Free Pattern - Trainspotted Too!

I wrote this a few years ago. It's quick! 

If you want a roll-up brim, start with k1p1 around for six rows, k around one row, then start with Row 1 of the pattern. Makes for a nice warm band over the ears!

New Term Begins

I have absolutely no idea what year I am I  HPKCHC - M4, possibly, or B7? No clue.

The manor system is still operative in the Snake Pit. I'm assigned to Cerberus Manor this term. Abycat & Cattiekins & MrsMouse are there (that I noticed in a quick glance). As usual, the Common Room filled up so quickly I'll never catch up! 

We'll be doing a Detention Whoompf on September 1, so I'm scrambling to get my entrelac hat almost finished so I can finish it Thursday morning. It just needs the corrugated ribbing!

Honey Melon Hat

So, I made a hat: 

I wrote a (not super-technical) pattern so I can replicate it:

Materials: One skein Zen Serenity Chunky, size 13 needles, yarn needle, pompom making device of your choice.

CO 54 in the round, k1p2 around for 24 rows

k2tog p1 k1 p2 around 1 row (48 st)

k1 p1 k1 p2 two rows

k1 p1 k2tog around 1 row (42 st)

k1 p1 two rows

k2tog k1 p1 around 1 row (36 st)

k2 p1 one row

k1 k2tog around 1 row (30 st)

k one row

k2tog around one row (15 st)

k2tog 3x, k1, ktog 4x (8 st)

Pull yarn through all st, secure.

Roll 1.5" brim 2x, sew in place with yarn loosely - make sure hat stretches to full width!

Make pompom with remaining yarn, attach snugly to hat.

(I used the wide vertical part of a wire hanger.)

Weave in all ends, block if desired.

Totally finished!

Ponchalette, all ends woven in. Woot! 

Tiny Crochet Dragon!

Tiny crochet dragon was finished today. He takes a wee bit under 2 hours!

Dragon selfie!!

Teaching a class on him in May. :)

Kerchief is done!

Headscarf kerchief-thingy is done! One skein of Cascade Tangier and size 8 needles, made it up as I went.

Past the Arm Holes

A bit more progress. The circle is still flat. I should be starting the back-and-forth after the collar soon. 

More on the Circular Vest

I managed to get the center of the best to stay flat for a few more rounds:

I then carefully marked where the sleeves should go, made the openings with chain less foundation double-crochet (As fun as it sounds. Really.), and did a few more rows.

It wasn't even CLOSE to flat... so, basically everything I crocheted yesterday had to be frogged. 

Let me tell you this: Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable HATES to be frogged. It's basically single-spun acrylic MOHAIR. It took less time to frog than to crochet on the first place - but only just barely.

Anyway, today, I managed to get a good, flat middle circle all the way out to the arm holes.

Tomorrow, after the sleeves, it can begin to ruffle a bit. But for now, it is flat.

Circularity

The Circular Vest class was today. We had the choice of basic double crochet on out, or to play with stuff.

I opted for "play with stuff", and am attempting a Viral Vest (some of the same motifs as the Virus Shawl). So far, so good!

Hexagon Jacket

Wore my Hexagon Jacket again today. It's still a little chilly, but not quite heavy-sweater level cold.

It's Berroco Remix, and has some now-discontinued colors. Not normally colors I'd put together, but it works!

I added longer sleeves (and cuffs), a short collar, and all the seams are detailed with crossed stitches. I wear it much more often than I thought I would!

Homespun Sweater

Finished my Lion Brand Homespun sweater. My design, top down seamless. It is soft and snuggly. I fell in love   with the color. Yes, it's acrylic. Don't care, it's soft and snuggly! 

A Very Green Sweater

I found some Lion Brand Homespun in an amazing green at JoAnn's on Tuesday. I am one skein (of 4) into what is going to be a very green sweater.

As usual, I'm totally winging it. The nice thing about top-down raglan sweaters is that it's easy to make fit corrections as you go.

I figure it'll be done sometime next week!

Deep Time Out

Sweaters, of course, are not the only thing that misbehaves. Shawls, do, too. This is my absolute 100% worst offender project EVER. It is made from the following AMAZINGLY WONDERFUL yarn:

"ESPRESSO-CRIMSON-GOLD PAINTBOX GRADIENT ON FOOT NOTES YARN: 15 mini-skeins of 30 yards each which transition from deep espresso through chocolate and rich blood reds before ending in bright gold. A total of 450 yards (4.25 ounces) of 80% Superwash merino, 20% nylon fingering-weight yarn."

Please see kimberbaldwindesigns.com for more amazing gradients!
I want to state clearly, and for the record, that this yarn is in NO WAY at fault for the resulting chain of disasters. The yarn soldiered on nobly, trying again and again to do what I wanted.

What I wanted was an optical illusion basketweave geometric design on a shawl. Should be pretty easy, as I've tried similar, and not completely killed myself doing it. This shawl, however, wasn't going to cooperate.

The first incarnation, I got to the third skein of the 15 (I started on the Espresso end) and realized that sockweight yarn on size 8 needles doesn't lend itself to hiding yarn tails very well. So I went through and spliced all 15 balls into one giant ball (Yeah.), and tried again. Things were going ok, then I missed a turn... one of the ends of a rectangle didn't happen, so I had to frog out a few rows. I tried to get it back, and it just wouldn't... so I frogged the whole thing.


This happened about once a month for an entire YEAR. Yes, year. I got the yarn at the 2014 MDS&W. I think I might have skipped a month or two in there somewhere, but I feel pretty confident that I tried to start this thing at least eight times and never got past the second color of the gradient!!

I recently (as in "just before the 2015 MDS&W") found the Knit Mate app (iOS only so far).


Made using the Knit Mate app, which is pretty cool!
I tried again, and it worked! It was going beautifully! And then I realized I'd only done HALF of the row... I did about 50 rows without the second half of the triangle shawl. I thought about saying "pfeh, that's fine!" and making it a bottum-up-from-the-point shawl, but. Darnit, I want the shawl I had envisioned!!

So I tried again. And again. I almost made it to the third color the last time, and then something was horribly wrong again. I'd forgotten a turn, so I dropped just the necessary stitches and tried to fix it, and it just wouldn't fix. Something was just OFF.

So, I frogged the whole thing, and wound up the yarn into a pleasant, pretty little cake.


Yep, those are Signatures. I have two sets, size 4 and 8.
I have since pulled out a ball of Done Roving Footlights Transitions, and I'm making a Fall of Leaves shawl, instead. It's going much, much better.

Stop Sock Bag - Felted!

So, I needed practice felting something. I also just (this week) ran across my Stop Sock bag, which I needed to line, since the needles kept falling out of the bag - right through the fabric. "Or," I thought , "I could felt it..."

So I did.

Before
After

It also happens to fit perfectly over a 24oz screw-top hole-for-straw-in-lid tumbler that I wasn't otherwise using... so that' a part of it now:


While the colowork did lead to bleed-through where the pattern isn't, the yarn itself (Paton's Classic Wool) actually didn't bleed at all. So, total win on that front! I really like the way it turned out.

Hearts Aflame - Mixed Knit & Crochet Set

So, we made some adorable crocheted hearts for First Saturday Happening this month. And then I decided to run amok with it.

First, using the heart pattern, I crocheted a scarf. (Yes, that's orange-flame fun fur (Bernat Boa) for the picot edge.)


Then, I made a matching hat:


Top down, winged it completely turned out adorkably great.

Then mitts. Crocheted, because that uses more yarn, and I had to make sure to use over 375 yards for the set.


Here, all together - and turned in at 541 yards. phew!!



Been wearing the scarf since I finished it mid-week - it's very warm, and the fun fur is fluffy and soft. Wore the hat this evening - quite comfy, also warm. Haven't tried the mitts yet (as of this writing), as I finished them not five minutes ago.

Wheeee?

The mitered-square hoodie (part 1)

I don't remember when I got the idea for a mitered-square hoodie; probably after a Woolly Thoughts class. I started knitting straightaway with some stash yarn, and bought a hoodie.

I reversed the zipper so the outside of the hoodie would be the inside of the jacket; the fleecy "inside" would hold on to the knitting well, and then I'd have inside pockets and such. I got a goodly number of squares of varying sizes made:


I grafted exactly two squares together... and it was MUCH bigger than I'd thought it would be. I may be close to having the entire hoodie knit!


We'll see. But I'll be working on this a bit more over the next few months. (And yes, I have PADD. But if I work on lots of projects, I'm still going to finish lots of projects. Eventually.)

Stitching Copyright (not what you think!)

So, I needed a stitched copyright symbol. I picked a bunch of fonts, chose one I liked, and blew it up to 72pt type. I then ran it through Stitchboard.com's Free Pattern Wizard (a wonderful, wonderful resource!), and got this:


Now, I'm not actually cross-stitching, per se; I just needed a shape generated so I'd know what shape I was stitching. (Um, that was clear as mud. Hopefully you followed along anyway.) So, I backstitched the whole thing, and started filling in the backstitched area with Smyrna crosses, cross stitches and French Knots.


I then chose a fill stitch for the center background:


And then finished it up. I love the look of the French knot "flowers", and how the design gets warmer closer to the center. I think it came out great!

I made a cup cozy. This one is my own design (smaller needles than usual, so more stitches than my go-to cotton pattern. It worked well, gave me a chance to play with some Berroco Remix^TM, and hey, I have a cup cozy!


(In the interests of full disclosure, the store actually has a cup cozy. Remix was on the Yarn Bar last month, so we're supposed to swatch up the yarn when the next month begins so customers can see how it works up. It's... um... a cup cozy-shaped swatch?)

More Simple K2P1 Rib Hats

So, more hats: I made another sparkly gray and [fill in whatever color here] hat, this one in red, and this time writing down exactly what I did. So, yay, pattern soon!


I used two strands together (Red Heart soft and Caron Party) to make two of this kind:


Unlike the two previous hats, this one does not have a fold-up brim. It didn't really need it, as it has the illusion of a brim anyway due to the double thickness of yarn - and I ran out of Caron Party on the second hat anyway!

Really, I mean it this time!

Okay, seriously, it's time to get back to blogging. Especially since I now work at a knitting store part-time! I have lots of yarn to talk about, and projects, and....

... well, let's start with how I ended 2014. For a lot of reasons, it's a year I didn't mind seeing in the rear-view mirrors, but I did get some good knitting done.

To wit, the store is doing a giant knitalong/crochet-along/hat-along for Project Frontlines. The goal is to have 250 hats made by July 1, 2015, and we're already 10% of the way there! I've been using yarn that lost its original purpose from my stash, or charity/donated yarn from the shop, and just going to town. It's been a chance to try a lot of fun hat patterns. For my last hat of the year, I made up my own pattern.

Here it is about an hour before midnight:


And here it is all finished:


And, just for the heck of it, here are my pattern notes.... I was a bit groggy at this point due to a truly mixed up sleep schedule:


The pattern will be available shortly (once I've written it up and test-knit it once). Wheee!