Category: blog

Well, now that the hat is done except for felting, I thought it would be a good time to go back and pick up Alison’s long-suffering poncho. I hadn’t touched it since before my dad died, and the last time I was working on it, I was in the middle of threading a longer cable needle through the stitches. Believe it or not, I have one 52″ cable and one 40″ cable connected together in my Denise Interchangeable Needles, and the bottom of the poncho is spaced comfortably around. This thing is HUGE! Hopefully I’ll be finished with the poncho sometime soon, especially sometime before ponchos are all the way out of fashion again!

Latifa

So, how is this for justification? Because Alison’s poncho is so large, I need a small project to take in the car, right? Sure, I do! I discovered the Latifa scarf on Knitty recently, and I just have to make one! For the color blocks I chose several shades of KnitPicks Andean Treasure, and for the ruffles I picked a varigated yarn from Morehouse Merino Farms in the “Berry” colorway. All of these yarns are so soft; I can’t wait to cast on! I think this will be my car knitting for some time to come. The only thing I am not looking forward to is weaving in all of the ends that will be generated by each color block plus each ruffle. So I hope this doesn’t turn out to be yet another doomed project. Wish me luck!!

DH’s snoring got me up at 3:30 this morning, which made me extremely tired for today, but hey, at least I got the hat done! I even weaved in the ends as it came off the needles, which is a task I usually postpone. We’ve got a mountain range of laundry to get done this week so I don’t know when it will be before I cna take custody of the washer for felting, but hopefully it won’t be too long.

I’m trying to decide now if the hat band I’m planning to make should be smoky gray as originally intended, or whether I should take the greenier shade from the hat itself and make a band from that. I guess I’ll wait and see how it looks after felting before I decide whih color would go best. Anyway, just had to share my first nearly FO of 2006.

Until next time…

Well, let’s just say that my 9-year-old is going to have a little extra time on her hands over the next two weeks. So, today she picked up her knitting again, and finally knit past the point where she stopped and we had to rip back last fall. She even snapped this photo herself with her very own digital camera, which she received for Christmas this year. She asked tonight if she could start her own knitting blog, which I think might be an interesting idea, because we’ve been struggling with her writing assignments all school year. But I’ll have to figure out a way to do it that will maintain her safety and security. I’ll think on it… and meanwhile, the pink scarf’s finally gettin’ longer!

Wow, here I thought I’d be close to done on this hat by now, and as you can see, I still have quite a bit to do! A couple more inches in the crown section and then the decreases. I guess the only real amount of knitting I’ve done this week has been during commuting time, so that might explain it. We’ve been in Homework H*ll with our 4th grader who somehow thought she could do a major writing assignment all in one night, only to find out that she couldn’t, so had to redo it all in another night… so it goes. Oh well. The good news is that with each passing day I am getting more into the rhythm of knitting again. It feels good!! I think working on such a familiar project was a good idea for getting started. Now, if I can just get up the nerve to go in the dining room and pick up Alison’s Poncho…

Yet Another Book to Love

I just got the book, Hip Knit Hats by Cathy Carron the other day, and I love it! The hats are stylish, fun and funky…. and should be a joy to knit. Each pattern in the book shows several variations, so you have the opportunity to try the hat in various yarn weights and style variations. How cool is that? There’s an errata page on the author’s website, but she includes a free pattern to help ease the pain. If you love knitting hats, definitely get this book. The hats are definitely worth it!

Hi, Gang! I can’t tell you how happy I am to be this far along on my cousin’s hat. This means it should be ready for felting by the weekend, given that I am to the crown section at last. Yay! I know I’ve mentioned, like, at least a thousand and three times how much I love the Fiber Trends AC-1 hat pattern, and that still holds true! Next time, I think I want to be adventurous and try the version with the flat brim. It looks glamourous and fun. I’m a bit disappointed in the way my camera is photographing the hat, though, because the colors are really lots more vivid than what you see here. When I’m done I’ll have to get a photo of Diane wearing it in natural light. I think it’s going to be pretty!

I’ve done quite a bit too much knit related shopping this week and I can’t wait for the UPS man to start rolling through the neighborhood. Sara, one of my co-monitors on the KnitTalk list, mentioned a sale at Cherry Tree Hill yarns. I’ve always wanted a hank or two of the Oceania yarn in my stash, so I got some while it was on sale. Two hanks, actually, so that’s enough to do a sweater for not-so-tiny me. Not saying that’s what I will do with it, given that I’ve never made a sweater in my LIFE, but I did by a new DVD from KnitPicks on top-down sweaters, and while I was at it, the one on entrelac hats and bags. We’ll see how I like those!

Anyway, so that’s where I am this week in the world of knitting; I’m excited to be getting back into it again. More next time…

Ok, so I’m knitting again, at least taking baby steps in the right direction. I promised my cousin Diane a felted brimmed hat like this one: Genny’s Hat. Diane has requested a teal hat, so I’m combining two strands of KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, combining one strand of the color “Stream” and one strand of “Winter Night”. It’s making a lovely deep teal. At first I was concerned that the color wouldn’t be right at all, but now I’m loving it! Let’s hope that Diane does, too. It feels good to be kniting again.

More later…