Brief demonstration
Ahem. A brief demonstration that I do actually have yarn that is neither floofy nor pink/orange/purple. Just in case you were worried. This is one of Seven Sisters Arts color wheels, and I'm using it to make some mitts to go with Constellate (all of which should be out soon, likely next month-ish). This is what happens if you work most of it with one end of a gradient, but work the fancy bits with the other end. It is also a demonstration that oh, oh yes, my stitches (especially on this pattern) are Super Duper Wobbly while I'm knitting. [...]
Worth waiting for
Ok now this? This was worth waiting for! The Constellate hat always wanted some mitts to go with it, but making a thumb grow nicely out of that stitch seemed hard back when that hat came out. But one of the cool things about coming back to favorite projects somewhere down the road is that, if you're very lucky, you got better at stuff over the intervening time. And now doing thumbs on these seemed easy and fun. And, well, I'm awfully pleased with them, even if it does feel a bit scandalous to just come right out and say [...]
Fairness
And, just in the interest of fairness, here's the same hat as yesterday, in the same yarn (well, same base, just a different color) knit straight through the gradient, rather than pulling from the opposite end for the fancy stitches. No, I will not be picking a favorite. They're both delightful and picking favorites is no fair at all. Well, I mean *you* can pick a favorite. I just shall steadfastly decline to do any such thing.
In Trouble
You know that thing where something is so damn pretty it gets you in trouble because you Just Cannot Stop Petting It (fine for knits, not ok for people)? Yeah. This hat is doing that. I had meant for it just to be a hat. But god those colors are too pretty to be done with, so there's a very good chance I might (accidentally you understand) be making a pair of mitts to match. Do I already have a pair of mitts to match with the gradient going straight through? Yes of course. Of course I do. But somehow [...]
Blocked, and not
You know how I'm always um, let's say 'encouraging' you to block your knits? Yeah. Here's why. This is the same pattern (Constellate, it's not out now, but the clever among you can probably guess that this little stack of goodness means it will be soon), knit in the same yarn (Seven Sisters Arts' gorgeous color wheels). Just one is blocked and one isn't (yet). The blocked one is just so much smoother and more even and more orderly, all for about 5 minutes of effort. And yeah, every single time I do something like this, I get someone piping [...]
Discontinuity
Let's talk about thumbs on gradient mitts. First, this is a very long gradient with subtle shifts. The color change over the course of the mitt is slight, so you could get away without doing this! But it's a neat trick, so it's worth talking about. Usually when I knit a mitt, I knit a tube for the wrist, make the tube wider to make room for a thumb, knit the wider tube until I get to the webbing between my thumb and hand, set stitches aside for the thumb, then go back to knitting the original size tube for [...]
Constellate, how can I change my gauge?
We're having a little KAL for Constellate, and I promised I'd talk about a few ways you can modify the pattern as part of the festivities. One of the easiest (and I think most fun) ways you could modify this pattern is to tweak your gauge. Now, the pattern is already written in three gauges (5.5, 6, or 6.5 stitches per inch, which should work for most dk, sport, or fingering weight yarns). There's a little chart in the pattern that looks something like this. It shows you what size head the hat fits at various gauges and cast ons. [...]
Constellate KAL
So, enough folks have asked that I think we should do a little knitalong for Constellate! I've got us a thread set up on ravelry right over here. If this has found its way onto your needles, I'd be delighted if you'd come show it off! Over the next week or two I'll show off some swatches of this stitch in other yarn, talk a bit about how you could change up the gauge to make a really bulky hat, and maybe even see if we can't come up with a few examples of how you could turn this into [...]
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