The hats just keep getting bigger and bigger..!

Now, Mr B loves his socks as I’ve mentioned several times before. But that’s where his love of handknits ends, pretty much. I have offered to make him hats in the past, but he’s wanted them to be black and 4ply (fingering) weight yarn and very, very plain. I did once actually haggle him up to aran weight with cables, though still black, and ended up with a lovely hat which he wore once and then got it mixed up with the rest of the washing so it ended up being felted.

Since I am on a hat knitting kick, I thought I’d ask again. His main problem is that he doesn’t want a beanie shape, which is pretty much 99% of all manly hat patterns. I suggested a few patterns, but all were deemed too much like a beanie. He has a dread of looking like Benny from Crossroads: that man singlehandedly ruined a hat style for an entire generation of British men. You’d think after 20 years that it wouldn’t be a concern, though.

Anyway, in despair, I handed Mr B a sheet of paper and told him to draw the shape he wanted. So he did.

Using these (not very) informative sketches as a guide, I went on Ravelry. After searching through the two pages of patterns tagged with “men” gave no results, I took a deep breath and began to search through every. hat. pattern. Finally, after calling him over half a dozen times to see a potential hat, this one made Mr B do a happy, hat-finding dance around the room and the Quest for the Perfect Hat was over.

I’m not knitting the pattern quite as it’s written. My tension is looser to allow for a bigger head (!), and I’m not faffing about with knitting the lining, but just doing a small fold over hem instead.

See! It’s not black! Mr B agreed not to have a black hat, as long as there was a “bit” of black on the hat. Truth is, he has very dark brown/black hair, so wearing a black hat just makes him look like he’s got a really strange hairstyle. So I opted for charcoal grey (and black for the stripes) Cygnet Wool Rich Aran, which is very much like sock yarn only thicker, in that it’s 75% wool, 25% nylon. Being machine washable and moderately tough, I won’t worry about the finished hat being stuffed in a coat pocket after being used to clean the car windscreen…

…although these hats are a little bigger than the last lot!

Pattern: Basic Hat Pattern from The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd
Yarn: Oddments of DK: Jaeger Matchmaker Merino, Sirdar Countrystyle DK and other stuff that I have I no idea about
Needles: 3.25mm and 3.75mm circs

Unsurprisingly, the small people chose the colours for their new winter hats whilst I was knitting the Innocent Hats. They’re pretty much identical to last year’s versions: I used the same number of stitches, same yarn weight, and so on. I even used the same fold over hem as before, because I love the way it looks.

The only fly in the ointment was the stripes. Knitting them in the round means the dreaded “jog” when you change colours. I have tried a lot of different methods, but I’m still not entirely happy with the finished look of the back. Almost makes me wish I’d knit them flat and tried an invisible seam.

I’m hoping that blocking (yes, the knitting on this page is unblocked! Drama!!) will help even out the larger stitches. I will report back!

I am trying to find a way to write this post without breaking my self-imposed rule about no festive knitting til November. But it seems ages since I had some yarn pr0n to share, so bum to that!

I’d been thinking what to make my Grandma for Christmas. She loves the Bertie scarf I made her a couple of Christmases ago, so I thought another snuggly scarf would be perfect. I have a few suitable patterns in my queue, and I was almost going to knit her a Lily of the Valley Estonian Lace Scarf but then Diane published her Beth pattern and like the fickle person I am, it was a case of must! knit! that! scarf! now!

I could have used some stash yarn, of course. But I wanted something soft and slightly fuzzy in a solid, Grandma-suitable colour. As I was sure nothing in my stash would do, I bought this:

Two balls of Angora 50 in sage green from The Little Knitting Company. It’s 50% angora, 30% wool and 20% nylon. The yarn is perfect as it has the softness and slight fuzz from the angora, but is a bit more substantial than pure angora yarns. The colour is nicely muted, too. Not that someone over eighty *can’t* wear shocking pink and luminous green, but I think my grandma is not the sort of person that *would* wear those colours. And the best part? It cost a measly £1.95 per 115m ball. No, the even better part was that the service from TLKC was brilliant. I ordered the yarn yesterday, got a phone call from Ruth in the afternoon to apologise that she had missed the post for it to be sent Recorded and did I want it just sent regular first class, which I said was fine so she refunded the difference!

Now all I have to do is knit it..! Can anyone tell me how to make a 36 hour day?

Well, my version of a spree, anyway. Most excitingly, I bought a new pair of jeans today, and discovered that I have “officially” gone done two clothing sizes since May. I thought I might need a smaller pair as the ones I have I can put on without undoing the button and I can’t bend over suddenly or I flash my undies to the world, so it’s nice to find that I am indeed a size smaller!

In knitting related shopping, I found a new sock project bag in Superdrug of all places.

It comes in white with either pink or purple stars (obviously I got the purple stars!) and cost a completely bargainous £1.99. It’s polyester/cotton with a waterproof lining which sounds like it has to be useful, though I can’t think of an immediate need for it in relation to my knitting… handy if I drop it in a river by mistake, perhaps.

It’s just the right size for any small project, not just socks, such as a shawl (if you use circs). Coordinating the yarn with the bag is probably not a requirement!

Now excuse me while I go off and prance about in my new SMALLER jeans!

Pattern: Innocent Hats for The Big Knit
Yarn: All the oddments from my stash. Mainly acrylic, but also some wool, cashmere blend and cotton.
Needles: Two 3.75mm Addi dpns.

It was Shelby who got me into this. I saw her jaunty hats on Ravelry on Thursday, and got the urge to make some of my own. So I did!

For anyone who doesn’t know why so many people are knitting miniature bobble hats, every year, Innocent run The Big Knit to raise money for Age Concern. For every bottle of smoothie they sell that has a hat, they will donate 50p to the charity. So the more hats they get, the more money is raised.

It took no more than half an hour to finish each hat, including making the bobble. Fortunately, I have a whizzy Inox pompom making kit, which meant making teeny little bobbles was really easy. If I hadn’t had it, I’d have probably left the poor things naked. It’s a great way to use up all the oddments in my stash, especially the scary acrylic in dodgy colours!

Clearly what I was needing was a big old lace project to get my teeth into. And it was time to get started on Cairi’s wedding shawl.

It was hard finding the *perfect* yarn for this shawl. I had a list of requirements and no yarn seemed to cover them all. But looking at the problem at a different angle, brought me back to my favourite lace yarn stockist and some 2/60NM cobweb weight silk in “pale camel”.

This is *much* finer than I had wanted. I was looking for some fingering weight yarn, but Colourmart have a service where they will twist strands of yarn together so that a scarily fine yarn becomes more substantial. So my 5,000 (!) yards of 1 ply silk became about 1,660 yards of 3 ply yarn. Still plenty of yarn, but much easier to manage.

And here’s my progress so far:

I spent a long time searching through all the books I have to find if there were any specific symbolic stitch patterns for wedding shawls. Surprisingly, there wasn’t anything. I did think especially shetland lace, with all the wonderfully-named patterns would have something, but I couldn’t find anything specfic. But I did find a pattern called “marriage lines” in James Norbury’s Traditional Knitting Patterns. The lines of yarn overs zig zag backwards and forwards but always together, just like the ups and downs of married life.

Taking this as a starting point, I adapted the pattern and extended it to create a border which will go around the edges of the shawl. I’m not sure if the photo is clear enough to show the beads in the border, but they’re there. The central panel is a version of oriel lace taken from Sensational Knitted Socks. I’ve taken out the purl stitches on the right side because I didn’t like them. Each end will have a pointy border added afterwards, hence the fetching pink edge to the shawl at the moment.

So far, it’s going well. It won’t be an excessively wide shawl; I’m estimating 18 inches after blocking, but if it was so wide that it hid the wedding dress, I think I’d be in trouble..!

I’ve never been one to stick to one project at a time. I try very hard, but with most long-term projects (i.e. ones that take more than a day to complete…) I reach a point where I just NEED A BREAK from it and have to knit a little something different.

But since I finished the two huge shawls last month, I’ve been having trouble settling at anything. I have a pattern OTN for the Gift supplement of The Inside Loop (out early next month!) but I’ve already cheated on it with my Amy Beret and now I’ve started Diane’s newest pattern:

Jo socks, knitted with Garnstudio Baby Ull (discontinued)

plus something that needs no concentration at all:

Purple Poodle scarf, knitted with Touch Yarns Bouclé Solid

I’m trying to think whether this is actually my first ever garter stitch scarf..! The yarn was a gift from Diane and when it was really cold last week, I got the urge to cast it on and make something to warm me up. While it won’t set the world alight with its design elements, it’s brilliant TV knitting, plus I’m using my Denise Interchangeables for the first time in a long while so they’re earning their keep. It does feel strange to use such “big” needles, though.

Not forgetting that I am halfway through the second Lotus Lace sock. And I want to knit Mr B another pair of socks, which I can’t do til these are off the needles, as I’m using my favouritest dpns!

So what did I do at the weekend, with so many projects to choose from? I reorganised my Ravelry queue and found a new template for the blog..!