Tag Archives: green

I know what a LOT of people are getting for Christmas this year…

knitting, , , ,

I am trying my best to show a little restraint when it comes to this hat pattern a friend gave me. But, oh sweet knitting gods, it is hard.

This hat is so cute and knits up insanely fast because you knit flat and then sew it into shape. What’s not to love?

Oh, that’s right, here is what is not love:

Way down at the bottom of the pattern, looking innocent, is the instruction to “mattress” stitch the ends together. I’m not sure why it’s called mattress stitching, though my current theory is because it makes you want to go lie down after you try it. Good thing this first hat (because oh yes there will be more, bed-related stitching or not) is for my daughter, who is not yet discerning enough to care about what a complete hash her mother has made of the mattress stitching on her new hat.

Of course, it doesn’t help that this first attempt is on a diagonal (the tutorials only show horizontal and vertical… how dare they not envision every possible orientation?). I’m making my son one next… it will give me another chance to see if I can work out how to join these things together.

Project #1

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Back from a cross-country plane trip… the ONE good thing about being hurled through the air in a metal tube after waiting in line to be searched is getting some time to knit. Thank goodness for all the little old ladies who demanded we get to keep our needles, at least. (They are so much safer than shampoo and toothpaste.)

Anyway… I finished Project #1:

I’d been itching for a reason to try out one of those multi-fiber yarn-esque skeins forever. I bought one while my mom was in town, and she whipped up an easy pattern for me to make a shawl/wrap/scarf with it. Basically, I started in the middle of the triangle at the top, and added 4 YOs (at the ends and two in the middle) every other row. Super easy, though I did track how many stitches I needed to get to the middle of each row. I only had to stop and recount during a row a few dozen times. I blame dehydration.

Anyway, it was fun to knit, and I got quite a few positive comments while I was working on it (including from one of the flight attendants!). Working with this yarn felt a bit like a sampler pack – I got to try knitting all kinds of weird things and see what I liked enough to do a big project with. The overall wrap is not really “wrap” sized, but it makes a great scraf-wrap hybrid. If I did it again, I would use two skeins instead.

This yarn had a lot going on – here are the highlights:

Super fuzzy dark green: Like mohair but less fun. Much less fun.

Ladder yarn: Let us never speak of ladder yarn. It is designed by sadists.

Thick’n’thin yarn: I was prepared to grit my teeth and bear through this part, but I actually quite liked both the yarn and the effect, so I’ll have to try this again.

Ribbon: Weird, but easy, though there was a thin sample that was super slippery and somewhat tricky to get the tension right with.

On to finishing the next project!