Starburst
I have strong feelings about hat tops. Which is probably silly, as when you're wearing your hat most people can't actually see the top of your head. But the feelings persist. Which is why I'm unreasonably amused by this. I love love love a flat hat top (the secret is to decrease alarmingly fast), and this is no exception. But if you take that and add in a wee starburst of the most cheerful yarn ever (Capella in Tantrum by SpaceCadet)? I'm going to be doing a serious happy dance.
Tip Top
Hat? Hat! Fast? Unreasonably so. Amusing? More than I would ever have expected. Colorwork? Yup...and it's my first go at it, and I'm bad at it, and I still had fun. Slightly sloppy insides and all. More? Oh yes. There will both be more hats in this series and at least one more shot of this hat...the top is too damn cute not to share. Soon. Very soon.
New Skills
Bear in mind I know nothing at all about colorwork. This is the first proper project I've even sort of tried it on. But with that in mind, I really do rather like how this is coming out (I'd take it as a kindness if you'd refrain from telling me all the things I'm doing wrong...I'm just enjoying the pretty for now, I'll learn what I should be doing later). I'm starting with the wee spikes all nestled up close to one another. Then after a while they start drifting farther and farther apart. Assuming this relaxes and evens out [...]
Smug, so very very smug
Public Service Announcement: Your swatch doesn't count if you don't block it. Remember the photo of the swatch I showed you last time? Take a look at it after a little soak! Totally different beast (with a whole stitch per inch difference in gauge). If I'd started the project without blocking the swatch, the finished project would have been way way way too big. I also feel like blocking the swatch helped me decide which color to go with (which was proving unreasonably challenging when I was just staring at the yarn). Tantrum it is. But don't feel bad if [...]
Pretty sure it’s become a scheme at this point
The other day I had an idea. It led to swatching (always a good step). Then came an email to Stephanie (of SpaceCadet fame) with a bit of a plan. We're still working on a few of the details but a plot is now definitely afoot. Yarn showed up (the gray is Cressida in Dark Skies, the pink-y orange is Capella in Tantrum and the purple-ish blue one is Capella in Molten Cool). And a swatch happened. And now we might be in the graph paper and doodling stage. It's a fun stage. You should expect to see more of [...]
Hazy
Every now and then I find a yarn that knows a special magic trick. It somehow manages to be more than one color at once. I don't mean more than one color over the length of the yarn (that's easy enough). I mean more than one color at any given spot in the yarn. Sort of like this. (This is surprisingly hard to show, so you can click to see a bigger version of the picture if you want to peer at it a bit more closely.) See how it all seems to have a base color (whether that's purple [...]
Changeful
You know how, when you're knitting, there's always a little voice saying 'you know, you could also try it this way...?' But you never get to really indulge that voice because if you did, you'd never actually finish anything? Well, Changeful are my attempt at indulging that inner voice! It all started with a lovely, zig-zaggy stitch pattern that looked quite marvelous all on its own. But as charming as that is, sometimes you don't actually want to knit the same thing for a whole sock. And there just happened to be a couple of points where you could clip [...]
Extras
There was just enough yarn left after I finished the first cowl that I couldn't quite justify letting it go to waste. So I figured I'd play a nail-biting game of yarn chicken and see if I could squeak a shorter cowl out of what I had left. Totally worked! Much more of a 'light chill' version (as compared to the first one's 'arctic blast' rating), but still totally the sort of thing that lives happily in a coat pocket for when you find yourself wanting a little something warm. Oh and if you've been waiting, Changeful will be available [...]
Second Verse
I did have to break into the second skein to finish up the first cowl. But I didn't really need much of it at all, which left me feeling like I should make a second, smaller piece as well. I wasn't feeling the cuff vibe (the yarn is a bit thick for that). And lovely thought that stitch is, it's not really inclined to be a hat. So I thought I'd see if I couldn't do a second cowl, just at the other end of the size range. It's a slight variation on the same stitch (amazing what happens if [...]
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