FO: Odessa Hat and Another Fortnight

I am a spontaneous gift-giver. There's usually no rhyme or reason to the care packages I send out. It's just, surprise!, it's August, but I made you mittens because it will be cold one day. It's not the most practicable way to be, but I find that life is more fun that way.

My co-workers won't adopt my system. Bummer. Like clockwork, the week before Xmas, the bottles of booze start piling up on my desk to the point where it seems like I might have a drinking problem. I don't; I can't get through 7 bottles of Scotch this year, that's all. I've tried to politely hint "please stop" by just keeping these bottles around to gather dust, but it just seems to give people the idea that I love this Scotch so much and oh, here's another bottle. Granted, I do love the stuff. The rocky romanticism of the Scottish isles come alive on the palate- it's really quite transporting and one of the most reassuring taste I could imagine. I'm just a sipper though- I'll have a wee dram watered down before bedtime in the cold dark winter, and that's about it. It's really hard to finish a bottle. It might take years.

In return for their generosity, I usually run home, paw through my stash, and cast on for a hat. The next day, my co-worker of choice will have a nice warm hat to keep their ears warm when they choose to wear a hat, which is usually not often since their is a vanity issue with the hair gel and styled spikes and whatnot. It's the most non-corporate gift ever, and they really don't know what to do with it, but they are usually tickled to death to get one.

First up (and for my only female co-worker) is the Odessa hat:



I used yarn leftover from my Eastlake pullover. Actually, I tried to make a frilly pair of beaded wristwarmers with it, but they came out so sloppy and weird that I frogged it and re-purposed the yarn. It's Berroco Inca Gold merino and silk blend, and it held up fine through the entire process and looks fantastic. The hat is a free pattern (I do love spirals) and it took me a bit of the afternoon to make.



The second hat was the exact replica of another hat I made this past fall- the Fortnight. I used leftover Shelter from the Grove mittens. The color is "Soot".



It's simple and fun- tons of garter stitch with a slip-stitch cable pattern at the crown. Another hat I could turn around in a day. That's exactly what is needed as I'm fairly certain that both of these hats will end up in the wash cycle on hot, and a nice hot spin in the drier as well, and then re-gifted to a newly-born sprogling. I leave instructions on pretty custom gift tags. They are usually ignored. Maybe this is why I need a barrel of Scotch in my office.

FO: Insane Clown will Eat Your Brains

I made a sweater. I dislike the way it turned out. It's the Caftan Pullover by Norah Gaughan from the Spring 2006 issue of Interweave Knits.

It was supposed to look like this:

Pretty, right? It's all bohemian floaty and comfy. I might go to a gallery and spend the day decoding some modern art and then sip cappuccinos and nibble little cookies which cause me to not gain weight or have wild mood swings because of my blood sugar crashing afterwards. La vie est belle.

I cast on for it and started on my way. I do love Norah Gaughan and cables and sweaters and I'm even starting to like silk a little bit more. The cables are fun, and I liked the yarn despite the yarn being a slippery silk novelty yarn- Berroco Ultra Silk. It's a silk knit tube with a nylon roving core. Using size 9 needles this moved along nicely. It's such a pretty shade of summery beach blue.



I made the front, I made the back. I seemed them up. Then I realized: because the front is heavier than the back with all those lovely cables, it stretches out alarmingly more than the back. Even though I made them the exact same length and seemed the armholes so they match perfectly, the front just hangs down lower, like a tumor. A floppy, heavy tumor.





Also, because I still have a bit of dignity left, I seamed up the front panels instead of leaving my ta-tas to awkwardly flop around in the breeze. One the model, it works for her, but she's doing nothing but drinking soy half-caf skim lattes and batting her eyelashes at the off-duty fireman in the corner. Also, because the yarn is mostly silk, there's no way to keep the neckline opened up and keep from rolling over. Silk has not structure and it just wants to collapse in a heap. So it got seamed.

Except, seamed, the two front panels create a face.



A deranged clown face. This is almost as rich as people seeing the image of the virgin Mary in their toast or other mundane everyday objects- except this one isn't a peace and comfort to anyone. Insane Clown is Out to Get You.



It can not be unseen. I put the sweater on and then I break out in a cold sweat, get twitchy and then spend about 20 minutes trying to get this thing off me. Like it's a cicada clinging to me. GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF ME! Sadly, it does not. Insane Killer Clown Face is here to stay. It terrifies me, and I can really only blame the book "It" for all this.

Also, I didn't make sleeves. I couldn't give the clown any more power over me than he already has.

Ah well. You win some, you lose some. Novelty yarn + complicated pattern= the potential for Insane Clown to appear. The Insane Clown will appear to you someday in something you do- or does he just appear to me?

FO: Eastlake Pullover

I trust that everyone had a wonderful Winter Solstice (the days...they are stretching out into lazy sunshiny afternoons already) and a great Xmas if you celebrate. I love giving gifts and I always make sure that everyone I know knows that as well. Lucky for me, once the giftwrap finally settled into piles on the floor, a huge blizzard hit the city and dampered the hustle for a couple days. It was glorious. After so much hectic running around in the past month, the idea of being snowed in was downright comforting. I made a huge batch of chicken stock with all those bones in the freezer and made a vat of soup that warmed up the house and everyone in it. As long as I didn't run out of booze, all was right in the world.

This was also the perfect opportunity to sit down with the manual for my new camera. I'm pretty excited about this. There's a pretty big learning curve on a complicated electronic camera but I think I've got the basics down. I'm also glad my old SLR got some use as a model.



RIP, my sweet Dinosaur.

Which brings us to my newly finished sweater: the Eastlake Pullover by Norah Gaughan.



It's from her Berroco collection Vol 3. I modified this quiet a bit from the original pattern.



For starters, I knit the body in the round instead of flat. The less seams to clean up at the end means a happier me. Secondly, I didn't like how the fern leaf pattern ended and a decorative band bisected the sweater mid-boob. I would be constantly tugging on that to get it going above or below boob level. No one needs a line going across their boobs. So I ended the pattern early and did about an inch and a half of short rows across the front to give it more shape. Short rows are always a good idea if you have curves- it makes everything fit much better. The other modification I did was only one band of pattern over the arms instead of two, just because I didn't like the way it looked. That was more of a preference thing than a fit issue.



I love the way this came out and I've worn it quiet a bit already.



The yarn is Berrocco Inca Gold. It's a lovely blend of 80% Merino, 20% silk. It's a tightly twisted cabled yarn- 4 separate 2-ply yarns are plied together to make a 4-ply that has a nice amount of spring and shine, and it's very soft. So far, I've had no problems with pilling and it seems like it will wear well, as most well-made cabled yarns do. It also has great stitch definition. I really loved working with it and I'll be hoarding more in the future.





The specs: I used about 9.5 skeins, or 1159 yards of this dk weight yarn for the 38" size. The maid body was knit on size US 5 needles, and the ribbing was on size US 3. I had to go down a couple of needle sizes to get gauge, and a sweater on 5's does take quite a bit of time, but it's well worth it in the end. I have an extra ball and a half of yarn left, and I immediately cast on for a hat to use up the remaining bit.