Not quilting but knitting: the nighttime dog walker's hat

I know, I should be getting the FEB, MAR & JUN 2015 Facebook Quilt Block Swap Group blocks up but I need a bit of a break.  Also, it helps if I change gears ever so slightly before I do the final cut-&-sew test on directions, so that is what I will be doing this afternoon.  In the meantime, though, this is what I did last month.

First I found this absolutely ridiculous yarn.  There is a reflective band wrapped  in with the acrylic fibers that make the yarn & I very quickly got hooked.  It is not an elegant yarn, it does not feel especially good to work with & it is over priced for what it is (especially considering how much of it is pulled, frayed & knotted:  buyer beware), BUT I love it.  I brought these instead of bottles of wine to holiday parties, I sent two to my Reddit gift-victim (one of them the traffic cone at the right, the other something nicer), at cookie swap when my shortbread cookies vaporized (really, into dust) I made up for it with a hat.  These hats have gone global.

But as much fun as this this yarn is to look at, it is, as I said, not all that comfy.  I decided to do a double yarn thing, but I needed to add in a yarn that felt good, but had the same care requirements, so I went back to the Red Heart well & wow do they have some retina burning color combos in their super saver line!

Thus these hats were born.  With both yarn, cast on 60 stitches.  Put a stitch marker every 12 stitches & two markers where you join the ends (yep, it is all in the round.  I used a circular 16" size 6 US needle you might want to go longer.  I have small strong hands & working cramped is not a problem for me.

ribbing-no flash

Join the two ends of the cast-on row on circular needles with the first stitch (careful not to twist, etc.).  Start immediately on the rib (there is NO all-knit anchor row) K2, P2 all the way around.  I went for a deep ribbing so it could be folded for a cushier edge so mine were 2.5"-3" or more, but make what you like.

ribbing- with flash

When the ribbing it what you want it to be, you can change to a 7 US or 8 US (the 7 transitions ever-so-little, the 8 makes it poofier).  You will need to add a stitch in each of the sets of 10.  I did this by knitting as usual in the first P of the first P2 of each set of 10, & then before removing from the needle I knit to the back loop of the same stitch.  This made a hole & dimple free rib to body line, which is the holy grail of increasing while working with bulky or double yarns. 

Knit in the round for...as long as you like.  I went about 4".  Then you need to decide, do you want a pointy hat, or a flatish top.  The less frequently you decrease, the longer & pointier your hat will be.  Begin by knitting 10 stitches (all but the last 2 stitches in each section) knit those last 2 together.  You can do this every row (I prefer this; it makes a flat op hat like the one here) or you can knit a complete row or two in between (which makes the traffic cone above). 

I did this until I had 6 stitches left & then I kitchener stitched them together.

As quick as this hat is & it really is- I can make one of these in 4 hours or less -this is not a beginner project.  I would suggest people already have some circular knitting under their belts & maybe play a bit with the knitting two yarns at the same time thing.  Also, the reflective yarn can be yuck-yuck-yucky to work with.  The reflective fiber snaps if it is pulled too much & both the Red Heart yarns have ZERO stretch.  That being said, I have never had a knit thing be so widely well received. 

Enjoy! 

52 Photos Project: Mint

It is week 44 over at 52 Photos Project & I am almost a little bit ready for week 52.  I feel rotten saying this; I know more than most how hard it is to come up with ideas that are broad enough to interest a lot of different people & narrow enough to have some underlying link.  It ain't easy. 

I think my ho-hummed ness has way-more to do with me than anything else.  Before I ever joined, when I first looked through the galleries I was struck by how often (maybe MAYBE twice a year) the prompt was a color & I confess I was kind of meh on that, but again I now how hard it is to  think up something new every time, year in year out.  You can see how people start going all avant-garde-art-fart with themes like Stillness & Bifocal (& to her credit I don't think 52 Photos Project has ever gone this far afield...although I do kind of want to see "bifocal" now that I have mocked it).

Then this week the word was "mint".  An image popped immediately into my head.  It was personal.  It was timely.  It had absolutely nothing to do with the color green.  So now what?  Do I go on a quest to take a green picture?  I live in Fladidah, it is almost always green in some way.  What about green accessories?  I had an irish last name, still have a first name that coupled with it is a bit of an ethnic joke & I grew up in the NY-Boston corridor-that bastion of Irish-Americanism.  It was decades before I could let green creep into my wardrobe.  My kitchen cabinets ARE green, but many people think they are gray.  The tv room is earth tones, including some green but do I really want to post pictures of the doorjambs?

Don't get me wrong, I like green.  Love it even.  Avocado & celery & lime & olive......& celadon & emerald & jade & malachite...& even mint.  But the fact is the word "mint" did not bring any shade of green to my mind (which is in itself absurd my yard is one big mint-hole right now as that is all that can survive the winter & the dogs together). 

What it did bring to mind was a box of nearly mint condition knitting patterns dating back to WWII my mother sent.  I thought about doing a color wash but that seemed silly as this picture is naturally mostly black & white.

& now that I look, I can see that skirt IS mint green.  So it's all good.  

A second attempt at a simple red scarf

Earlier this year I got the bug to make a scarf for the Red Scarf Project.  Naturally, I did not follow the guidelines as far as dimensions went.  Fortunately, I also missed the deadline by roughly 11 months so I have had plenty of time to make another scarf the right way.  Plenty of time, but I still had not started by the first of this month.

Luckily, I have until the first week of December to begin, finish & get the whole thing off in the mail (to arrive by December 15).  So I am starting again.  I used my 30% off your total purchase to buy a few different kinds of red yarn (& by red I mean ever-so-loosely red; I certainly did not feel obliged to limit myself).  The Red Scarf Project site has links to several patterns (emphasizing reversible patterns, which is great), but I decided to revisit my own, but do it right this time.


Using the same yarn as in the old post pictures (but red, of course), I cast on 33 stitches to meet the 5-8 inches wide requirement; in the end it was 10.5 inches on the nose but honestly 8 inches looked so spindly.  Besides, I know it is going to get longer with use so it will move closer to the required width over time.  In the end, mine was around 52 inches long, but that made it long enough to wrap & tie, which was suggested.  The pattern remains:

Knit for seven (7) rows.

For the rest of the scarf, up to the last seven (7) rows -& I bet you can guess how those will go- repeat the following three rows:

Row 1:  Knit
Row 2: Knit five (5) , purl to the last 5 stitches, knit five (5)
Row 3: Knit

Continue until scarf is desired length.

I made mine so that it ended the opposite of the beginning (if the first three rows were knit on the same side, they were all purled on the same side at the end).  If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. Lastly, A tells me the fluffy yarn makes it a girls-only scarf; I hope he is wrong. Now that I have finished this one, my plan is to get another on the needles quickish; I figure if I knit instead of playing Angry Birds I will actually have a nice little pile to ship off.

Knit went wrong

As this is almost my first post of 2012, let me say happy new year & all that.  2011 ended pretty much the way they say the universe will end, things just kept getting faster & faster.  Then as our first act of 2012 we bought a brand new home heating/air conditioning unit; the old unit died  72 hours before the first hard freeze of the season.  If "bullet dodged" is the theme for the upcoming year, I can live with it.

It has taken a bit but we are now more or less where we were in mid-December in the house torn-up, chores to be done arena.  & as an extra the utility closet that housed the old & houses the new air pusher thing-y (& the hot water heater) has now been cleaned & re-organized, new shelves & that was a bear of a job.

Which means I can finally get back to my regularly scheduled time wasters, especially now that the problem of why-the-pictures-won't-upload-anymore appears also to be resolved.  Did I forget to mention that?  I want to say mid-December I suddenly could no longer upload photos from the computer that has the MyBook that has all the photos.  It is just as well I did not start loading photos to my laptop because right around the second week of January the hard drive died & a recovery was unlikely & then lo (or is it hark?) most of her came back to life.  In the end, my laptop had a screw loose (apparently, that is a real thing) & points of contact were not making contact & when the she was opened up (to harvest her organs errrrmmmmmmm hard drive) to bring what I could to the not-yet-purchased replacement, it was clear there was a screw loose.  Like I said 2012 is shaping up to be the Year of the Bullet Dodged.


I thought I would begin my new found & no doubt temporary return to a quiet life by doing a little more clearing...kinda.  Specifically, last year I failed (FAILED) to make a red scarf for the Foster Care to Success gift baskets.  I cannot send the completed scarf off until ?September? but I thought it would be good to get it on & off the needles, ready & waiting.

As it happens I have still failed because the scarf I made was too wide to be a scarf.  Also it is a little mohair-y which they frown on.  That wrong scarf went to C****** as I mentioned in an earlier post...I think.  Anyhow, it went so fast that I cast on another, finished it & shipped it off to my mom.

Cast on as many stitches as you think a scarf should be wide.  This will depend on your gauge using that yarn & whatever needles you find blah-blah-blah; I usually trust the yarn label for gauge/needle size & aim for nine inches or so wide (something went horribly wrong this time & I decided early on I didn't care).

Knit for seven (7) rows -- although I think the one in the picture was more like TEN rows

For the rest of the scarf, up to the last seven (7) rows -& I bet you can guess how those will go- repeat the following three rows:

Row 1:  Knit
Row 2: Knit five (5) , purl to the last 5 stitches, knit five (5) -- & again, the one in the picture was more like first&last SEVEN stitches
Row 3: Knit

Pay some attention at the end if you want the side that begins with an all-knit rib to end with an all knit rib.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.

I think it would be safe to say with adequate yarn in your carry-on you could start & finish this scarf on a flight to your holiday destination, so long as it included a stop-over &/or was a trans-Atlantic (or Pacific) flight. Or you could work on it during a Sunday marathon of House or Law&Order.  Or a few weekends of early season football.  What is adequate you ask?  I used six skeins of Sensations Angel Hair & made a very wide, plenty long rectangle & had most of the last skein left over.

They say the best scarves are not more than 10 inches shorter than the wearer.  I am 5'2" & I tend to prefer nothing longer than 4'6" & often shorter but you should decide for yourself.  This thing alas while a good length was almost double a workable-scarf width.  When folded over it is quite thick, too thick really to wear comfortably as a scarf.  You can avoid this problem by accurately reading the needle size & gauge printed right there on the yarn label, a skill that was apparently beyond me.

So what to do, what to do. As it happens, for the red one, C****** liked it that wide but she also liked the idea I came up with, which was to lay the scarf (for at that point it is still a scarf) & then fold one corner to the other edge, making a right triangle.  Then shoot maybe two inches worth of stitches in there to hold it, repeat at the other end & you have sort of kimono-looking shrug/shawl thing.  My mother called it a shroooooog (all 'o's after the 2nd one are mine).

It is really really reversible.  You can wear it inside out & upside down &, while fitting slightly differently (it all depends on how big your shoulders are really), it doesn't look wrong.  I think if you made it long enough, you could even throw a button in the front & maybe with an I-cord loop & have something a bit more formal.