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

A worthy post after months of no action - Rhinebeck 2013!

Hello readers!  Before you even say anything, I'll explain myself.  I went through a bout of no knitting this summer, where not only did I not write any blog posts, but I also did not do any knitting.  I bought a house with Fuzzyhead in June and all of my efforts went to doing all the little things with the house (for your own amusement, you can follow my house adventures at joeyandjanicebuyahouse.wordpress.com).  Now that we're settled in, I think it's about time for me to get back to knitting, and writing about it.

We begin with my most recent knitting excursion to Rhinebeck.  You may recall that Catherine and I went last year for the first time, and we were gung ho about going again.  We went with the same bus group, a bunch of ladies from Georgetown who organize the trip each year.  We were fully prepared for the bus of cackling hens syndrome again, and I think it really helped to know that was coming in advance.  I brought my ipod and I think I chiseled away about more than 12 hours worth of podcasts on the trip.  Let's start the recap!

Here we are, shortly after 8am as the bus is rolling out of the parking lot to begin our journey to Rhinebeck.  As someone who doesn't live in Georgetown, this meant I was up at 5:30 in order to walk a dog and get ready to leave and then drive to Georgetown to meet the group.  The lack of sleep didn't catch up to me until later that afternoon, around the time when I was getting mildly bus sick from the combination of jerky stopping and starting and what I later found out was a vanilla air freshener.

At about 10am, we arrived at ye olde duty free.  They are a well-oiled machine at duty free, since they get so many bus loads of cackling hens arriving each day to load up on booze and designer fragrances, so a kind young lady from the duty free hops on the bus to give us the low-down on the process.  She also handed out two $10 gift certificates, to force us to spend money, and Catherine won!  As soon as it was in her hand, we started chanting "candy! candy!" and the other gals on the bus laughed at us.  Who's laughing now, ladies?  We scored two GIANT Reese's peanut butter bars for $6, with money left over for jelly beans.  Super score.

Our border crossing experience was the exact opposite of what happened last year - this year we were really delayed in crossing to the states, but breezed through the border stop on the way home.  Here we are crossing over to Buffalo, before we even got to the hour long wait in the parking lot before the let us come inside and flash our passports.

In knitting news, this is what I was working on on the bus.  The pattern is Rivercat from Knitty and this is yarn that I bought last year at Rhinebeck.  It's from Cephalopod Yarns, Skinny Bugga in Green Darner Dragonfly.  This is where I was at the start of the trip, and within the last hour of traveling back, I was grafting the toe.  I started the pattern a few days ahead of leaving for Rhinebeck so I wouldn't be figuring out the tricky little parts of the pattern while on a jiggling bus.

We arrived to Poughkeepsie in one piece and ditched the rest of the group at the Olive Garden to run across the street to Chili's.  We were in bed early, and up at the crack of early to get ready for the fair.  Here we are on the bus on Saturday morning, excited for yarns!

I made a list of what I needed to buy on Friday night in the hotel.  I had specific projects in mind, and I jotted down the basic requirements for yardage and yarn weight:

Norie Hat - 260 yards, DK weight


Rockefeller Shawl - 450 yards colour A, 505 yards colour B, light fingering weight


Larch Cardigan - 1580-1720 yards, Sport weight


Hemlock Ring Blanket - 600 yards, worsted weight


And I was open to the idea of picking up yarn for a baby project for a coworker, and I wanted to pick up some yarn for Tyler, who just started knitting earlier this year.  His only request was "red", so that left it open for fun interpretations.
 

Blurry, but it`s the entrance to the fairgrounds - Dutchess County Fairgrounds, home of the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival!

The line-up.  This is mostly to show the scale of the event - when I tell people I went to a knitting festival, they don't really get that it's a big deal, with THOUSANDS of people.  It was way more crowded on the Saturday than last year, and I'm not sure what made the difference.  A lot of the vendors were the same, the weather was equally nice, so....?

Waiting in line to get our chance to squeeze all the yarny goodness.

We took a different approach to shopping this year; we weren't just going to browse all day on Saturday and miss out on getting the yarns we wanted.  Last year, our "take notes first, and buy later" philosophy meant some of our choices were sold out before we got back on Sunday with money.  This year's plan was to hit up the popular booths first and make impulsive purchases so we wouldn't regret it later.  First up, Miss Babs.

As soon as we were inside the gate, we did a hop, skip, and a jump through the leaf piles and booted it up to Building C to visit Miss Babs.  Last year they were crazy busy all weekend, and I never ended up buying anything from them.  This year I wanted to get something, and I was open to what that would be. I decided on getting the worsted weight yarn for Hemlock, and I picked up four skeins of Heartland Worsted in "Fieldmouse".  The line-up to pay was stretching outside the building, and one could describe her booth as CRAZY.  We waited in line for one hour and five minutes.  No joke.

I was almost more excited about the food options than I was about the yarn.  We chose this cute little food truck for lunch on Saturday.  They make flamms, which are like pizzas, but super duper thin.  I chose the Traditional, which had spiced creme, red onion, scallions, bacon, and some other kind of cheese.

It was so delicious, I can't even tell you.  The only thing I didn't love was the charred edge bits and the amount of flour that they had to use to get the flamms to slide in and out of the oven easily.  Catherine described it as eating an ashtray after a while, and because of it she didn't finish all of hers.

We did more wandering and shopping in the afternoon, and we also hit up the other very popular booth of the weekend, Cephalopod Yarns.  They had a pretty big line-up last year, and by the time we got there, there wasn't much selection.  This year, we were ahead of the game, and we went there with guns a-blazin'.  I picked up a skein of the DK weight in "Arkham" for my Norie hat.

After the two big names were out of the way, we wandered around and took in the sites.  I wish that I could have bought a $10 bunny:

But I'm pretty sure I couldn't get over the border with one, plus it didn't look like they had anything for you to carry it around in.  Too bad.

One of our major afternoon stops was at The Fold and Blue Moon Fiber Arts, which is where I bought the yarn for the lovely sweater I wore on Saturday.  They carry Socks that Rock, and I remembered their booth fondly from last year.  From them I picked up a skein of mill ends heavyweight sock yarn for some winter socks for Fuzzyhead, and the yarn for my Rockefeller shawl in the form of mini skeins of Socks that Rock in "Sabertooth Caterpillar" and "Cozy Fierce and Dirty Orange".

By 4:00, we were tuckered out, and we spent the last hour or so sitting on a grassy and leafy hill, resting our tired little tootsies.

  Back at the hotel, I documented my scores from the day, on my hotel bed, in poor lighting:

That's Heartland in the back, my Socks that Rock for Rockefeller in the middle-right, Socks that Rock for Fuzzyhead's heavy winter socks on the left, and Cephalopod DK up front.

Sunday went by a lot faster, and we were mostly concerned with doing our quick final shopping and getting back to the bus, with food in our bellies, by 11:30.  We went back to all of our "saw it yesterday and kept thinking about it" booths, and Catherine picked up a few more things.  I only needed to grab Tyler's red yarn and a mini skein of white sock yarn from Miss Babs for an upcoming project.  I went up to Miss Babs first thing in the morning, and the giant line was already starting, so I almost dismissed the idea of getting the mini skein.  I left it for the time being, and I went to another booth and got two skeins of Shepherd's Wool in a nice bright red for Tyler.

I still had some US cash burning a hole in my wallet, and I really didn't want to have to exchange it back to Canadian.  And what's the one thing everyone needs more of?  Sock yarn!  I went to TuckerWoods and got a skein of Rory's Toes, which is their tweed sock yarn.

We petted a few sheep and walked through a few more buildings to make sure we weren't missing something fantastic, and then made a break for lunch.  While Catherine was still finishing lunch, I zipped back up to Miss Babs, hoping that the line wouldn't be too big to mess up my timing to get back on the bus.  I saw some other people from my group, so I figured at the very least, we would all be late, and I picked up one last skein.

We were back on the bus in plenty of time, and I got some solid knitting done on the drive home.  We made record time on the way back, mostly due to the fact that we only stopped once before the border (and there was a Starbucks, hallelujah!), and we were through the border control stop in less than 10 minutes.  We arrived back in Georgetown at 9pm, and loaded up our bags for the drive home.

And now, the final yarn round-up:

I've still been taking pictures of all of my knits and yarn purchases, so I'll work on putting together some catch-up posts of everything I've been knitting.  You can look forward to that, and now it's lunch time.

Onward,

vrock