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?