Hats off to fall

I finished my warm, wooly hat made with patent stitches.  This is a total copy of the hat I made for Ed last Christmas.  It is a donation for the Strawberry Hill Nature Preserve Annual Auction, which is in October.  Can’t you envision someone striding down a hiking trail wearing this?

I learned this patent stitch technique from Merike Saarnit at Knitters’ Day Out 2009.  It is really cool.  The resulting fabric is squishy and smushy and very warm.

The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted, which is a very, very soft singles yarn.  It should feel great on someone’s head.

…and I still have more yarn!  This hat weighs 73 grams.  I have 38 grams remaining of the light green yarn, and 29 grams of the dark green (total 67 grams).  I could probably squeeze another hat out if I made it just a bit shorter or narrower.  That’s great value from my original two balls of yarn.

Two hats, no fruit

Today we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming of socks, sock yarns, and spinning sock yarn.  Last week’s knitting was very hat-focused.  Currently I have two hats on my to-do list.

First off, every fall I knit a child’s hat to donate as part of my registration fee for Knitters’ Day Out.  The hats go to Caps for Kids (a Craft Yarn Council program).  I peeked into my stash and came up with this:

My mom bought me this yarn at a market in Santa Fe.  It’s a heavy worsted weight, but she thought it was sock yarn (to be fair, she asked if it was sock yarn and the seller said “sure!” – not so good).  I know a little girl would like these colors (because when I started knitting this at a social gathering, little girls flocked to me), so I knit a plain old basic hat.  It came out a little big for a child, though, so I think I will full it a bit before sewing on the pom pom.  It’s not quite done, but it’s close.

The second hat is another donation, this time to the annual auction for an organization that is near and dear to my heart: Strawberry Hill Nature Preserve.  Sadly, I won’t be able to attend the auction this year due to a scheduling conflict.  I decided to donate something instead.  I’ve never done this before!  I’m going to recreate the Warm Portland Hat I made for my friend Ed last year:  I have enough yarn left over from the first hat.  I thought that a nature lover might appreciate this.  It’s made with Malabrigo Worsted, and the single-ply merino is soooooooo soft.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this hat is great for a bald man! I’m using an Estonian patent stitch technique that I learned at last year’s Knitters’ Day Out.  I love how it creates a very thick (but airy and lofty), reversible pattern: That’s what’s up with hats.  Next time, we will return to our regular sock knitting content.

FO: Cozy Oregon Hat (patent stitches)

I finished Ed’s hat today and am really pleased with the way it came out!  Here’s my in-house hat model:

I had a hard time reclaiming the hat from Boy 1 after our front porch photo shoot, so maybe he needs one of his very own.  I have plenty of yarn left – the finished hat weighs in at 64 g.

I spent a fair bit of time yesterday playing around with the decreases.  I learned that the pattern looked best when I only did decreases on the light-colored rounds (which are more knit-y than purl-y), and you have to do some fancy float dropping on the patent stitches to make the line of the light yarn nice and straight.  The decreases go down by 2 stitches each time, also in order to preserve the two-color columns.  And to get a nice rounded crown, I began the decreases every 4th round and then sped them up to every 2nd round, ending with 8 stitches at the top.  It took me a bit of swatching to figure all this out – here’s the evidence: But I think the end result is worth it – check out the bird’s eye view! I love how this turned out.  Did I say that already?  I feel so clever and want to cast on again for another one right away.  But… Bada Bing calls.  I also need to finish up some Christmas tree ornaments.

And before I know it, it will be time to pack away some sock yarn and plan appropriately interesting-yet-simple projects for travel knitting.  Any suggestions?

A Hat Experiment

Back in September, I took a class on Estonian patent stitches with Merike Saarniit.  This technique is really interesting; it creates a reversible, cushy, smooshy, warm fabric with lots of air pockets in it.  I decided to practice by making a hat for my friend Ed, who needs a warm hat to keep his (not very hairy) head warm when he’s in Portland. I don’t have a pattern.  I’m using the Two Color Full Patent Stitch for this hat.  One of the interesting things about patent stitches is that they create a fabric that is very different in gauge than “regular” knitted fabric.  I’m using Malabrigo worsted (a single ply 100% merino yarn that is very, very soft) and I would classify it as a “heavy worsted.”  My needles are size 5, and I only cast on 64 stitches for this large adult hat.  It’s big enough, though. Ed specifically requested a hat with enough length that you could fold up the bottom and double the fabric around the brim.  I think this two-color pattern will look especially nice folded back.I’m not exactly sure how I will create the crown decreases.  I have a practice swatch I started to figure out some details at the beginning – I guess I’ll go back to it and practice some decreases before doing them on the hat.

This technique is really quite captivating.  I recommend it!

KDO 2009

Another year of Knitters’ Day Out is complete!

Kris and I began the weekend with a Knitters’ NIGHT Out.  We ate at Cedars Restaurant in Camp Hill and enjoyed a lovely array of mezza dishes.  Unfortunately, I did not photograph them.  Trust me, they were both beautiful and delicious.  Then we headed to KDO to register and visit the marketplace.  At registration, we learned that everyone won a door prize this year.  I got lucky and won this set of plastic needles in sizes 8-10.5.  These will be perfect for teaching kids.  I’ve already lost most of my straight Brittany needles to beginner knitters who never return them.  This is a very useful door prize for me!

Kris had never seen a sock knitting machine before.  This one as at the Knitters Dream booth.  Fascinating! I ended up picking up a few small things at the market:

- a cute little book from Regia called Flusi and the Sock Yarn (it goes with their new line of sock yarns for kids, which I resisted as I have plenty of stash) – cute illustrations that might make kids ask you to knit socks for them! - a sock pattern that I picked up at The Mannings booth (they had two different samples knitted up that were quite striking, and I thought this would be a great way to knit down some of my handpainted sock yarn):- some 2-ply yarn from Icelandic sheep from Cedarland Farm in Delta, PA (south of Lancaster near the Maryland line, about 60 miles east of Gettysburg).  This is 100% Icelandic wool in its natural color, but I think it will be plenty strong for socks: On Saturday morning, I took Merike Saarniit’s Patent Stitches class.  Patent stitches are a group of Estonian stitches that use a lot of yarn (the patent stitch is composed of a pair of loops over the needle) and which create a really squishy fabric.  Often, garments made from patent stitching were fulled, which made them warmer (Estonia is a very cold place).  The patent stitching creates a more flexible fulled fabric than felted stockinette.

Here are some of the sample garments Merike brought to show.  See the hat knit in orange and blue/purple?  I loved that stitch (the Two Color Full Patent) so much that I bought some Malabrigo Worsted to try making a hat using it.  I offered to knit Ed a hat when I was in Portland last month, and he requested “green.”  I think these two greens together will still be neutral enough to suit his taste. Here is the patent stitch sampler we made in class: I was much more enamored of patent stitches than I expected to be.  They are enticingly squishy, and many of them require no purling, even though they look like ribbing.  The Pearl Patent, for example, creates a dimensional nubbly pattern that gives me the same visual and tactile satisfaction as moss or seed stitch, but it would knit up soooooo much more quickly because it’s all knitting and is knit over fewer stitches.  I plan to knit the hat mentioned above as well as a pair of socks that uses patent stitches on the leg.  Merike recommended reducing the number of stitches considerably, as this fabric is very stretchy.

After a lovely lunch spent catching up with Kris, Julie, and Alison (Julie’s sister, who usually joins her for this event), I hopped off to my afternoon class on ribbing.  We created the following sampler of different rib stitches: This session served to remind me that one should always question the basic 1x1 or 2x2 rib when it is called for in a pattern.  Why go plain if you can go fancy?

Another fun year!