It is very difficult to photograph a black hat.

Pattern: Sherwood, from Knitty, in hat form
Yarn: Plymouth Galway, knit tightly on size 4 needles.

I really like the Sherwood pattern. Really, really like it. But you should check out the charts - that’s crazy talk! The whole sweater is charted out in one massive chart! There has to be a better way of representing what is essentially a repeating stitch pattern.

In any case, I turned the cute sweater into a hat. I cast on 14 pattern repeats, staggered the cable action and voila! A hat! A fairly large hat, suitable for my brother’s big head. I knit this super-tightly so that it will be nice and cushy - his last hat was knit from Lamb’s Pride Bulky, so it was super warm for those Buffalo winters.

Is that photo above too dark? How about this one:

Not much better. Silver digs the hat, though!

I made my first ever knitted object out of Galway - a 2×2 ribbed scarf for Rob. It turned out a bit too short (the cheapo me didn’t want to splurge for another ball of yarn) and I mistakenly purled the stitches through the back loop. I had bought this ball of Galway for a pair of gloves, which I never got around to knitting. It’s wooly and tweedy and lovely and I would definitely use it again.

This is the last of the holiday gifts - I previously knit two pairs of socks for Rob’s parents and a lacy scarf for my mother. I don’t know how people can blow through a pair of socks in 5, 6, 7 days. I just don’t get it. It seems like they take me forever. Never again! But I’m now done, so yeah! No last minute gift knitting this year!

Pattern: Thuja, kind-of
Yarn: Mountain Colors Bearfoot (Bark Brown) and Koigu KPPM (not sure of the colorway, leftover from the Retro Rib socks)

The Thuja pattern on Knitty is knit with Artyarns Supermerino, which is a worsted weight yarn (and one of my all-time faves). I basically modified the pattern for a fingering weight yarn, knit tightly on size 1 needles. My pseudo-Thujas are worked over 80 stitches (knit 4, seed 1, repeat), but knitter beware - I knit tightly, especially on my shiny tiny needles.

The contrast heels and toes? I originally knit the cuff, worked a flap heel, then realized that I was going through the Bearfoot pretty quickly. Having a cheapo scale is very, very useful and confirmed my suspicions. So, I used some leftover Koigu (heart!) to add what is now a design feature.

Rob’s dad has larger feet than Rob, so hopefully the socks won’t look so… pointy. As always, misocrafty’s short-row tutorial creates perfect hole-less heels. Overall, I’m pleased!

Pattern: Lacy Serpentine Scarf, from Heartstrings Fiber Arts
Yarn: Handmaiden Sea Silk (70% silk, 30% Seacell), color Glacier.

First, the pattern. The scarf is knit lengthwise, which is perfect for the variegation of the yarn. My small swatch showed a little bit of pooling of the gold color, but knitting lengthwise solved this completely. The scarf is a fairly simple lace pattern - only three distinct pattern rows, you definitely get the hang of it after awhile. That didn’t prevent me from making a big mistake - I forgot to work one of the rows, as you can see here. I kind-of noticed on the flight back home, but was entirely too lazy to do anything about it.

The yarn. Sea Silk, you are:

1. Soft.
2. Drapey
3. Shiny.
4. Mucho awesome.

As Knitter’s Review pointed out, there’s very little seaweed in that Seacell - it’s mostly Tencel with 5% seaweed. But seriously, who cares? Tencel is hot hot hot these days (well, as hot as a fiber can be), and it’s shiny and soft and works for me. The yarn as a whole blocks out like a champ, and the end result is drapey as all hell.

Behold the miracle of blocking:

Yum. The colorway of the Sea Silk isn’t quite my thing, but I think that my mother will love it. It seems much less intense knitted up than it was in the skein. Also, the color striping is subtle enough that it doesn’t distract from the lace pattern.

One caveat about the yarn - frogging is somewhat dangerous. I ripped out a few rows when I noticed a mistake, and it was like literally watching the remaining scarf unravel before my eyes (at least before I could get all 303 stitches back on to the needle). Ok, perhaps that description of the situation is a bit extreme, but the yarn really is extremely slippery. I ended up frogging to the row before the mistake row, then unknitting, stitch by stitch, the (303 stitch!) row. Knitter beware!

The yarn + pattern worked out great - I have 18 grams (of a 100 gram skein) left over, so this is a great one-skein project for your Sea Silk. In fact, I wish that I had worked another pattern repeat, because I think that this scarf is going to stretch lengthwise (and therefore get skinnier and skinnier widthwise) with wear.

Overall, I consider this project a success! Rob even gives it the stamp of approval, where the stamp is actually a swig of beer.

Random

Houston weather == wacky. On Wednesday Houston hit record highs, for both the high and low temp - 83 and 70 degrees, respectively. Then Thursday, the apocalypse descended and it went from an early high of 71 down to the 40’s at 10am. Yes, you read that right - 10AM. Now the high is in the 50’s for the next few days. I’ve never seen so many worn handknits at the Houston Stitch+Bitch - everyone was taking advantage of the weather to wear their scarves and sweaters!

And last but definitely not least, Gilmore Girls hearts the yarn!

I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, both knitting and otherwise. I’m really looking forward to the long Thanksgiving weekend ahead, which will be spent in rural PA far, far away from pretty much everything. No internet, no cell phone service, it will be lovely.

Here are the socks that I started before Kid & Ewe. Not much progress has been made, huh? Perhaps this is what’s contributing to my knitting funkiness. There’s been a change in plans with these - I knit the other sock (not pictured) to the heel, worked a flap heel, and then weighed the remaining yarn. I had already split the skein into two balls, and there was less than half of a ball left for the sock. I couldn’t bear the idea of purchasing another skein of Bearfoot for the tiny bit I’d need, so the socks will feature contrast heels and toes from some leftover Koigu. I’m not crazy about the color combo (a better photo of the Koigu is here), but it’s what was in the stash. I think it gives the socks a bit more of a casual feel, which is good - they’re a gift for Rob’s dad, and I’m a bit afraid that he will only wear these for fancy-pants occasions.

The socks won’t be going with me to the northeast, since we’ll be visiting Rob’s family. No need to worry, I’ve got plenty of knitting planned for the vacation. There’s some Sea Silk and Manos for gifts for my mom and brother, and the Cashcotton (soft!) for some swatching. Hopefully I’ll have ample opportunity to wear the Target Wave Mittens (and I’ll be bringing my Clapotis), they were knit in August and haven’t seen snow yet!

I hope everyone has a fabulous holiday (or a great weekend for those not in the US)!

Ok, I’m off to go pet llamas and buy yarn that I really don’t need. Yeah! Kid and Ewe and Llamas, too - it’s no Rhinebeck, but it’s all that Texas has. It’s in Bourne, TX, which I found out yesterday is pronounced “Bernie.” (an aside: when I first moved to MA, it took me way longer than it should have to realize that Worcester==”Wista”). I’m off to the wild west in about an hour, woo!

I’ve started yet another holiday project for the road - socks for Rob’s dad, Thuja-inspired this time. I’m knitting these with the Mountain Colors Bearfoot that I purchased recently. It is very hairy. I forgot how hairy mohair is. I’m putting in some major car travel time, so hopefully I can belt these out pretty quickly.

Since I have no other knitting excitement today, I leave you with a non-blurry photo of Joe:

Everyone seems to really like Joe! He’s pretty adorable. However, he is an ATTACK cat. Holy cow, does he bite! It’s crazy, you’ll just be sitting there and he’ll run up and chomp into your arm. Ouch.

I’m going to preface this post by saying that these photos suck. There’s not many prime natural light photo-taking opportunities these days. I’ll snag some good outdoor photos this weekend, in the meantime you can check out an accurate photo of the color here. Ok, I replaced the first photo with a direct-sunlight shot. My camera hates purple and it really is the best of the worst. I think that the green plastic table is a nice touch.

Pattern: Pseudo-Rib and Cable socks, but really just a rib and cable pattern with a short-row heel and standard toe decreases.
Yarn: Knitpicks Bare Superwash, dyed by moi!

I’m sure that Nancy Bush writes great patterns that produce beautiful socks with interesting details. Hell, I know she does. However, I have chosen to follow pretty much zero of the pattern of her Rib and Cable socks (from IK Fall 2005). My gauge was so much smaller that the yarn called for that I decided to just do my own thing. I’m sure that the pattern has a really cool heel and nifty toe treatment, but I didn’t actually read that far. Unfortunately, this leaves me with a pair of socks that I learned absolutely nothing from (a first for me), but whatever - it’s holiday knitting time, and the motto these days is Produce, Produce, Produce.

So, ribs and cables. Exciting! I did a short-row heel, which was super-mondo successful thanks to this tutorial by Misocrafty. I never understood why each side of my heel looked different until reading the tutorial - it turns out that I was picking up the wraps from the bottom on the knit side, but from the top on the purl side. Knowing is half the battle. I was going to write that I never had problems with holes in my short-row toes and heels, but a quick glance at the Baudelaire toes tells me otherwise - hole city, damn. Well, the psso method in the tutorial tightened things up perfectly for me. Look ma, no holes!

The Knitpicks yarn. Hmm. It’s very soft, even after dyeing. That’s good. However, it’s a bit splitty. Or maybe it was my super-sharp metal needles (which are getting a bit bent, thanks to my super-human strength death-grip). Time will tell how well this stuff wears. I kind of miss my super-sproingy Koigu.

All in all, I consider these socks a success! I think I still have some more work to do on them - the length fits my size 10 feet, and I know that the robmom (who these socks are for) has smaller feet than I do. I’ll probably frog about a half inch from the toes, so that they are a bit more snug. Let’s hope that they otherwise fit her well!