Sunday, September 16, 2007

I suck at titling my posts



Pat's hat has been finished and given to its recipient. If I'd been thinking this morning I'd have brought my camera with me to church to get a picture of the hat on its owner, but I have been feeling dreadful. I'd had this headache for probably 34 hours?
Anyway. I've since embarked on a new project, and photographed the (mid-blocking) swatch: As usual, my photography kinda sucks hard, but I really like this lace pattern and am going to use it on a stole for myself. Though the swatch is in color #80 (ivory), I'll do the stole in #59 (orange) and it will be great. The pattern is Vine Lace from Barbara G. Walker's Treasury of Knitting Patterns (the first) and is so easy I feel like I'm cheating.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Third time's the charm, eh Vin?

Okay, well. Pat, a woman who goes to my church and loves Newsboy-style hats (I can't blame her!) has asked me to make her the "Headline News" cap from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, in "fire-engine red". I asked what kind of yarn she wanted it out of and she requested acrylic since it's washable.
Monday I went to Yarnivore to get some orange yarn to knit a something to go with my new Earth-mother dress that I love (I got Plymouth Royal Bamboo for that btw) and while there I asked Melanie for help finding a really bright red acrylic. She produced Dark Horse Yarns "Fantasy" and I squeezed the skein. It does not feel acrylic. So I checked the label--aha! It's 50% nylon. Nylon is my guilty pleasure fiber. It's made of coal, so it's not exactly eco-friendly, but it feels as soft as bunnies.
So anyway I've been knitting this dang hat all week, because I'm just incompetent. I didn't like the gap between the last knit stitch and the first purl stitch on my wide ribs so I went down a needle size, which required me to use a different number of stitches and I had a headache. Then I decided to omit the first of two purl stitches at each occurrence then pick up the missing stitch near the end, which worked but it all got cruddy after that as the really loose top stitches didn't match the neat tight stitches below. And so now I've finally decided to just do it as written and hope that some blocking will miraculously make it not so bad (Don't spoil my fantasy). Only now I've lost my cable needle.
Sigh.
So I'm giving cabling without a needle a try, as learned from Grumperina's tutorial here. I've done one round of them, and it looks kiiiiinda messy, but I guess that'll just happen when using worsted weight yarn on 6.5mm needles?