Hat with Braids!

Katie in Hat

I made this hat out of a pattern from One Skein Wonders by Judith Durant. The book is a little hit or miss but some of the patterns are fun. It took me two tries to get this hat right and I had to adjust my approach but it came out looking like the picture but in black instead of purple. It has exciting features!

* It is hat shaped, hat sized, and fits on heads that may choose to wear hats.
* It has a 4 inch band of seed stitching along the headband for a neat look.
* Earflaps!
* Two long braids, one from each earflap.
* Special flower bling!

My Special Model looks great in the hat. She especially likes that she can smack me with the braids. Knitting a hat is slower than crochet so the hat took about 8-ish hours to make and about 2/3rds of 1 skein of Lion’s Brand Lion Wool, a yarn that is extremely OK.

This has emboldened me to try a single sock. GASP!

Meanwhile, I heard something about some dude trying to give a big speech after the Apple Tablet announcement this afternoon. When are people going to learn that one cannot attempt to follow Steve Jobs? New Apple Bling? State of the Union. Apple Bling. State of the Union. Easy call.

Anyone have a SotU drinking game?

Wombat of Shame

fade and I have the same knitting book: “The World of Knitted Toys” by Kath Dalmeny. I have made a large number of Amigurumis and they are super cute but the crocheted creatures always have some mild coherence problems. No matter how tight I pull the magic circle closed, I can always see white dots of polyfill through the tips of legs and the top of the head. The weave isn’t tight enough and polyfill shows through. We decided to do a knit-along to try something different with a new technique and fade picked the wombat. It’s easy! It’s straight forward! It’s adorable! What could possibly go wrong?

My wombat didn’t come out. I knew something wasn’t quite right when I made his body but I pushed on through. He is full of shame. He is a wombat. Of shame. I have no idea what went wrong. The pattern was mostly making squares! And yet here he is. Not looking anything like a wombat. At all. I looked him up on Ravelry (where you can friend me as multiplexer…) and it looks like the fault is the pattern, not our inability to knit. All the wombats from that pattern are full of sadness and shame. Shame wombats. Sad.

We’ll make something else but I heard something about a request for a Jayne hat. Knitpicks Wool of the Andes yarn totally has the right colors and I found a pattern…

I have learned lessons from the Wombat of Shame!

Pros:

- The weave on a knitted toy is tighter than an ami so no polyfill shows through.
- The toy is overall softer, squishier and more toy-like.
- Makes a much larger toy with far less yarn.

Cons:

- Knitting has fewer weapons for sculpting than crotchet so getting a nice rounded ear requires more elaborate measures and careful counting.
- About 5x longer to make a knitted toy than a croteched toy.
- The increases/decreases much more difficult than the same crotched.

Overall it was a pretty positive experience. I’ll totally make another one. Hopefully it won’t also be full of SHAME.

Unbelievably Busy Weekend

This weekend I got through…

- Vacuuming the house.

- Doing about seven hours of gardening. This included laying down 2 more bags of mulch, building an entire veggie garden (3×3 raised box), planting 36 vincas, 6 calibrochias, 1 overgrown lantana, 36 carrots, 3 cucumbers (which did not survive I don’t think), 2 tomatos, 2 jalapeno peppers, 2 basils, and 2 cilantro plants.

- Teaching myself enough of the basics of knitting to be truly dangerous.

- Knitting with a basic garter stitch, some boucle and some fun fur 4 feet of fuzzy, goofy scarf for Katie. I just can’t sit and watch a movie.

Meanwhile my parents came over and stripped 90% of the baby wallpaper off the walls in Katie’s room and put up chair rail in preparation of turning it from a nursery to a little girl’s room. This is sort of wimpy but the paper had to come down. Sooner or later, the bears and blocks must be upgraded to bright pink dancing fairies. (Sigh)

I am extremely sore.