Kiss My Knits!

I made a kid’s scarf out of some Noro Iro the other day, and had enough left over to make part of a hat, but not an entire one. So I got some Sirdar Donegal Tweed in purple and just kind of… started knitting. It became clear at about 10pm last night that it had gone nuts enough that it needed something to just put it over the top, so I just kind of… kept going.

Here’s the hat. Because my husband keeps saying “Toing! Toing! Toing!” when he sees it, I’m calling it the Three Toing hat. A nice silly hat and scarf for a kid. I think in different colors, larger, with a few modifications, that actually would make a nice silly hat for a grownup, too.

And future note to self: At 1am, stop knitting, because who knows what you’ll end up with?

ETA: Lest anyone think I am going crazy, let me tell you, it could be worse.

Another hat tonight, this one I call Funky Forest. The solid parts are more burgundy than the picture shows. Here’s a view of it on with more accurate colors.

It uses the Colinette Five Point in colorway Forest (hence the name) and is a variation of the hip-hop pope hat(tm Khaman) of several weeks ago. I didn’t have bulky yarn in a color I liked for the brim and crown, so I doubled a strand of worsted. It made the hat a little heavier than one strand of bulky, but it’s a little more visually interesting and is still acceptable weight. Also, I wanted to funkify it a little more, so I picked up a row of stitches (hard to explain briefly) to make the top ridge pop out more, and at the top I decreased to four stitches and then made a couple of rows of i-cord for a little stem.

This one’ll come to Simucon too. I have plenty of other projects I should be working on, but I just HAD to use some of the Colinette! I officially love it.

Behold! The Seven-Pointed Star! Called that because I massaged the math and worked seven points into the crown instead of the pattern’s previous eight. Also has a ribbed bottom to make it a little less girly. This one’s for a guy, which is why it looks so big on me.

I just wanted to do something with a DR connection for Simucon. I’ll probably make the hats I take there with seven points just as a little inside noodge to the game.

You may remember the ill-fated rainbow fish hat which looked like a particularly colorful yarmulke.

I decided to give it another go, but with a different pattern. So here’s the result. I’d like to try this hat again, but on 11s instead of 13s to make it a bit snugger. Plus the end that got woven in on the rim (you can see it over my right ear) looks sloppy. I wove it in on the inside, but of course it’s stockinette stitch so it rolls up… which means it’s really on the outside. Oops!

Down side: The stash didn’t actually get reduced, because I have plenty of both yarns left over, just in slightly smaller quantities. I need to use stuff up!

Okay, so my daughter wanted a hat like the others I’d made, so I had to knit a THIRD hat. But it was fun. She picked out the yarn herself, and here’s the result. This was the best yet, with the crown decreases working out perfectly to make a cool star-like pattern on the top. I cast on 96 stitches using #6 needles to make a more defined stitch pattern.

Here’s my girl modeling it. You’ll have to turn your head sideways, because I don’t feel like opening up Photoshop this morning just to rotate the picture 90 degrees. I like it. All she needs is a little tie-dyed shirt and she’s ready to follow Phish on tour.

As a side note, I have just about enough yarn left over from the other hats to make another hat. I’ll never be free of the roll-brim beanie!

I decided to quit waffling, already, and finish the second hat. I didn’t give it a point like the boob hat had, and when I screwed up a stitch finishing the crown in the My Gym waiting room, I thought, “eh, she’ll never know” and kept knitting. It turned out better than it looked like it was going to in the first picture. In fact, she loved it, as you can see. Sometimes you shouldn’t overthink things.

For those who care about such things:
1 skein kureyon
size 9 16″ circular and double-pointed needles.
Long-tail cast-on.
On circular needles, co 88 stitches. Place marker at beginning of row.
Knit in the round for about 4 1/2 to 5 inches.
To decrease:
row 1: From marker, *k9, k2tog* repeating * to end of row.
row 2: knit
row 3: *k8, k2tog* repeating * to end of row.
row 4: knit
row 5: *k7, k2tog* repeating * to end of row.
row 6: knit
Switch to double-pointed needles when the work gets too small.
Keep repeating this pattern until you’re down to, like, 32 stitches or so. Then omit the plain knit row and just keep up the decrease pattern, otherwise you’ll get down to 4 stitches and have a boob point. Unless that’s your thang.
When you’re down to 8 stitches (or 4, to taste) using yarn needle, pull end of yarn through remaining stitches and weave in ends. (Or cheat like me and knot it).

FYI, I have a 22 inch head, so you can figure that with 88 stitches, your gauge is probably going to be about 4 stitches to an inch.
(2008 note – at the time I wrote this pattern, I was a tight knitter. You might want to pop down to a size 8 needle.)

Math AND fashion! It’s the ultimate geek girl craft!

So someone saw me knitting the boob hat and wanted one in similar colors. Being the cheap person that I am, I picked out an all-wool yarn from the same manufacturer in colorway 87 and started knitting. However, as I knit it up, I realized that the outside of the skein was deceptive. All the green was tucked way, way inside the ball. It ain’t purple. It ain’t even close.

So now I’m presented with several options. Finish knitting the hat and give it to her, even though it’s not what she thought she was going to get, finish the hat and find someone else who wants it (unlikely, since all my contact in real life is with a four year old), or unravel it, make something like this for myself, and just suck it up and buy some new yarn for her. Opinions?

Okay, I followed this pattern pretty closely, and the hat still wound up too small. Its like I’m wearing some kind of stretched out yarmulke in rainbow fish colors. (By the way, it was early in the morning when that picture was taken, so forgive the glazed look.)

So now I get to frog the hat (rip it! rip it!) and re-knit. The only question is: since I have to re-knit anyway, should I go ahead and add some Plume FX and make it glitzy, too? Or will I regret it in the morning? I should mention that I have enough yarn for a matching scarf.

Y’all got an opinion?

Here it is, The Manly Hat!

I had to go out of town this weekend, so I was able to finish this up since I couldn’t log into DR. The hubby likes it, and it does match his VW convertible. Since he’s paying for so much of this yarn, I was glad to have a project that he could use. Easily the most practical thing I’ve knitted. I do enjoy knitting for others.

And now, I go on a yarn diet. No more yarn shops until at least March. This shouldn’t be a problem, since I’ve got so much stacked up.

Of course, I do need a few more skeins of the K1C2 Souffle in Razzleberry for the Chickami that I’ll be making after I use up the rest of my stash. Summer’s coming, you know.

Okay, I might be an addict.

Well, as I said, I promised my daughter her own little purple fuzzy hat, and here it is.

This was the same pattern, adhered to more closely. The difference here is that instead of a strand of sport-weight wool with the purple, I used a strand of sport-weight cotton, Mission Falls 1824. It was a perfect color match for the purple, so I got lucky. I think the cotton might make the hat a little heavier than a really thin wool (lighter than sport-weight) would have, but the cotton does have pretty good loft and my daughter doesn’t seem to mind. She likes it because it looks a little like the hat the title character in this book wears.

Hopefully after I take care of more wedding work tonight (love is in the air this month, I’ll tell ya!) I’ll be able to start on the other projects that’ve been stacking up.