Half a Hat, Now With Bonus Ladders!

Bleurgh. Look where the needles join. See the vertical ladder line in the fabric under the join? Bet you don't have to look very hard. (sigh) I never get ladders. I can knit with all sorts of yarns and dpns, and I don't get ladders. EXCEPT...

With very slick superwash wool. You know the kind I'm talking about. It's the stuff that gives superwash a bad name. Feels great, but handles strangely. Gauge might wobble, fabric might gain inches during blocking, ends won't stay put.

And in my case, ladders.

I reckon I'll have to use my crochet hook to turn those ladders into stitches, and then use a k2tog on the live stitches to get rid of the extra one. But that will come when I'm just about ready to close the crown. No point in "fixing" it too soon.

This is the Kittiwake pattern by Alice Starmore, btw, from Aran Knitting. Except I changed it a little. (Shocking, right?) I wanted more of the braid, less of the rib, so I shortened the ribbing section by an inch (leaving it still long enough to fold in half), and am adding another repeat of the braid cable. It's a slow knit, fiddly, and I will never, ever do it on double points again.


After the hat is finished, I get to knit this:














Details will follow. :)

Silence is Golden

I have the house to myself this weekend. Even the dog is gone. This is because, clearly, God loves me best.

And s/he wants me to have the knitting chair.

And s/he wants Panera Larry's baby to be warm this winter.

And s/he wants me to have the pride and satisfaction of finishing something. Anything, really.

Hooray for God for being smart enough to arrange all this.

The stats:

Pattern: Chevron Baby Lace hat (ravelry freebie) and my own baby mitt pattern
Yarn: Dale Baby Ull, what else ;) About 80% of a skein for the set
Needles: US2 dpns

Notes:

The crown of the baby hat is a bit fiddly, and I'm not sure the end result was worth it. But it will do.

To make the mitts, co 30 and join, leaving at least an 8" tail. Work k1 p1 rib for 1.25 inches. Increase to 40 stitches and switch to stockinette. Knit plain until mitt is 3.25" and then k1, k2tog on alternating rounds until you have just a handful of stitches left and can draw the yarn through the loops to close the circle. (On non-decrease rounds, just knit plain.)

Break the yarn and knot it to the 8" tail at your cast on edge. Slip a crochet hook into the cast on stitch next to the tail -- this will be the base for a chain. Chain stitch along the knotted tail until the chain is about 26-28" inches long when unstretched.

Using your final loop in the crochet chain as your slipknot, cast on 30 and make the second mitt as above. When you wind in the ends from the knot in the chain, weave them in opposite directions. to hide the bulk. And yes, it's best to knot this. You need a strong connection. Don't worry -- it's invisible once it's woven in.

This will look like a fairly large mitt, but it really isn't. Newborns tend to curl their fingers, but you want the mitt to leave them room to stretch.

Now, onto the hat for Panera Eric. He deserves something good, too.

New Math

I wasn't going to cast on any new socks. I thought that if I resisted that lure and focused on sweater knitting, I'd have a chance of finishing St. Brigid fairly soon.

Which would be true in theory, but doesn't quite work in practice.

I pulled out St. Brigid yesterday and went to sit in my big green knitting chair. Some of you know, I've recently gained some new roommates, courtesy of a bastard sonofabitch asshole piece of shit my sister very wisely, and at long last, is divorcing. (Not that I have formed an opinion of this man's character. These statements are all totally objective and based on clinical data. Ahem.)

So there I am in my big green chair, hunkering down for a spell o' knitting while watching the Purdue football game. And here's what happens --

-- The kid wants to watch cartoons. There are three other televisions in this house, but he wants this particular one. And this is the only one with a good knitting chair nearby. He whines when I tell him no, which is not too terrible to take, except that the whining is competing with the game.

-- My mother, currently in town again, decides to vacuum this room, muttering all the while about how there are two adult women living in this house and neither of them vacuums to her satisfaction. I wouldn't give a shit -- I have long practice in ignoring this sort of muttering -- but the noise was interfering with my ability to hear the game commentary. Vacuum + muttering mother + whining kid = starting to be a problem.

-- As soon as my mother leaves the room, my sister wants to complain about my mother's complaining. Mom's vacuuming other rooms now, and still muttering. Now we have Vacuum + muttering mother + whining kid + complaining sister = Goddamn, would you people shut up and let me watch the game and knit already.

-- Enter my father, who tolerates me watching football because he likes football quite a lot. But he wants the remote, and he wants to talk. A lot. He wants to talk about the game, which is a good thing, but I can't answer his questions about why the refs are making the calls they're making because I can't hear the commentary at all any longer. Also, he tends to change channels during commercials and replays, so we're missing quite a lot of commentary anyway.

Still with me? The end result:
Vacuum + muttering mother + whining kid + complaining sister + chatty father + constantly changing channels = mis-crossed cable in row 11.

Also, game? What game?

So I'll be saving St. Brigid for SnB nights, and when I need to knit at home, a simple sock will have to do. This one will be a 2x2 ribbed leg and instep out of Mountain Colors Bearfoot, a yarn I purchased about a thousand years ago from Nana's.

Worth noting: When I sat down at the kitchen table this morning to cast on and browse my Sensational Socks books for a leg pattern, the kid came in to play video games "with" me (a/k/a he plays and shows me the screen at intervals), my sister came in to complain about my mother, my mother came in to complain about housekeeping, and my father came in to talk football. The only difference from yesterday? Different room, no vacuum, and we were talking Bears instead of Boilermakers.

So I closed up the pattern books and opted for a simple ribbing.

Because sometimes, the best answer is the simplest one.