FO: Scrollwork Hat

After my last blog post, I totally shamed myself into finishing this hat:

The Scrollwork, a classy little number from Wool People Vol 4. It sat crammed on a shelf (a former CD tower, now useful as a place to put all the odds and ends of life when you live in a 1 bedroom flat- flashlights, stationary, pens, pocketknives, sunglasses, a button jar, scissors, and odd balls of yarn and anything you want off the table when you sit down for dinner) with just the brim done for more than a month, waiting for me to just put a couple of hours in to turn it into something more useful.

And finally:

The color is much more accurate in the first photo: a lovely, dusty pink with bits of tweed (as it is still permanently nighttime here, it's hard to get knitwear photos during good light, especially if one might be a desk jockey for pay all day).  The yarn is Classic Elite Portland Tweed, now discontinued.  Why?  Because it's weird, most likely.  It's a blend of 50% wool, 25% alpaca and 25% rayon, which is just...odd.   While I didn't curse it and hate it, it was not my favorite to work with- very little give and spring and life to it.  It's not terribly soft, and the alpaca/rayon makes it drape really nice, but I was warned up and down the internet that it would grow terribly huge and lose shape right away.  Also:  it is labeled aran weight, and it is nowhere near that chunky- it knit up DK.  So I knit it down 3 needle sizes for a very tight fabric, and the moment the heat from my head warmed it up during my victory lap (I always don whatever knitwear I just finish, at least for a couple hours when I finish) it started to relax and grow slouchy and loose and start to creep down my forehead and splay out where it hit the back of my neck, threatening to eventually suffocate me and perhaps even eat my brains.  

What to do?  I washed it and threw it in the dryer, tightening it up quite a lot, and with these puny Euro energy efficient driers, it was nowhere near enough heat or agitation to felt the fabric into a stuff, unyielding mass .  It's better now.  I would never normally do that- knitwear gets washed by hand in a bucket and dried flat in world.  I just recently started using the spin cycle on the dryer to wring it out to expedite the drying.  

But looksie, it fits perfect!  At least my head, which it is not intended for.  

FO: Plethora of Hats

A cold chill has swept the land.  After a bit of petered-out hurricane Gonzalo blew through England, it went from balmy and windy, to rainy and windy, to cold and windy in a 24 hour period.   Sweater weather!  Cuddly hats and snugly scarfs and indulging in all sorts of edibles that you've been turning your nose up all summer.  Sweet potatoes and soups and sweet potato soup, squash and crispy sweet apples and I've not turned down any offers of hot chocolate.

I've been plugging away on hats.  It's become a bit of a joke in my knit circle: another week, another hat.  And it's true, I've been knocking out about one a week.  These aren't difficult patterns, and most of them are worsted-weight, so it only takes me a few hours a piece.  

As always, fantastic gifts.  All of these are being flung to the four corners of the earth.

First up: 

The Botanic Hat, a clever little Stephen West Beanie.  It's completely reversible, and looks remarkably different when you give it a flip.

See?  The best thing about this is that when I finished, I weighed the leftover skeins and realized I had enough for a mirror-image:

The pair of hats used exactly two skeins of Rowan Lima, an alpaca yarn that makes me rethink alpaca yarn.  It's velevety.  Instead of being twisted into plies, it is chained, so it makes for less drapey structure-less fabric as it seems to behave much more like wool.  It's not bad at all..

Another creating- the Windsor Hat.  It's a free pattern on the Rowan site and I loved how feminine and girly it was (and I'm not a girly girl by any means).  The pattern was a huge pain in the ass though- it was written Rowan-style to be knitted flat, which is as complicated as you could possibly get.  Still- it is slouchy and warm and after a glance at the pattern, I was able to improvise and knit it in the round, and all was right in the world once again.

The yarn was an odd skein of Creative Worsted, a wool/mohair blend, and the pink was leftovers of Swans Island worsted Merino from my Wayfarer scarf.  

This bad boy is going to a friend of mine who just moved from a balmy climate to a cold one:

It's the Greenery hat.  I made an extra-thick brim so it can be worn as a big slouch or doubled over the ears (which hides the cabling a bit, eh?).  The yarn?  Ah, the yarn.  A few skeins of wool yarn I picked up at Monoprix in Paris out of pure curiosity.  While I miss Monoprix badly (like Target in the US, they had great chic clothes) this yarn was not the best.  It was really dense- this hat is heavy!- and had a weird acrylic-like squeak even though it was pure wool.  It's not terribly scratchy though, and I think it will keep a head very warm.

Finally:

I used all the scraps that haunt the flat from the ghosts of hats past and made a Kex hat, another  reversible beanie from Stephen West.  I've been making a ton of his patterns lately...I just find they are brilliantly unisex and uniquely constructed.  

I have some more projects to flaunt, but some are gifts and need to be gifted first, but I'm enjoying this sudden drop of temperature to inspire me to cover everyone I know in wool.  

FO: A couple of hats....

I think I might have expressed this before, but I do love making hats.

They take very little time.  I can usually crank one out in four hours or so, unless it is with very skinny yarn or very complicated.  That's about a week's worth of commuting time, or some idle tv time in the evenings.  Speaking of which, 2007 called and I'm really into the Danish show "The Killing" right now, and it's NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE AWESOME KNITWEAR.  Why am I watching a dark, wintry, Danish crime drama in high summer?  I can't answer that, but the UK Netflix doesn't get nearly as many films as the US counterpart, and it's mostly loaded with British sitcoms, which, like almost all sitcoms, I find insufferable.    

Anyway, hats make fantastic gifts.  Everyone could use one.  Or eight.  I made these both as gifts.  They also take up odd skeins of yarn- a ball leftover from a sweater, some scraps from your scrap bin, a skein that you impulsively bought with no real project in mind for but you just had to try it.  

First up is the Nantes hat from Interweave Knits Winter 2011.  

It's got the perfect amount of cables and lace, making a lovely cathedral-like pattern.  I loved this pattern and will be making it again in the future.

I made mine slouchy, but you could go down a needle size and make a beanie and it would work as well.  I do love slouchy over-sized hats.  I tend to not wear hats with the brims straight across my forehead, but I rather like to push them back so they cover my ears.

The yarn is Rowan Pure Wool Aran, a soft superwash wool.  It comes in 186 yard balls, and I shortened the pattern by three rows so I would have enough yarn to finish it nicely.

Next up is the Nottingham hat.  I used a skein of Quince and Co Osprey leftover from my Aidez cardigan that I made last winter.  The color is pea-green, which, honestly, is a tough color to pull off this close to your face.

It's slouchy as well.  Almost rasta-like, but I did want to use up every last bit of wool.  The lace pattern makes nice diagonals, it was simple and it looks fantastically hip if you can pull off this color green.

These will both be gifted eventually.  The right person, the right season.  No one I know is allowed to be cold.  

FO: Porto Sweater

All this travel means I have a lot of plane/train/bus time to turn wool into garments.

I'm way behind in actually figuring out what I've made at this point, and even if it's a proper garment. I'm pretty sure there are some pretty glaring mistakes going on. A sock with two heels? Check. I sweater with three arm holes? Probably. A shawl where I run out of yarn at the very last row or precious, no-dye lot handpainted artisan yarn? Yup. Staring at it right now. I just keep going.

This was a little-known pattern from Twist Collective called Porto. It struck my fancy as just something that would be good to wear. I understand that most people, when they think of something good to wear, run to the store and buy it.

It just seemed like the perfect comfortable casual sweater for fall. The medallion cable details on the sides give it some nice waist shaping, and the cabley details at the v-neck add some interest to an otherwise very plain, wearable sweater.

I used 9 skeins -a bit over 1200 yards- of Rowan Purelife Organic Wool, a straigtforward DK weight of wooly goodness.

I think it's discontinued now, but the color is "Parsley", which is barely a hint of green natural dye on white wool.

I made the 36" size. It didn't take me so long to knit up- about a month- but I used size 4 needles to get a nice, tight gauge that is not terribly bulky. It fits, it's warm, I've reached for it every time I've gotten a chill. It's just comforting and easy to wear and I love it so.

FO: Pup Tent

Growing up, I had many, many cousins. I lived pretty far from them, so I wasn't really part of the tight-knit core group. When I would visit them, it was fun, if mostly because I got to ride around in the bed of a pickup truck and I was allowed to operate heavy farm machinery at a tender age. Plus, my vocabulary of bad words and insults would grow tenfold anytime I spent more than a few minutes with them. That is if I could stop coughing enough from all the cigarette smoke being inhaled second-handedly.

Anyway.

The name of this hat is Pup Tent. I can not say the words "pup tent" without cracking up a little bit. It's mostly because my disrespectful trash-talking cousin once yelled while observing clothes hanging out on the line, "Aunt Linda, your underwear are so big, I could use them as a pup tent!" and then we all scattered like so may giggling deer to escape the wrath of a chubby, angry aunt. When you are six, it's funny. Or, as we might say, "wicked funny".

The pattern is a freebie. I made it a little larger to use up the yardage and ended up with a nice slouch. I used it to use up the last 150 yards of Canopy Worsted leftover from the Vine Yoke Cardigan. It's simple and it used up what I had left, and it will now make a very nice gift for a winter-climate dweller (although perhaps just not for my Aunt Linda).

FO: Vine Yoke Cardigan

Just in time for warm summer breezes, a heavy winter wooly cardigan to see me through. It's the Vine Yoke Cardigan by Ysolda from a Twist Collective that was published in 2009.

Springtime here was not exactly an airy brief silken clothing inspiring event, so I sat down and churned out a quick sweater despite the fact it might be a while before it actually gets some use. Some people make hay when the sun shines, I make wool winter sweaters while the populace dons winter coats in June.

Actually, this was intended as a gift, so I made it size up than what I normally would make myself. The pattern is unusual as you knit it sideways, which lets the unique lacy cable wind its way across the shoulders, and I loved the small lace details of the cuffs and waist. The pattern wasn't hard at all, but there were a lot of short-rows involved so you had to pay attention, but otherwise you could have this done and blocked in a week or two and be done with it. It's hard to adjust the fit in sweaters like this, but you could easily modify to make the sleeves longer of shorter.

What's better than getting a wintery-warm sweater in July? Nothing. It's almost like one of those anti jokes: What's worse than finding half a worm in your apple? Cancer.

The pattern called for buttons and button holes. I thought it looked sloppy, so I left them out. I am currently in the market for some lightweight pewter clasps to fasten the front. That dpn is just for show!

The yarn is The Fiber Company Canopy Worsted. I used 8 skeins- a mere 800 yards, so it's very easy on the yardage. It's a 50% alpaca 30% wool 20% bamboo blend. Quite warm, if I have to sum it up. It's lovely to work with, with very little of the prickle that I grew tired of alpaca for. Every time I declare myself "over alpaca" this yarn brings me back. The color is a lovely heather green "yerba mate".

FO: Utopia Hat

A quick, simple gift hat for a friend that's been pestering asking for one for quite some time.

It's the Utopia Cable hat. Quick, simple beanie with nice results. It's a free pattern (and written in the style that fee patterns tend to be) but it's not difficult. It's perfectly unisex to downright manly, depending on your color choice.

I love meandering cables. I used a skein of Cascade 220 tweed in a very dark coffee brown shade. I actually like the tweedy bits in this shade- no more rainbows, just subtle flecks of lighter colors.

Spring has not made itself so known that this won't get worn a couple times before it's put away.

FO: Wisteria Sweater

Oh, hello! I've been on a real sweater kick lately. I think it's a kind of "make hay while the sun shines" sort of philosophy, except it's "Make warm sweaters while you can still bear to wear them".

While we've had a couple odd warm-ish days, and a few sunshiny days (which were bitterly cold) spring is indeed coming. A trip through the countryside north of here revealed a slight tingle of green to the trees, and a couple fields were growing something green but the TGV whips by them at 200 mph, so I couldn't tell you what. I've been having a tendency to travel to fairly arctic climates this past year, so winter sweaters have been a year-round wardrobe staple anyway.

I've been wanting to make the Wisteria Pullover from Twist Collective since it came out in 2008. When I fall for an unusual pattern, I usually wait a little while before casting on because it takes a little time for reality to hit me and for me to realize that whatever garment I choose might have not been the best choice. This is why one of my first sweaters was an enormous, fully cabled monster that flattered no one, but I'm saving it for when I'm in my late 70's and can only hope to get lost in a garment.

I had even bought yarn for this: a gorgeous dark purple Madeline Tosh called Oxblood. I hed even started swatching for this sweater with the Tosh, before my stash and I were so rudely separated by an ocean. The Tosh will have to find a new purpose now, as I had acquired some really gorgeous Mondegreen from the Verdant Gryphon and got to it.

This yarn was amazing. It's an unusual blend of 60% Blue Face Leicester wool, 20% silk, and 10% baby camel. The baby camel causes it to have a slightly fuzzy soft bloom, but the underlying silk gives it a sheen, and it overall creates a dense and beautiful drapey fabric, with really nice stitch definition. Oh, and the color. I'm always a fan of neutrals, but this a beautiful steely gray with purple undertones.

The pattern was well-written. The cabling took a little time, but the rest of the sweater was simple. The only mod I made was I added another 2 sets of waist shaping decreases. I made the 40" size, which is bigger than I normally make but I wanted a slightly roomier sweater, but I didn't want it took look sloppy, hence the extra decreases. The only other thing I would change if I made this again would be some short-rows at the bust. The sweater is the same shape front and back. Because it is roomy, it's not a bad fit, but even the flattest of pancakes would have better results fit-wise if it had some boob shaping.

Oh, my row gauge was off and I realized the sweater was getting to be tunic sized if I didn't cut it off (It's knit from the neck down) so I have 6 rows less cable pattern at the bottom edge. But I love the necklace of twining cables. It really makes the sweater unique.

Despite the fact that I was told "Hey, you'll be ready to go to the Ren Faire in that" while I was knitting it, I find it to be wearable. It's unusual, but in a graceful sort of way. This isn't a light weight sweater at all. It is cozy and warm and snuggly, and it held up so nicely through multiple wears so far.

I love it. New favorite.

FO: Knotty But Nice Hat

I've been cranking out hats pretty regularly this winter. I'm finding, as always, they make great gifts, especially when I'm out making new-ish friends and don't want to commit to something crazy, like socks. You suffer for me, you cook for me or bring me ultra amazing chocolates, you bring me good booze. Then we will discuss socks. Until then, I am only devoting a couple hours of my time to keep your ears warm.

Hence, the Knotty But Nice hat from knitty.com. It's a simple, straightforward, very little brainpower knit that takes no time at all to whip up. I do love cables, especially when the pattern is intricate or woven-looking. Added bonus that the bunched up fabric makes any garment extra-thick and warm.

It's made for a man with a bigger, more oval head than myself, so it's a bit large one me. It would be much less pointy on the intended recipient.

I will vouch for its warmth. Any day that the sun is out, I will be out, walking around the city, exploring with my camera in tow. This day was windy and freezing cold and I totally got wind burned on my face, but it was lovely having a part of the city to myself that is normally packed with tourist and almost always unnavigable.

I made it from a single skein of Cascade 220 Tweed.

FO: Briar Rose Pullover

While it doesn't get cold in Paris like it does in Maine or even New York, it's nice to have a few really heavy-duty warm sweaters to keep you toasty on the rare day where the temps do dip below freezing.

I reached for a bag of Lousia Harding yarn called Thistle. It's a Suri Alpaca and Merino blend. I took to heart how Pariseins love to wear all black with a bright pop of color and I choose a rather stunning shade of sunshine yellow.

I cast on for the Briar Rose Tunic, a cover girl from Interweave Knits:

I made a couple modifications as I went. I took a full 8 inches off the body, but still ended up with what one might call a rather immodest dress. I decided to put my decreases in the ribbing section on the side instead of in front of it to give it more of an hourglass illusion. Finally, I reversed-engineered the sleeves so I could knit them from the sleeve cap down, and just stop when I run out of yarn. It worked out brilliantly, and I ended up with a long-sleeved sweater with just a couple of yards of yarn left over.

It's so warm and cozy. Once blocked and worn, this yarn blooms and sheds like crazy though, so this is a decidedly outdoor sweater.

I am hoping the shedding stops or slows up eventually. Everything else I wear with it ends up looking like a giant yellow cat has used it as bedding.

I love wearing it though and have done so several times already. It was fantastically easy to make and the cabled yoke detailing makes the pattern.

FO: Angler's Loop Socks

Now that the wind has a chill to it, a fresh pair of socks are in order.

These are a gift for someone with bigger feet than me, but I happen to be the only foot model around today. I had to do some real awesome yoga poses to get these pictures as well.

The foot is plain, but the back of the leg has a pretty and complex cable.

It's based on the Angler's Loop pattern, with a few modifications. I did them toe-up, and left out the ribbing on the foot. Easy and straightforward, they are a good guy sock, but they could totally be a woman's sock as well. They are socks.

The yarn is a skein I picked up at Rhinebeck a few years ago from the March Hare. It's a superwash merino blended with nylon, and it comes in big 455 yard skeins. It seems like a good, solid sock yarn but I'm not sure if the indie dyer is still producing. The color is "Fiddlehead Fern", which is dear to my heart and stomach. Oh, how I love fiddleheads. I haven't found them in Paris, but maybe I arrived too late in the spring to find them.