Lifecycle
Once, long ago, I took a weekend trip. It was cold, so I made a hat. I had a tiny bit of yarn left, so I made some very very wee cuffs to go with it. Then, as is the way with knitted things, I wore the heck out of them. They've been used for four winters, and they are showing some serious signs of wear. But, this isn't all bad. I've been having great fun reworking and re-releasing old patterns. I've always wanted the mitts to be a bit taller, and I've been feeling the need for a hat [...]
Truth in Advertising
This is for everyone who writes to me and says their knitting isn't as pretty as mine. I'll let you in on a little secret. Mine isn't either. Or rather, the knitting when it falls off the needles isn't as pretty as the carefully blocked and enthusiastically lint rollered knitting I usually show you in pictures. So just to make everyone else feel better, I'll show you the before shot. Ends flapping in the breeze, crown all wrinkly, stockinette less than smooth. It always looks like this at this stage. Always. If your knitting looks like this, you haven't done [...]
Options
The more I knit, the more I find myself interested in options. I almost never knit something without thinking 'hmmm, I could do it this way, or I could do it this way, or maybe I could try this other thing' and wanting to more or less do them all. Now often, this is a bit impractical. Eventually I just have to settle down and knit the thing. And if I'm writing a pattern (which I do for almost everything I knit), I don't feel good giving you options for variations I'm not showing you pictures of. Doing that would [...]
Still Entranced
So the cowl now has a friend! Or rather, the partial cowl has a friend. You see, I want the cowl to be as long as possible, but I also want a hat and mitts, so I'm holding off on finishing the cowl until I've finished the others, just so I can use all the yarn. I'm really rather taken with it. I used the same stitch as in the cowl and made a band to go around my head then tapered it down to a point. Then I picked up stitches on one side (evenly adding in as many [...]
Obliging
I have very obliging friends. When I texted Laura and said 'hey, wanna drive around the sketchier parts of town and take knitting pictures?' she very graciously said 'sure!' instead of summoning the authorities like a reasonable person might. The goal was to get pictures of the stripy malabrigo hats I knit last winter. I wanted some properly grungy backdrops because these will be part of a little collection (another mini book like Rabble Rousers), and I needed a particular ambiance. So off we went, to a local place that buys junk cars for parts. We parked in the abandoned, [...]
The Limits of my Love
I love you all dearly, but my porch is currently a giant sheet of ice. That means I'm going to show you the crappy pick I took yesterday (before it thawed and then froze into a death slick) instead of dutifully going out there and taking a better one. Because really, slipper ice skating is not a sport I wish to take up. We'll say it counts as proof that the hat is done, and we'll call a better picture of it something in the 'to do some time soon' category.
Variations
A quick variation on the previous stripy hat. It's Malabrigo Twist again (the second half of the skeins I used for the last one, both should easily come out of those two skeins). It's the same technique as before (never knitting more than one color in a given row, glorified stripes, miles of stockinette with just one goofy row every now and again), just a slight change to make wee nubbies instead of an all-over pattern. I think they make a nice pair. Last time I did three variations, but I think I'll have to call it good at two [...]
Balmy
As I write, we're about 4 hours (and 4 inches) into a nice proper snowstorm. (The picture was taken yesterday when the porch was free of snow. At the moment, it's rather a lot more snow-covered out there, and I feel no obligation at all to go out and document it for you. You'll have to use your imaginations instead.) I'll be alright though, as I have a lovely and hugely warm new hat. See? That, plus a bit of work on The Boy's sock, was all my knitting over the birthday/holiday weekend. The rest of the time was spent [...]
Well it’s About Time
You know that moment on a hat? The moment where all you need to do is keep going around and around and around as you've been doing for a while now? And there's nothing else to be done, you just have to put in the stitches? Even if you've lost all will to live (or at least to knit)? Yeah, that's where I was on this one. It was not leading to much in the way of forward momentum. At least it wasn't until I noticed how inescapably nifty the inside of the hat looks. See? This discovery has left [...]
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