FO: Kidsilk Creation Scarves

All these time-consuming colorwork mittens and lace socks kind of take a toll on me.  Occasionally, I need some instant gratification.

It this case, with novelty yarn.



Have you seen this stuff?  It's been out for a while now, and I found some on sale at Janette's Rare Yarns, so I couldn't resist.  It's called Kidsilk Creation.  It's the same luxe yarn as Kidsilk Haze, except the fine strand of silk and kid mohair has been pre-knitted into a giant tube.

There's not a whole lot to do with yarn like this.  I mean, you get a ball of it that retails at £17 and it's only 11 yards long.  On the inside of the label (and plenty of sources free online) you can find the pattern for the Kidsilk Creation Scarf in both knit and crochet versions.  Even if you've never done any crafting before, you could totally make this as it requires no skill and is very forgiving as far as mistakes go.  Basically, you start at one end, push your needle through the tube to make two stitches, and then knit them with more yarn picked up a little further down the tube, while pulling the tube open to make a fishnet ruffle.  It quickly makes a spiral, and it keeps spiraling around as you go.  Depending how spaced apart your stitches are, you can have tight corkscrews, or big, lofty ruffles.

I made two of the knit scarves right away.  They took me about an hour a piece.  They make for lovely gifts, as they look far more complicated then you should get credit for.  If I could find an appropriate project, you could also make a knitted border for, say, a cardigan front or a collar, to give it a fun ruffled edge.  They make for a fun, flirty scarf that is light and airy and super feminine.

That was a fun little break.  Now, back to the grind.    

FO: Handspun Urchin Beret

Back to showing off a bit of knitting here. Here's another handspun hat that I whipped up in an afternoon.

It started out as a 4oz braid of Creatively Dyed roving. It's a 50/50 wool and bamboo blend.



I got this at MDSW a couple years ago. I just remember that it was hot out, and touching wool was a really big effort for me. Maryland has a great wool festival, but it's timed rather awkwardly. It's at the exact part of the year where you are liable to get your first really muggy days, which make you panic about there never be the need for woolly things ever again.



I spun this up as a chunky 2-ply, with plenty of thick and thin spots. The bamboo was a little squeaky to spin- it wanted to clump and not be a homogeneous blend with the wool. I went with it, and let it be what it wanted to.



I got slightly over 60 yards in the end. A hat-amount.



A simple beret was whipped up in record time. I used size 15 needles. Once again, it's the Urchin Beret by Wenlan Chia. It's a good pattern for a small amount of chunky or bulky weight yarn. I put in some extra rows just so I wouldn't have any leftovers. The bamboo really wants to drape, so it gives it a nice slouchy appearance. You can't really put this on your head, you have to pour yourself into it and let it flop around artfully and lopsided.



The bamboo didn't pick up the dye, so the white really muted the bright colors. It looks more heathered than anything.



Voila! It's a cute, fun little topper.

FO: Chunky Rib Hat

The insanity continues.

A 2oz braid of yet another bump of Capistrano hanpainted. This one is BFL. My A-Z stashdown is rolling right along...



The color is "Seychelles". Blue and purple and red cool jewel tones.

Again, with the singles.



I'm trying really hard to make thick, lofty yarns that are even in thickness. It's a huge challenge for me. Lace is my thing.



I feel like progress is being made.

I only ended up with 54 yards of this. BFL is a very dense wool, and it doesn't have crimp like merino does. It has more like a wave. A bit more fluffing or pre-drafting would have given me more yardage.

Luckily, you can do a hat with very little yardage.



This is the Chunky Rib Hat. It's one of those hats that you barely need a pattern for, but the Yarn Princess wrote it out for us. It took about an hour. total.



It's rows of knit stitches. It's rows of purl stitches. It's stretchy and you don't have to worry so much about gauge. If you have the yardage, you can keep going a few extra rows, or cut it off if need be. It will still stretch over your head okay.



The only modification I made was the crown decreases. I had a bit more yarn left than I wanted to have tucked away unused, so instead of decreasing every row, I snuck in a row of plain knit between each row. It's a more gradual decrease and rounded top.

Easy-peasy on size 13 needles. Another skein of handspun, converted from my stash to my winter woolens drawer.

FO: Chutes and Ladders Hat

A couple weeks ago it was sofrigginhot out and it felt as though winter has never existed anywhere ever. How could these waves of oven-like heat come from the same planetary weather system that did this to my car just a few months ago?



I spent the heat-wave week working from home in my little office with no air conditioning. That's how dire my work life has gotten- I would rather spend 8 hours in an airless sauna then make my way into the city with a crush of humanity to sit in a chilly icebox for the day. It actually ended up bring quite entertaining- just when I couldn't bear the heat another second, I would run into the kitchen and cook a big dinner. Corn on the cob, wonton soup, stewed chicken thighs over fresh pasta. Basically, standing in front of the oven and cooking made it so much easier to bear the oppressive heat and humidity because as soon as I stepped away, it magically felt 10 degrees colder. Also, because I couldn't drink water fast enough to stay hydrated, when I drank something with alcohol in it, i was tipsy and having a riotous good time right away. The fact that I spent several occasions over the winter dishing out huge amounts of cash to sit in a sauna or steam room, I had to embrace the heatwave as a way to cleanse my pores. My skin...it's fabulous.

It got so hot in the kitchen, a bottle of homemade beer exploded and shattered into a million pieces. I was kind of proud of the fact that I was tougher than the beer, but cleaning up all those sticky shards was not how I wanted to spend my morning.

The other thing I thought would make me feel nice and cool was to whip up some handspun hats. Oodles of them. As many as I could find odd balls of handspun in my stash. I've been spinning for, oh, 6 or 7 years now, which equates to a whole lot of 2-4oz skeins of oddballs of yarn. I'm on a lot of conference calls and webexes all day, and I find if I don't knit to keep my hands busy, I'll just start click-clicking away on the internet or tap-tapping away on the keyboard, answering emails and stressing about all the tasks that I could be doing. So I knit, and try to pay attention to the call. It's nice.

Here's the first one I spun up:



It started as a 2oz bump of Merino/Silk fiber from Capistrano Fiber Arts in the "Etoille" colorway. It was as soft as anything and the 20% silk content made this just a little shiny. I had acquired this at the Yarn Tree in Brooklyn ages ago...I actually bought two bumps and made a scarf out of the first one I spun up. I love the color on this so much- the combination of the moody dark purples and blues with yellow really made my heart pitter-pat.

I spun this up on my Kromski Minstrel into a big, bulky thick-and thin single.





I tried to keep it as lofty as possible. I had some thin spots where a whole lot of twist accumulated, but for the most part, I was happy with my non-lace spinning. It was fun, and making a bulky yarn takes a fraction of the time than cobweb lace. I got about 70 yards.

I found a hat pattern that I wanted to try.



It's called the Chutes and Ladders hat from the "Handspun Handknit" book. It's a perfect fun little hat to eat up a skein of handspun. It's just a ribbed brim, cables with double yarn overs that you drop on the next row. Or, at least that's how I did mine. The pattern had some ambiguous instructions, so I chose to ignore them and just knit on. It was probably just the heat messing with my head. I don't see any scary killer clown faces in this, so I think I'm okay.





It's not the most tidy hat, but I had a lot of fun making this. Also- it took maybe an hour and a half, and that was even with a good chunk of multi-tasking thrown in. I keep meaning to pick up some round balloons at the dollar store. I've been blocking hats over a mixing bowl for years and they all kind of have a flatter top that what I'd like.

Size 11 needles.

FO: Architect's Hat

Last Sunday morning, a bit of a chill was in the air. I sat down with a cup of coffee, a pile of scraps of Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Bulky, and The Knitter's Book of Yarn. In a couple hours I had this:



It's the Architect's Hat. It's a top-down hat: it has a short-row cap, then stitches are picked up around the edge and the rest of the hat is knitted. It has a fun slip-stitch pattern and really took no time at all. It was quite useful when it came to using up odd lengths of yarn. I think this Lamb's Pride Bulky has been in my stash for at least 7 years now, and I was going to throw it in the garbage if I couldn't come up with a project soon.



B is for Brown Sheep...this is part of my A-Z Stashdown Challenge.



It looks a little lumpy, but I took these pics pre-blocking. A bath really evened out the slip-stitch sections.

I will totally call upon this pattern again. It would be great in quieter or natural fleece colors, or even solid colors.

The Specs:
I used US 10 needles. I'm guessing my yardage is about 130 for the whole hat, but since I was just grabbing random scraps, I have no real idea. Lamb's Pride Bulky is a bulky weight single that is a 85/15 blend of wool and mohair.

FO- A child in sheep's clothing

A friend of mine, Ta, has this habit of spawning children that cause anyone with a beating heart to seize up and die from their cuteness.



I'm not one to fawn over babies but I can't help but wanting to steal one of hers just to blow raspberries on their tummies. Look at her Sophia Loren lashes!



I'm pretty sure that cuteness on this level should not be allowed. Plus, my friend is a rocking mom who sends me pictures of her spawn wearing knits that I made. I'm always curious as to whether things I make and give will get some use, so it is really nice and appreciated to have a bit of evidence that it did.

Anyway, I got a birth announcement from Ta in the mail the other day as she outdoes herself once again with another round of smooshy cute awesomeness. I right away made this:



It's the Baby Sheep Hat by Melissa Burt. This caused me some confusion at first as I was wondering how a baby sheep was to wear a hat. Oh, I see...it's a hat with sheep on it meant to be worn by a baby human! That explains everything.

I cast on Monday morning on the bus, and finished during my ride home on the subway. Vrrooom. Naturally, I didn't read the instructions....the black parts of the sheep are supposed to be duplicated stitched at the end, but I just triple-stranded and kept my floats loose in back.



The specs:
I used less than a half skein of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK (which may or may not have actual cashmere in it) for the main taupe color, a tiny bit of Cashmereino DK in black for the face and feet (I would have used even less if I would have duplicate stitched). The white yarn is some merino handspun that I had leftover from another project. It's soft and lofty and loosely spun, giving it a fluffy sheep texture.



I did one modification, which was I added a couple rows of 2x1 ribbing at the bottom so that the brim wouldn't flip up. It hasn't been washed or blocked yet (and I'm hiding the ends that need to be sewn in) but I'll do that tonight and send it out tomorrow.

It's not machine washable (I'm usually a big fan of washable cotton knitwear for children) but really, how dirty can an infant's hat get? Something tells me that I might be happiest remaining ignorant of that answer.