Star Crossed Slouchy Beret

I like the “friend activity” page on Ravelry because it exposes me to patterns that I might not otherwise see. That was where I came across the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret pattern.

This pattern only uses one skein of Malabrigo, which is a big plus.

Sadly, though, I don’t think this beret works well on me. It isn’t slouchy enough and generally looks too small. I should have done at least another half of the pattern repeat before the decreases. I’m still debating whether to frog it and re-knit it, or to donate the hat to charity.

Pattern: Star Crossed Slouchy Beret (Rav link)
Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted, Polar Morn, less than 1 skein
Needles: US #9, #10, #11
Mods: I used US #9/16″ needles for the ribbing based on project notes I found Ravelry. I think this worked well. The US #11s/16″ were for the main body. For the decreases I used US#10 DPNs. I’m not sure why the pattern calls for 24″ needles — I tried them and didn’t like how the stitches were overly stretched out. The 16″ needles worked just fine.

Hats for Knit With Love

This year, Suzie has organized Knit with Love, an effort to collect at least 25 knitted hats that will be delivered to elders via the San Francisco chapter of Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly. Suzie is currently just over halfway to meeting her goal and will accept hats for two more weeks, so if you have time to whip up a quick hat please take a look at the link!

Cabled Newsboy Cap

Pattern: Headline News Cabled Newsboy Cap from Stitch ‘N Bitch Nation
Yarn: Blue Sky Worsted Hand Dyes, Color 2003 Ecru, 2 skeins
Needles: Clover #8/16″, Clover #8/24″, Clover #10.5/16″, Brittany #10.5 DPNs
Thoughts: This was my first project in August, and unfortunately I feel pretty “meh” about it. Clearly I chose the wrong color yarn for myself; I was going for neutral so that the hat would match a variety of clothing, but didn’t consider that ecru doesn’t go so well with my skin tone. The yarn knits up thick and soft, but it was splitty so I wouldn’t use it again.  I found the decrease instructions rather confusing.  In the absence of pattern errata or clarification on the SnB website, I ended up emailing Wendy completely out of the blue to ask for help because she had knit the hat before. She didn’t know me from the next knitter, nor had I ever even commented on her blog previously, but she still kindly responded super quickly with detailed instructions. Wasn’t that nice?? All in all, this is not one of my favorite projects, but I’m glad I finished something! Yay!  Moving on now to the other projects on my needles…

More Sparkles

Gifted to my lovely and talented friend Jen.

Fair Isle Finished

Lately, I have been focused on finishing.

Pattern: Bea Ellis Traditional Hat
Yarn: Dalegarn Heilo, 1 skein color #0020 (cream) and 1 skein color #3152 (brown); Marks & Pattens Camomille, 1 skein color #208 (for the lining). The yarn was purchased in a kit.

I took an extremely stupid and circuitous route to knitting the top portion of my hat. It was so stupid that I’m sure many of you will catch my mistake before I explain it.

The story starts at the end of the snowflake pattern, which I knit in December. This was where I left off.

I put it down for awhile and only knit an inch and a half further here and there. When I picked it up again last week, I found that I missed a few rows in the pattern. (This can happen if you have the chart on a magnetic board, use the magnets to track the rows, and the magnets move without your noticing.) So I frogged back. No big deal.

Dark brown lifeline shows where I frogged back

I proceeded to knit all the way up to the crown decreases. This is how the hat looked:

Yeah, you can wince. Those ridges aren’t supposed to be there. My floats were too tight, causing all that bunching. While I was knitting I had a sneaky suspicion that this was happening, but I was in denial about it. I didn’t think blocking would help because the tight floats would prevent the hat from stretching out. So I frogged the entire cream portion of the hat and started again.

The second time around, the hat was looking pretty good from the outside. I made a very conscious effort to spread out the stitches on my right needle before stranding the yarn in the back. I got all the way up to the beginning of the crown decreases again. Then I decided to check out MJ’s finished Traditional Hat and the Norwegian Knit-Along Gallery to see at how others’ hats looked on the inside. Guess what I discovered?

There are many rounds that are knit in just one color (cream). Thus, I could have cut the brown yarn and just rejoined it when needed for the brown fleck pattern. This would have eliminated much stranding and I could have avoided the float problem. The bottom line is that I did a lot of extra work for absolutely no reason. Ugh, sometimes I wonder whether I have a brain! ***big sigh***

Now, I would have left the hat alone and just finished it if it weren’t for the fact that now my floats were too loose.

What did I do?

Yup. Frogged it again. As you can see my yarn is now fuzzy.

I knit the entire cream portion again for the third time. The positive side of all this was that I got much better at knitting with my left hand. I can now feed the yarn more smoothly and Continental knitting doesn’t feel so foreign anymore. My right-handed knitting is still much neater and faster, but I feel like I have a good start with my Continental knitting.

I finally proceeded through the crown shaping and pulled the yarn through the remaining stitches on the needle. Here is the hat with the “proper” floats:

My hat is far from perfect, as some of the floats are too still loose, a few rows are too tight (particularly the all-cream rows in the snowflake portion of the hat) and some of the stitches remain uneven after blocking. But I’m thrilled that I tried two-handed fair isle knitting! I will definitely practice Continental knitting more before tackling another fair isle project.

First Fair Isle

After practicing two-handed fair isle on a swatch, I finally started my Bea Ellis Traditional Norwegian Hat.

When I uploaded the first photo to my computer, I laughed out loud because at a glance it actually makes my fair isle look semi-decent. And you can see the snowflakes!! Wooo-hoo!! But I wish y’all could see the hat in person, because my fair isle has a lot to be desired. I’m not great at taking non-fuzzy close-ups, so here is the best I could do:

As you can see, my knitting is bumpy, and the stitches are different sizes. I thought about ripping the entire thing out and starting over after more practice, but I was having too much fun watching the pattern develop. And to be honest, I bought this kit in order to learn fair isle knitting, so I am cutting myself a little slack and letting it be the way it is for now. I may finish the entire thing first and then frog it, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. Want to see the floats?

I have been trying to determine whether the floats are too tight. My gut feeling is that they are, but on the other hand I didn’t want them all hanging loose either. I’ve read that I should spread out my stitches on the right needle before twisting the yarns in the back, so I have been trying to remember to take that step.

Two-handed knitting has been fun and challenging! I’ve never knit Continental before, so this has been a slow project for me. At first I kept wrapping the stitches incorrectly with my left hand and thus twisting them. Then I switched to “picking” so that I don’t have to wrap, and it’s working a lot better. Until now I’ve never been inclined to learn Continental, but now I’m thinking that it’s worthwhile to learn it just so I can be better at two-handed fair isle in the future. Perhaps I will knit a felted Sophie bag using the Continental technique, because the felting will minimize my uneven gauge!

I started out using the true Philosopher’s Wool method, meaning that there are no floats and all the yarn in the back is woven in. It didn’t work for me because the contrasting color kept showing through. Then I started reading the posts for the Norwegian knit-along, and realized that floats are fine too. As a side note, I think the Philosopher’s Wool instructional clips (which can be viewed on their website) are really clear and good. I highly recommend checking out their clips if you’re interested in learning this technique.

Fair isle knitting can be addicting! I’m already thinking about trying a headband next!