Chunky Knits

Square One
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Whenever you need a break, or just need something to make you feel a little better.. pull out the chunky yarn, I say. After sock yarn, nothing is more fun.

I've been trying to work through the skeins of yarn I bought early in my "stashing" career... the ones I purchased when I didn't know that one skein of bulky yarn wasn't enough to make anything out of, even if it is luscious and soft.

I picked up two skeins of Mirasol's "Sulka" yarn (50% merino and 50% silk). This is a fabulous soft-spun single that has 55 yards in 50 grams. It was on sale, and it was gloriously soft and what did I know? I figured out later that I would have needed to go back for... way too much to do a scarf or anything else. But hats, now, hats are great. I was going to do this hat alternating my two skeins (one is a lovely aqua blue and the other a soft tan). But then I remembered "Turn a Square" and I started looking into Noro yarns.

You see, Noro has many beautiful yarns and originally this hat is knit using one of them. It doesn't match my Sulka, tho. Luckily, my LYS carries Silk Garden Chunky -- a match all around! It's wool and silk, spun as a single, and well.. chunky. The slow color changes are what make the hat so fun, combined with the gradual shift of stripes that seem circular to stripes that appear to be square at the top.

They knit up in about a day and used exactly one skein of Mirasol "Sulka" and one-half skein of the Silk Garden Chunky. I actually ran out of the blue Sulka, but bound off the hat with Silk Garden and I don't think it makes a bit of a difference.

And now I have two fewer skeins left to be knit! Two fewer skeins that I had no idea what to do with. That makes me terribly happy.

FO Frenzy

Felted items
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I've had a couple of WIPs sitting around for a while, and of course a nice sized stash marinating with yarns that have been around for over a year now (which is a darned long time for my project-oriented mindset) and I finally figured out what to do with them and got to it!


First, I sat down and finished off my Gift Box. I've had this lovely handspun sitting around for some time, but there just wasn't much of it. It's very pretty and squishy, but not really one that I want to save around for displaying as a skein. So I took my Mardi Gras Rose yarn, and some black 3-ply that I had already spun, and started a box.

My intention was to create what would essentially be wool wrapping paper. I wish I could remember who or where it was, but on something that I read (a blog or board), Furoshiki was mentioned. It's a method for using a large square of cloth, folded different ways, as a universal bag and it's being revived as part of the Green movement in Japan. I thought that a box that I knit (or even several boxes), might be a really fun way to use up some of my odds-and-ends of handspun yarn from Spindlers' Challenges each month.

I cast on and knit a square in black using seed-stitch to give it a little more structure. Then I picked up around the edges and knit upwards, switching to the Mardi Gras yarn at an inch or so in, and switching back to black when I ran out of the Mardi Gras skein. Near the top I purled one round, and then knit a length that would fold shut at the top like wrapping paper would. I created "creases" in the cloth by strategic placement of yarn-overs so it would naturally fold along those lines. Then I stretched it over a plastic toy and tossed the whole thing in the washer to full.

It went pretty well, but apparently the blades of the washer tore holes on the hard edges of the toy. So I ended up stitching them shut with nylon thread and re-washing the whole thing without the toy inside. Luckily it didn't shrink enough that I couldn't get it back over the plastic box in the end and let it dry there.

I also finished off my daughter's socks. I was using these as a test-knit for an idea for my own socks. I can't decide what I think of them. The spiral band is just darling. It is also (as many people predicted and complained on Ravelry) extremely tight and hard to get over her heel. Once on the socks look adorable! Getting them there, however, is quite a pain. I think I may possibly frog them to the ankle and knit the twist straight up one side of the leg. Or I may just do that for the next pair.

Last, I pulled out a couple of skeins I bought on sale with no real plan other than "make hats" and found patterns for them! The light brown skein had always been scheduled to be a "Clem" hat from "Hip Knit Hats" by Cathy Carron. I had even purchased a matching skein of mohair to strand with it (as the pattern requires). Am I allowed to say "darn, this is cute!!" if I made it myself? Well, I will, anyway. This is the second time I've knit Clem. The first time I used two strands of the same yarn and no mohair. The hat shrunk more than I expected in the felting (fulling) and it has never fit quite right. I didn't bother to do the embroidery for it, because it was too short. This time I was careful to knit the hat longer, but I ran out of yarn in the end. The mohair ran out first (that's what I get for not paying attention to yardage requirements) about an inch before I used up the last of the Manos del Uruguay. That's fine, because you can hardly tell in the final product, and the lack of mohair is pretty nice to show off the embroidered edge. I'm also not a great hand at embroidery, but I did a passable job this time!

Last, I dug through my 101 Designer One Skein Wonders book and found a pattern for the "Two Hour Bag". This looked like a great match for my darker skein of Manos del Uruguay, and boy, was it ever! It surprised even me. I put the two together with little thought, mainly wanting to use up the yarn. But as I knit, the colors of the Manos came into play and all of a sudden it didn't look thrown together, it looked quite purposeful and lovely. It just looked even better the more that I knit. And after a round in the washer, the colors tightened up together and it is simply stunning. The bag wants one of Janice's raku buttons (from Dyelots) so bad it isn't even funny. I'm going to have to sneak out of the house tomorrow and go purchase one so I can get it completely done.

As a final comment, I want to mention that I may have said "felting" in a couple of places. Technically, when working with a knit project with heat and agitation, the process is called "fulling" and the object is "fulled". An object is felted when you do the same thing, but start with un-worked fiber. In the end what you have is felt cloth (fulled cloth?) and personally I like the sound of "felted" better. I don't know why, but I do. So any slip-up is mine, and I do know the difference. Sometimes, I just don't care.

You can see more pictures of everything on my Flickr Photostream or check out the projects under "TinkerTots" on Ravelry.

Sparkle Yarn!

2009 April Spindler's Challenge "Celebrate"
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

April's Challenge them was "Celebrate". Once again I went out of the box to pick what I thought was the ultimate celebration song, Prince's "1999". Because, let's face it, New Year's 1999 has got to have been one of the biggest parties in a long time (and we must admire Prince's genius for engineering the resurgence of his career for a brief time with this song).

For this challenge I got to bring out my brand new (at the time) ITS Crafts spindle from Europe. It's dang gorgeous. It is exactly the same weight as my cherry Bosworth spindle (23g), but it feels so much more delicate. The whorl is topped with amboyna burl, and ringed with reclaimed brass shavings in epoxy. The shaft is walnut and is gently tapered for its entire length. I'm afraid to drop it. But it spins smoothly and long (as a rim-weighted spindle should do). The roving is unknown random top from my grab-bag in purple, pink, black and grey. Not shown here is the magenta angelina I picked up because for this challenge, I have a special request.

My daughter wants a hat. Specifically she wants a purple hat. With sparkles. For the first half of this yarn, I took 6-8" lengths of roving and carefully plucked and pulled it out flat. I then laid the angelina out over the top and rolled the whole thing up like a sparkly jelly-roll. I spun the first batch from the fold, wanting a lofty, soft yarn that would barber-poll. Only the purple got the sparkles. The black went in plain. I did what I think of as "long draw", although I'm not entirely certain that's accurate. Rather than pulling the fiber in with my fingers and following the twist up into my drafting zone, I hold my single further down and let the twist grab the fiber out of my hank as it wants to. I'm still not letting more twist up into the fiber until it looks like I'm not grabbing any more. Then I open my fingers to let what twist has built up jump into the higher single and drafting zone and then pinch it off again to pull out more.

This method resulted in a more blended single. The colors across the roving mingle more. The purple/pink side came out more uniform, and the black/grey became heathered. My daughter took one look at the resulting two-ply yarn and pronounced it "not sparkly enough!". So I began again.

This time I opted to spin worsted. I'm better at it and it goes faster. I took my purple roving and broke it again into 6-8" lengths and spread each one out into big, flat squares. To these I added a LOT of angelina and rolled them up like the first. Instead of spinning from the fold, I spun from the end. I was better able to control the spread of the angelina this way, since if I got a little thin at one point I could just grab a few more strands into my drafting zone, or a few less when it got a little thick. The black section had more white in it than grey and I was able to separate them so they would stripe rather than blend. When plying, it was fascinating to see the black and white line up versus the purple and pink, making one color or other pop out.

This yarn met my daughter's approval.

The hat was knit from the top-down, increasing every other row in six places. After finishing the crown, I knit a few rows and then switched to 2x2 ribbing. I bound off the edge with some of the pink-only strand (extra that I plied back on itself). And the very last bits of yarn I wound into a pom-pom for the top. The hat is big! It easily fits me. The woolen-spun yarn is at the bottom so it is especially warm around your ears. But the beauty of 2x2 rib is that it collapses on itself and this hat still fits my daughter. And... she loves it! The crown is quite sparkly and so is the pom-pom. By using the purple ply (with the angelina in it) doubled back on itself for the bind-off, there is a little extra sparkle around her face, and she doesn't seem disappointed at all (if she even notices) that the "less sparkly" skein was used as well.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Eva's Hat

Eva's Hat
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Here's a quick little project I've been using to fill my time. I've found that knitting a large object (or in other words, a sweater) on circular needles causes my hands and arms to ache after a few rows. Rather than push into the area of repetitive-stress injury, I've opted to knit those few rows and then move on to something smaller that doesn't seem to bother me as much. I've had this cute little hat on my "to do" list for a long time, thinking I'd use it to finish off the Baby Cashmerino I had from the Striped Cardigan. I thought the two might compliment each other nicely.

I opted for the 18" size, thinking the 15" would be too small. While that might be true, I believe that the 18" is going to be a bit too big for the intended recipient (my niece, who is not-quite-one-year-old). Modeled here by my 4-year old daughter, it's quite cute (but still a little bit big). On me, it's just a tad tight. Part of that was learning more about Fair Isle. I thought I had kept the floats in the back loose enough to not be a problem. The knitting looked just fine when laying flat. But once you pull on the band a little, the tight spots become quite clear. I spent quite a bit of time redistributing tension across the band as best I could, but I still can tell where it puckers a bit. It's not fatal by any means, but I'm really glad I got some beginner's practice before embarking on a larger project.

The Fourth Time is the Charm?

Jabberwocky Handspun

A couple of weeks ago I had the idea that I wanted to use the herringbone stitch in a hat. I really love the way it shows off hand-dyed yarn. It was wanting to make this hat that drove me to run out to Dyelots and get roving to spin my own bulky singles just for this hat! After that, I decided that I needed to engineer the stitch to be done in the round.

I got out some old yarn and started working on a swatch just to see how the stitch went together. I used the pattern from My So Called Scarf and went to it. A couple of rows and I figured out a trick to working the stitch in the round. I also worked out an 'easier' way to do the first row.

Start with an even number of stitches
Row 1: K1, *s1, k1, yo, psso both knit and yo* - repeat until there is one stitch left, K1

The second row gets interesting.
Row 2: *yo, k1, slip both stitches back to the left needle, pull third stitch over yo and knit stitch, slip two stitches to right needle* repeat around

It creates a beautiful pattern... that has absolutely no give along its length. Having worked from the top down, I had the crown of my hat done and started working this pattern, only to find I couldn't stand how stiff the cloth came out. Hat #1 hit the frog pond.

I immediately went to Ravelry and browsed patterns for bulky and superbulky hats and found Urchin, from Knitty (isn't it pretty?). Here was something just made for this yarn, right? I cast on and worked my way through two sections of the pattern. Texturally it was a good fit, but boy did it not look nice with my yarn. The handspun merino/bamboo blend has lovely silvery streaks running through it because the bamboo does not take the acid dye and remains white. Garter stitch reduces that to a muddy sheen. It's pretty, but it's not drop-dead gorgeous the way that stockinette is with this particular yarn.

Hannah - back
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Back to Ravelry again! For a long time I have had Hannah from MagKnits in my saved patterns. It's for bulky yarn, and a super-cute hat. I decided to give it a try.

Our first problem here is that Hannah calls for bulky yarn and my handspun ... well, to say it nicely it transcends "bulky". My second skein is much closer in weight to a milled bulky yarn, but I'm saving that for some mitts. I sat down with the pattern, my handy Molskeine notebook, and math on the brain. Then I went for it. Even as I knit, I decided that parts of it were still going to be too big. I made the buttonholes smaller (only one YO instead of two), and dropped out rows left and right. The beauty of very-bulky projects is they knit up SO FAST!! Two hours later and I had a "finished" hat again. I tried it on and it was incredibly cute! Plus my yarn had made a rather interesting color-spiral at the crown.

Unfortunately it was just a shade too big. Oh, it looked nice. It looked like it fit. But if I bent over, this pretty "little" hat would tumble right off my head. I tried snugging up the button-band. I shoved it in my suitcase for the trip home and considered for several hours if a little bit of elastic woven in would do the trick.

Instead, when I got home, I carefully picked out the woven-in-end at the crown and pulled the whole hat apart once more.

Yesterday I cast on ten stitches less, figured out how to make the first row of decreases bring me back in line with my pattern for the crown, and whipped this baby out one last time. It worked! The hat fits beautifully. It looks lovely, with a wonderful match between yarn and pattern (and my clothes). And it is amazingly soft and warm.

And I made it, yarn and all!

Leafy greens!

Foliage Hat
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

Admittedly not my favorite vegetable to eat (give me green beans or broccoli first, any day!) This is one pretty, leafy-green hat! The pattern is Knitty's Foliage, with a number of modifications of my own, of course.

For starters, this hat is not knit with bulky or worsted-weight yarn as the pattern calls for, but with the leftover Mediumweight Socks That Rock from my Leafling socks. That makes it a heavy fingering weight yarn, just short of DK. I did several gauge swatches, and put my math to use figuring out how to make this work.

I didn't have enough leftovers to double the yarn and knit as written, plus I was really hoping to take advantage of the very pretty color-shifts which I hoped would stripe. I could knit the pattern as written, but on US3s, and come up with a child's hat. The original states its finished size as 17" stretching to 24" (that's a dang stretchy hat!). My guestimating put the as-written-but-fingering-weight-version at about 15" (or less) but stretching back to 19".

My other option was to expand the crown chart, which I ended up doing in a spreadsheet. I ended up with 33 stitches per needle, down to 32 stitches per needle after the last row of the crown (you decrease one stitch per needle on the very last row--a detail I almost overlooked when reading the pattern). I repeated the lace-pattern three times for the body of the hat and... ran out of yarn!

Foliage Hat
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

A hurried plea to my sock-club's group on Ravelry yielded a kind gift of another person's left-over yarn (39 grams) to finish off the hat. In the meantime I worked on the Diamond Fantasy Shawl, finishing it up just as my emergency gift arrived. As I picked up the instructions to start up the hat again I noticed something odd--the decreases did not look the same as all those I had done before. I double-checked the instructions, knit a little more and scowled at myself. Slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over.... yes. That matches. But it just doesn't look right .. what did I? Oh. Dear. Another project I had been working on just before the hat used a different double-decrease. Slip two as if to knit them together, knit one, and then pass both slipped stitches over the knit stitch... did that do it? Oh, yes. It did. Drat.

Rather than reknit the whole hat, I worked one round where every five stitches or so, I dropped one down and fixed my s1k2psso to the original decrease I used.

One more repeat of the lace pattern and I started the ribbing. For a while I toyed with doing a k2p2 rib. I really am not a fan of the "look" of a k1p1 rib. In the end I decided to stick with the pattern, mostly. I ended up extening the decreases of the lace-pattern into the ribbing. It's subtle but looks nice.

The body of the hat is just a tad long, but looks nice rolled in the front, framing my face a bit better than just a round-fit hat. I'm really pleased with the outcome and looking forward to sending my yarn-angel a little gift in thanks!

So close to a FO...

Foliage in Progress
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

This pattern is just knitting up wonderfully. I am using the Foliage pattern from Knitty.com. I'm using fingering weight yarn on size 3 needles (when the original pattern calls for worsted or bulky on 7s or bigger), and I expanded the chart for the crown another six rows without much effort. Eventually I may post that chart, here.

The yarn I'm using is a heavier fingering weight known as Socks That Rock Mediumweight. The colorway is "Lucky" and it is the remainder of my yarn from the sock-club kit for March. Amazingly enough, I was left with a full 1/3 skein after knitting a pair of socks--that'd be 50g remaining from a 150 gram skein. Not too shabby. It calculates to about a 150 yards. I thought it would be enough for a fairly lacy hat. It almost WAS enough. But not quite.

As I turned the crown and started on the body of the hat I weighed my ball of yarn. After one repeat I weighed it again, and started calculating. After another repeat I weighed it once more, just to be certain. At that point I knew I had exactly enough for a third repeat of the pattern--when I wanted to do four. And ribbing to finish. ACK!

I rifled through my stash. The only other Mediumweight yarn I have is my skein of Faulty Dyer (which I won with my Hat for the Moon). I appealed to my sock club group on Ravelry, asking for opinions as to whether or not it would look good finishing off the hat (probably) or if I could get someone else's left over Lucky.

And it turns out that I am lucky! A kind fellow-sock-club-member said she'd drop her remainder in the mail on Monday. Even if it takes all week to get here that should be plenty of time to finish off this project before the end of the Olympics.

In the meantime, the next project is begun! My Diamond Fantasy Shawl is cast on and has a whopping 17 rows--and considering that's the point of a triangular shawl/scarf, it's hardly anything at all. Still the yarn for it is gorgeous and it's a nice change from the hat. I think I'll probably get a washcloth done some time this week, too.

But that hat is gonna bug me, sitting on the shelf unfinished.

Progress and Procrastination

Sweater Sampler
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

I've finally managed more progress on the Icosa Ball! I just don't have pictures of it. What I did snap off real quickly was a shot of Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Sampler that I started to work on in-between triangles. It's nice to work on some larger yarn/needles and in the round as well. It is easy work, and fast. The sampler is interesting as well, although most of it so far hasn't pushed me with anything new. The color-work isn't until the very end.

I had a 'soft goal' that I wouldn't start any new project until I finished five triangles for the Icosa Ball. I did sneak in a bit early on that with the sampler... but I do have five more done and grafted onto the main work!! I also started to close the apex-holes on the portions already fully grafted. I don't like to second-guess the designer, but I am closing them slightly different. His instructions state to pick up 10 stitches around the whole and graft it shut--not very obvious what to do there. Since there are five rows per side of the pentagonal hole (one is the grafted 'row') I picked up a stitch from each of the four knit rows for a total of 20 stitches. Then I k2tog around, pulled the yarn through the remaining stitches twice, and pulled it tight. I really like the look of it and it matches the rest of the seams, as well as the cast-on at the center of each triangle.

I took the time today to pull what is done over the pillow-form and I'm just not liking the match. So I doubled up some thread and gathered the top and bottom of the pillow tighter. I hope it will reduce the size just enough to fit better, because I really don't want to unstuff the whole thing and sew the seams again to make the entire pillow smaller. With any luck it will do the trick as I finish and graft on the last five triangles.

Puppy In Hat

Puppy In Hat
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

After finishing my Little Twisted Socks, I knew I had one more thing that absolutely needed to be completed before I could wind up my Socks That Rock yarn and get going on that project. Here it is...

The lovely two-tone, intarsia-in-the-round baby hat, created by Fidget on Ravelry.com. She didn't have a pattern for it, but was happy to PM back-and-forth on a couple of points, and then I just improvised using her finished-object pictures as my 'pattern'. I also relied heavily on an article I found on let me explaiKnit's blog. I didn't get the hat knit exactly as Fidget did it, but I did knit it on a circular needle, in the round. The front color join is done by wrapping the yarn, and the back is managed using the yarn-over method.

If I must say so myself, the hat is cute as a button. I used Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo yarn (80% bamboo, 20% wool). It's made for an August newborn, and hopefully Mommy and Daddy will love it as much as I do. And baby, too, of course!

Mobius Hood

Mobius Hood
Originally uploaded by Project Pictures

My mobius hood is done! It knitted up extremely fast, and I thought doing it inside-out on a big circular needle was really wild. I can probably attribute my speed to using aran-weight yarn, rather than fingering, and adjusting the repeats on the pattern accordingly. It's very hard to knit something ugly using Artyarns Silk Rhapsody!