Josephine in her flying machine

It's almost ready to share, readers!  I've been plowing through my Home Alone hat this week to get a pattern produced, because 1) I want to get my feet wet with pattern writing, and 2) I want to wear this hat.

I've taken serious notes while I did my knitting, and I'll be sitting down to write out a formal pattern to share with y'all this week.  The hat is 95% done, and here's what it looks like:

The bottom is quite long, because I plan to tuck it up inside the hat for double warmth.  If you stare long enough at a screen shot of the hat in the movie, you will notice that there is a smooth, unbroken edge of knitting that goes up inside the hat.  I wanted to make my version of the hat as true to the original as possible, so I tried out a few ways to accomplish that.  Originally, I cast on and knit some extra rounds to be tucked inside, then a purl round, then got going with the hat, and I didn't like the little ridge the purl round created at the edge of the hat.  I know this makes for a natural folding line in the world of tucking up a lining inside a hat, but I didn't like the effect.  Also, the way I started it involved knitting the cast on edge together with a round of live stitches (to avoid sewing it in place later), and I hated how obvious that round of stitches became.  So I ripped it out and started again.

The hat you see in the picture above was started with a provisional cast on, so now that the hat is complete, I've gone back to pick up those stitches and make the lining.  I have far more red yarn left than the grey at this point, so after a few rounds, I switched to red to make a fun contrasting lining.  And when I say lining, I actually mean that I'll be going as far as the backs of the reindeer, to fully cover the wearer's ears.  Again, if you stare intently at a screen shot of the hat on Kevin's head, you can see a slight line at the top of the reindeer's back where the lining ends. 

In good progress news, the chart worked out beautifully in the round, as I had only ever done the chart as a test knitted flat, which sucks for colourwork.  I played around with my gauge to fit my mammoth woman head (I'm a solid 22" around, just like a man), and the pattern will be written to fit a larger head size.  My next post will be just the pattern for the hat, and if I can figure it out, I'll link it to Ravelry so others can find the pattern.

And since it's been eons since I posted, let's recap all my knits since July:

I finished Slim Jim's reindeer legwarmers.  For the final chart repeat, I added an extra stitch between each reindeer repeat around to account for the calf (craftily hidden in the white space between the reindeer).  When I got to the ribbing at the top, I snuck in a few extra stitches again, for extra stretchiness.

I made a pair of octopus socks, featuring yarn from Woolverine in downtown Kitchener:

Stash's Christmas socks are complete, in a handsome pattern called It's a Guy Thing.  This puppies are folded up and waiting on my gift wrapping table to be wrapped for Christmas.  Fuzzyhead was the foot model for this picture.

From my trip to the Knitters' Frolic in April, I impulse purchased this skein of purple sock yarn because it had a cat on the label.  I earmarked it for a pair of socks for my non-knitting cat-loving coworker (I know, I know, that's a risky move, but she has said more than once that she LOVES hand knitted socks)

The socks were a great mindless knit over the summer, and I really hammered home the cat thing with a pattern called Paw Tracks.  The gift will be presented with the tag so that the cat connection is very obvious.

My current socks project is Hermione's Everyday Sock, also made from sock yarn I scored at the Frolic.  This Sweet Georgia deeply discounted yarn translates beautifully into fun stripey socks.

These are still a WIP, and they're a perfect thing to bring along to knit night or in the car.

I made use of the last half a ball of heavyweight sock yarn I bought at Rhinebeck in 2013.  I made a pair of fingerless gloves for Fuzzyhead earlier this year, and there was still so much of the yarn left that I needed to do something with it, so I made a hat.  Since the yarn was more like a sock yarn than anything else, I knitted with two strands held together to make Jason's Tweed Hat, as it calls for a chunky weight yarn.  Once I finished the folded over ribbed section to cover the ears, I was running seriously low on yarn, so I cut it back to a single strand and finished the hat.  From a distance, you can't even tell, and all the warmth anyone cares about is around the ears, so no harm done.

I finished Rockefeller, and I love it.  The picture on the left is when it was almost done, and the one on the right is the shawl all blocked and beautiful.  It's such a nice piece to wear all bundled up around your neck and shoulders.  I wear it with a shawl pin to hold the ends in.

I ran out of the blue/green yarn as I was starting the second wing, so I started to taper off the blue and increase the number of orange rows.  Then I started running out of orange, so I said "screw it" and I made the second wing shorter and round than the first (which is long and skinny and goes to a fine point like a triangular shawl wing).  It really makes no difference when I wear it, because I put the shorter end down first and wrap everything over top of it. 

I made a pair of Northman Mittens to replace my tired looking red Olympic mittens from 2010.  I wore those things down to grubby, filthy nubs, and I darned and patched them more times that I care to admit.  These mittens are my new deep winter double-thick mitts.  They are glorious.

I made them with worsted weight yarn knit on 2.25mm needles, which makes for this deliciously thick fabric.  Even without the lining, these would have been fine for cold winter needs, but the lining cleans up the inside and makes for a fun surprise when you peak inside.  I severely modified the lining mitten to make it fit inside.  When I followed the pattern as it was written, it was so cramped and crowded inside the mitten that it gave my hand a headache.  I ended up ripping it back and redoing the lining three times before I got it right.  My inner mitten has a lot fewer stitches, and I began the decreases for the finger tip area a lot sooner.  If you pulled out the inner lining and looked at it, it's quite pointy and ugly, but it fits beautifully inside the mitt.

I hammered out a pair of tweed cabled socks in a delectable golden hue.  These are Fall Mystery Socks, knitted up in my very first tweed yarn purchase from Rhinebeck.

Fuzzyhead's friend had her stomach removed because of cancer this year, so I made her a fox cowl hood so she could keep warm and toasty this winter.  This is an awesome pattern, and a quick knit.  All I want to do is knit these for every small child I know (which is none, I don't know any small children).  I knit this up in Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick, and I used every last scrap of yarn from two balls to make this.  Every.  Last.  Scrap.  I had 10" of yarn left to sew on both foxy ears, and that was a struggle.

 I started and finished a shawl for Slim Jim using the yarn I won at the 2012 Adjudicated Show.  This lovely ombre yarn was calling for a delicate lacy shawl, and that is was I gave her.  Enter, Out of Darkness. 

I included beads, because why not?  I purchased four little tubes of 6/0 glass seed beads from Michaels and only had to go back once to get more (I needed almost exactly 5 tubes to finish, with less than 20 beads leftover).  I blocked this beauty on the back of my purple couch (even if the day ever comes to get rid of that couch, I'm going to keep it for blocking purposes).

I used almost all of my pins to block all those pointy point points.  I finished the shawl quite late one night, and even though I was pumped to get it blocked and finished, I couldn't bare the idea of pinning all those points when I was anything but perky and well rested.  Slim Jim will likely receive the shawl next year, maybe for her birthday.

I made a Ninja Bike Mask, perfectly fitted to my face shape.  I used worsted weight yarn (in crappy acrylic, because I intend to wash this a lot, because, you know, sweating) and the instructions were clear and easy to follow for modifying.  It was really written more as a set of guidelines than as a formal pattern, which I appreciated for making it with whatever yarn I had lying around.

 

I got my entrelac on with this quick little knit, which helped me use up some Noro Silk Garden Sock.  This handsome little fellow is Grey Gardens, and it's super cute when my hair is up.

And finally, my other current work in progress is the Honey Cowl, featuring sweet sweet discounted Briar Rose DK yarn from Shall We Knit? in Waterloo.

This will be a gift for my other coworker, and it's also a lovely mindless knit for knits when I don't want to think. 

Up next for this kid, trying my hand at writing a pattern, and asking nicely that a few people try it out and tell me what you think.  Stay tuned!

Sections of couch everywhere!

I think a Wednesday blog deadline might be a bit of a stretch for me, readers.  I definitely finished my required knitting for the week yesterday, but fitting in the blog time didn't quite happen this week, and it didn't happen last week.  I'll aim for Wednesday, but I think I'm more likely to set aside time on Thursday night.  Either way, here's what I've been working on this week:

The sock has another 7 rows on it, and I'm still not even at the end of the ribbing.  The ribbing calls for 1.5" and I'm about a week away from moving beyond the k3 p1.  A handy thing about Week 2 is that the blue-er blue worked out to be exactly 7 rows, which made it super easy for counting my rows.  The grey-blue continues on for a bit more, so it won't be an easy marker for Week 3 unfortunately.

Last week, I also introduced my Home Alone hat idea.  I was struggling to find a pattern that I could rework to fit my needs, and no chart seemed to exist to make Kevin McAllister's signature moose hat.  The best I got on Ravelry was this:






Moose Camouflage Hat

It had the trees along the crown, and the repeating moose pattern, but it wasn't close enough in my opinion. 

So I did what any dedicated Home Alone fan would do, and I made my own chart in Excel.  Fun fact: knitting stitch height and width ratios can be recreated in Excel by setting the column width to 1.67 and the row height to 13.2.  I did this, and then got to work with the best picture of the hat I could find, which showed very clear stitch definition:

Once I had one moose sketched out on the chart, it was easy!  One chart repeat is 24 stitches across from nose to tail, and the diamonds and trees work out nicely.  Just now, as I was typing that last sentence, I realized I goofed on the pine trees in my chart.  It appears that they are in two different styles - one branchy bare tree style, and one solid filled-in tree style.  Shoot. 




Problem solved, I just went back in and fixed it.  But I also realized I can't add a pdf file to my blog post, so my plan to share the chart is not going to happen right now.  I'll get back to you about that.

In other moose hat news, I also need to figure out the rest of the hat pattern so I can actually make it.  I figure the hat circumference would be six moose around, for a total of 144 stitches.  With a head circumference of roughly 23", that means I need a yarn that gives me 6 stitches per inch.  I'm thinking something DK for this one.  Worsted just seems like it would be too bulky and thick for the hat. 

I made a quick swatch in some worsted yarn I had lying around, and it confirmed my suspicions; I want a denser, tighter looking fabric, but with finer stitches.  Make sense?  My swatch was also done flat, so I had to do my colourwork on the purl side.  BALLS.  My first swatch was mostly to confirm that my knitters' graph paper dimensions in Excel were right, and that my moose wouldn't look too squat or stretched out.  The moose look perfectly in-proportion, they just need to be done in the round so I can get a sense of what they will really look like, and so I can do it in the right weight of yarn.  All in good time, lovelies.  I'm in no rush to get this project off the ground, because I have bigger fish to fry right now.

And here are my bigger fish:

This is my progress on the Nordic Mittens I mentioned last week.  I'm on a knitting roll and I threw this right mitten together in a few nights.  The Swish DK was a really nice choice for these.  It's soft and smooth, but completely machine washable, and these are a gift for a non-knitter so that's a definite must.  The left mitten is on my knitting to-do list this weekend so I can present them to my student on Monday when she's back at work.

It's a nice colourwork pattern, my only complaint is that there are some sections with longer floats between colours, and I would prefer a nice neat every 3 or 4 stitches goings back and forth between two colours.  I suppose this challenges me though, so you've won this round Nordic Mittens.

I also received a box full of yarn from Knit Picks last week, and I had every intention of taking pictures of all of my purchases to show you, but then my basement flooded and all my craft stuff had to be emergency evacuated into the laundry room.  The basement is fine, the most annoying thing is that we had to tear up our laminate flooring (which was just put down in September, but can be used again because we acted quickly to get it up off the floor), and all of our basement stuff is currently relocated around the house and it's going to be crowded and overwhelming at my house for a while.  We probably won't put the basement back together until all the snow is gone outside, just to make sure that the fixes for the cracks worked.  In the meantime, here is the gist of what I bought, with pictures courtesy of Knit Picks.

Palette fingering yarn in Cream and Hollyberry for my reindeer legwarmers:




Palette yarn in White, Ice Lily, Mulberry, Hare Heather, and Grizzly Heather for Slim Jim's polar bear hat:







And Wool of the Andes worsted for my lined nordic mittens in Garnet Heather, Gosling, and Pumice Heather:


























Feast your eyes on my yarns, and I'll catch you up next week with my progress.

Onward,

vrock

New Year's Rockin' Eve

Welcome to the end of year round up, readers!  I've been cramming in a bunch of final projects all this week as 2013 comes to a close, and I've even started and finished a project or two.  As of today, December 31, here's what's kicking around my house.

Norie was started and finished in two days, because I'm a dork and if I'm not at work, my fingers will find knitting.  It's a compulsion.

This is only my second ever hat for myself, and I feel like I should have made more by now, but I haven't.  I chose this pattern so I could have a pretty and delicate hat to wear when I need to not look like a grub.  The only other hat I have was made so long ago, I don't even have a picture of it.  It's super warm, but looks very rustic, and turns whatever hair I'm sporting into a wicked batch of hat hair.  Now when I walk my dog in the morning, I'll look like a lady.

I also started and finished a single fingerless mitt yesterday.  I borrowed Son of Stitch n' Bitch from the library to get the pattern, Beer Gloves, and the yarn was from my Rhinebeck adventure this year.  The yarn is from The Fold, and it's Socks that Rock Mill Ends in a camouflage-ish colour.  Very manly for Fuzzyhead.  It's a heavy sock weight, which really is knitting up like DK, which is perfect for these mitts.  I also renting me up a movie from the library, and while I watched Gatsby, I made a mitten.  

I also got to learn a new bind-off, which looks perfect for all the little fingers.  This pattern calls for an invisible bind-off of your choice, and since I had never done one before, I went looking for something on the internet. Here's a little link-love for the invisible bind-off tutorial I found that was very helpful. 

The palm of the mitt has a textured portion, which I think is meant for twisting open beer bottle caps.  Fuzzyhead will find it very useful, I'm sure.  

The mitten mate for this one might be started and finished tonight as we wait for the ball to drop, who knows!  The first one was a very quick knit, and I'm eager to get them done so Fuzzyhead can start wearing them and keep his little fingies warm.

Here's the progress report for the TARDIS socks:

One whole sock is done with ends woven in, and the second sock is at the heel flap.  I'm coming in to a nice stretch of mindless knitting for the foot, so I'll be glad to keep this one on hand for on-the-go knitting.

I also started a very long-haul project this week, a knitted quilt with many tiny hexagons, made from all of my sock yarn scraps.  Considering I make socks like they're going out of style, I think this blanket will still take me years to finished.  Each little hexipuff is only about 2 inches across, and estimates on Ravelry say it takes upwards of 150 of these guys to make anything substantial.  So far I've made three, and I've got loads of scraps to use up.  I've been keeping all my yarn scrap balls in clear glass jars as decoration in my office, but now they will have a more useful purpose.

Now how about some finished projects from 2013 that may have been missed on the blog?  I've been terrible for updating this year, but I've got a plan to remedy this for 2014.  Keep reading to find out more.

In the meantime, here's the finished project round-up:

Big chunky cowl, I wear this almost every day

Maeva socks.  Despite what this picture shows, they are done.

Turtle shell and hat set for Steph's little Hannah.  

Paulie.  Bam!  Sweater that fits, and I look great in it.

I took a bit of a knitting hiatus over the summer when we moved, and when I came back to it, this was the first little thing I finished.  A nut, for my chipper co-worker.

Plain and simple stripey socks, featuring Miss Babs yarn from Catherine.

Itty bitty socks for a co-worker's baby.

Annis shawl, keeping my office chair cozy, and quite often keeps my neck warm.

Hemlock Ring Blanket.  I banged this one out in about a month, and it was so much easier than I thought it would be.  Can you do feather and fan?  Of course you can.  You can make this blanket.

I've also taken to wearing it as a cape, because we keep the temp of our house at a nippy 18 degrees C.

And my Christmas socks, hung on the mantle.  SO CUTE.

And while I reflect on all my knitting wonders from 2013, I'm already planning for a year-long knitting project.  Catherine and I are doing a knit-a-long of socks.  We're making the Harvest Dew pattern, and we're making it last all year by only knitting one row a day.  In a more likely scenario, I will knit 7 rows per week when I sit down to do it, but we are forbidden from finishing before December 31, 2014.

This is the yarn that Catherine got me for Christmas:

She has the same yarn in a different colour, and we both searched for a while to find a pattern that would showcase the variegated yarns.  Harvest Dew was a top choice for both of us before we compared notes, and we had a "get out of my head!" moment when we revealed out top pattern pick. 

And as I mentioned above, I'll also be posting more in 2014 because I'll be doing weekly updates on the progress of the socks.  We're doing cuff-down, one at a time, so you can check in each week and watch it grow.

Happy New Year!

Onward,

vrock