do actually have a second ball of this yarn, but I just didn't want this little partial floating around. It's an acrylic/nylon blend, very soft, but not something I'd want to knit more things for myself out of.

I was inspired to knit baby hats due to Katrina's YarnThirty podcast in which she talks about her own experience. If you're interested in the personal anecdote of someone who has had a baby in the NICU, listen to this part of Katrina's podcast (should be cued up to ~35 minutes when she talks about it). And in a follow-up comment on the Ravelry discussion board, someone else mentioned a couple of interesting points:

[And I did a lot of research on it and found that you should use very low/no animal fiber content yarns due to sensitive skin ... and found that many NICUs needs bigger size baby hats because they receive many preemie hats.]

This yarn was perfect for just such a thing: soft, washable, and cheery colors. I predict I will likely use that second ball to make lots more baby hats in different patterns :)

Another hat down! If I just made baby hats, I'd probably have 500 hats in no time!

1 - Ombre Calzetta

Ravelry Links -- Pattern: Calzetta | Pattern: Ombre Slouch Hat | Project Page

In pursuit of my knitting goals, I decided I definitely needed to learn stranded color work, aka fair isle because there are so many pretty patterns out there I want to knit!

I was given a skein of Red Heart Grande (80% acrylic/20% wool) which is a super super bulky yarn. Perhaps one of the chunkiest yarns I have ever seen. A chunky easy stranded color work project seemed like a good way to use up this random yarn. I used Calzetta as the actual pattern for the hat and applied the color chart from ombre slouch hat. Fortunately, I had some nicely coordinating yarn already in my stash to use for the main color.

A couple things that I learned from this project:
-I need to do a better job on the ribbing. It has no recovery so just stays majorly stretched out, but the whole hat is stiff enough to stay on the head I think.
-The stranded work was actually not too hard to do, but I did majorly get the skeins tangled up with each other. I think I might be able to solve that problem using a yarn guide. I can't knit English/throwing so I can't do the one color each hand that some people can do. It's supposed to be easier to knit fair isle continental, so I'm hoping that holds true for me too.
-Also, you can see that I wasn't able to work the full chart, and that I probably should have started earlier too, but I thought I was supposed to work 5" from the ribbing not 5" from the cast on edge, so I had to start decreasing much earlier than I expected.
-On that note, I probably should have given up working the chart on the decreases as they have ended up a little muddied. But I couldn't shake the idea that I wanted a full transition to the second color on the top.
-And unrelated to this specific pattern, but nonetheless about this hat: pompoms turn out bigger than you think! Clearly I have gone way off the deep end with this softball sized pompom, but it's still kind of fun :) I made my own cardboard pompom maker using this DIY (also good for making shapes inside pompoms).

 Cheers to Hat #1 of the 500 Hats Project! Onward!

Knit Goals 2016 and Introducing The 500 Hats Project

This year I am resolving to do something about my yarn stash. And finish all my outstanding WIPs.

I'm not doing too bad in the WIPs arena. I'm doing Finish It February hosted by Lina Knits on Ravelry, so I've already got a pair of socks and a hat finished. Then I'll just have one sock that needs a mate, sleeves and ribbing on my pullover sweater, and decisions about my cardigan. The cardigan doesn't have much left to go, just part of a sleeve then a button band, but it's not well made (I was accidentally doing backwards YOs so the stitch pattern doesn't really pop) so I may frog it. Or not. I may finish it for practice and then try to block it to open up the eyelet pattern. Also, I knitted it in cotton, so I don't know what I would do with all that cotton if I did frog it. Thoughts?

Knit goals for the year
-Finish the WIPs
-Knit a hat for Nathan's dad for Christmas (nothing like starting early!)
-Learn brioche
-Practice stranded colorwork
-Generally improve my knitting ability
-Work on my 500 hats project (see below!)

Ok! I think these are pretty doable!

Now let's talk about the yarn stash. Oh the yarn stash. There's nothing like moving to put your hoarding stash into perspective. I've got 2 clear 55 gallon buckets stuffed full of yarn and then random little skeins stashed all over the place. A lot of it is super saver that I used to use when I made a lot of amigurumi. The amigurumi production has since slowed way down, and I'm focusing more on wearables at the moment.

Thus was born The 500 Hats Project! #500knithats
(Bonus points to whoever can tell me where the name comes from)

I want to use up the yarn to make hats for charity. But it's not as simple as all that. I want to improve my knitting skills at the same time. So I'm hoping with each successive hat, the techniques will get slightly fancier. At the moment, I haven't decided on a charity to donate the hats to. They may go to a local charity here in San Diego, or I may send them elsewhere, you know, where it's actually cold. Leave a comment if you have any particular charity in mind!

Disclaimer: I may not actually make a total of 500 hats, I just want to use up my yarn stash, so whatever the yield is, that's what it'll be. Unless anyone wants to join me?

A Freshly Minted Sweater

You guys, I knitted a sweater! It started out with a false start, then got a little rocky, but the big reveal is below. (Spoiler! It's totally wearable!)

I totally blame all the talented knitters on Kollabora giving me serious knit lust. But you can see that I've only made knit scarves before and only with two patterns (I made the Vite cowl 3 times and the ruffle scarf 3 times).  So, I thought I would start my sweater knitting journey off simply with a piece that was knitted flat and seamed up.

I used the Corrugated Asymmetrical V-neck sweater pattern from Teva Durham's Loop-d-loop book which I had bought on a lark at a used book store, only 75 cents! It only has 2 pieces and 4 seams, and there's nothing much crazier than knits and purls.

You guys, I'm scared of cables, but at the same time I am totally infatuated with cabled sweater patterns. Somebody teach me! (I want to make this Severus pullover so bad in that awesome jade green colorway. And also Neville's sweater when I learn colorwork.  My knitting eyes are obviously way bigger than my stomach. Also Harry Potter, ahh!)

I had this pound of love acrylic yarn in this minty green, and I figured this was the most yardage of anything I have, it'll be perfect for making my first sweater since it might be an unmitigated disaster.  I only have one set of needles, and I wanted to use this yarn, so I basically fudged the gauge and called it close enough with stretching.  I wanted it to be somewhat tighter than the picture anyways.

I cast on twice as many as the smallest adult size thinking I could match gauge by adding more stitches. But I learned, that's not how you do it, and the piece I started with was not what I thought it was. I basically had the idea that I was knitting from the waist up.  I knitted a few rows before I realized something crazy was going on and then I ripped it out and started again.

So when I started, it looked like this (see below). And I was thinking, there's no way this is going to be right. It looks like a uterus. This is after I ripped out the first try. This is actually one of the sides of the sweater, you turn it sideways when you seam it together with the other piece.  I actually had started knitting the sleeve flat in this picture.



I also learned that I have freakish hulk arms and that I should probably size up in the sleeve or not decrease so dramatically.  The first sleeve I made was according to the pattern and it was comically tight and stretched out on my arm.  I debated making another but figured it would be more wearable if I did, so I scrapped the first one.

But here it is after all the trouble!  I shamelessly copied Kendi's styling with this mint and navy combo.  It's so brilliant together though, right? Totally fresher than mint and black which is what I would have defaulted to.



The jasmine blooms for about a week in the course of an entire year and then all the pretty blossoms promptly turn brown and fall off.  I tried to get these pictures in before they all started dying because that bush is pretty marvelous if just for that one week.



I actually nixed the corrugated pattern on the sleeves since I thought they looked kind of frumpy and opted for stockinette all the way down and then used a modified rib knit for the cuff. I thought it would be fun to have a nonstandard cuff so I finally settled on [K1, P1, K1, P3] repeat around the cuff.



I think it ended up a little short (and tight!), so it's more of a cropped sweater.



Totally learned and practiced my JSSBO (Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off) on the cuffs! I made the mistake of using a traditional bind off on the first extremely tight sleeve, and it was all I could do to get it over my hand.



Strappy dresses/tops only under this thing I guess since the neckline is so weird.  It's definitely a cool effect though.

I have no idea how much yardage I ended up using, but there is still a comically large ball of yarn left even though I was convinced I was going to use up much more than I did.

Not bad for my first try, eh? I still have yet to wear this out anywhere (do I dare?) but it's been quite hot, so that's my excuse.  I actually have a second sweater in the works right now, and it's already looking much better than this one!

Sparkly Ruffle Scarf

Another knit project!

My mother saw this at some craft fair or something and got it in her head that I could totally make this.  At least I got a nice pair of bamboo knitting needles out of it?

It's just one ball of those popular sashay ruffle yarns or whatever brand it is that's the newest novelty yarn.  Honestly, it was a huge pain in the ass to work with.  You had to stop every three rows or so and stretch out the mesh some more, and I couldn't really find a good way to hold the yarn while I worked it.  And on top of all that, there was a damn break/knot in the middle of the ball.  Like the yarn had broken and then somebody just tied a big old knot to put it back together.  This really made things worse because the mesh can't be stretched out when there's a knot tying all the strands together.

Anyways, frustrations and complaints aside, it's kind of an interesting scarf.  Not something I would wear, but I could see how other people would be into it.  It's surprisingly heavy since it looks all light and floofy.



Anyone else worked with cool/frustrating novelty yarns lately?

The Vite Cowl

My first finished KNIT object!

I've been looking for the perfect knitted scarf pattern, and even though I had to learn like 6(!) new stitches to make this cowl the first time, it comes together so easily and beautifully.  There's enough interesting texture to the pattern without using cables, which I don't have the ability or equipment to do.  This is the Vite Cowl by Kristi Johnson, and I was so enamored with the lovely teal cowl made in the example that I had to make one (or two).

This fuschia one is made out of one skein of Loops & Threads Charisma yarn.  The yarn is wonderfully soft and fluffy for being 100% acrylic.  I didn't bother to block it since I don't have blocking pins and mats and things, and I've been told that acrylic doesn't take to blocking well.  I made it on some huge circular needles so it was very loose which made it actually long and stretchy enough to use just one skein for the cowl.

Can you see the lovely leaf pattern?


I actually also made a second one of these in this beautiful mossy green 50% wool from the Lion Brand Cozy Wool line - I used about 1 and a half skeins.  I made it for my friend for her birthday way back in November (and actually got it to her on time!).  I was tempted to pick out some yellow shade of yarn, her favorite color, for this scarf, but I love a good green with gorgeous strawberry blonde hair.

Funny story, I'm like the world's worst gifter.  I usually promise to make things for some gift-giving occasion but then fail to produce the thing until 3-6 months later.  For this scarf, I was supposed to meet up with my friend for lunch, and I was seaming the ends together and weaving in tails when I was supposed to be leaving!  Of course, this means that I failed to get a single picture of that lovely cowl :(