Newborn Viking Hat

Wonder of wonders, I'm posting the latest hat to leave my needles... if only because it had to be wrapped up to go to a baby shower yesterday. Nevertheless, I shall celebrate-- huzzah!


It's a simplified and scaled-down version of my Baby Viking Hat, which looks comparatively gargantuan:

Project Notes

Yarn: Knit Picks Shine Worsted-- which happens to be one of my least favorite yarns. I have quite a bit left over from a baby blanket, and out of some perverse sense of duty, I have been knitting my way through it-- this didn't even use up one skein. Sigh.

Pattern: My own-- still unpublished. Someday, I promise.

Modifications: I made the horns smaller and omitted the earflaps-- newborn Vikings lacking the manual dexterity to yank off their helmets. I also substituted garter stitch for the fancier stitch patterns used in the original version-- I didn't think they would read well in a smaller format.

Etc: The hat was a hit with the mother-to-be-- parents, it seems, like to think of their children as bloodthirsty marauders. I can't wait to see it on the little guy, who should be arriving any day now!

Turn a Square... squared!

Let us, for a moment, return to August-- which, for me, was Beanie Month. I'd like to share a prime specimen of that noble species, knitted in August-- and photographed on a late September day that felt much like August. I'd like to thank the weather participating in this time-travel experiment.

Exhibit A:


But wait, there's more:


Notice anything different? I started running out of dark brown yarn toward the end of the second hat, so the Noro stripes gradually got wider... Let's get a side view:


And head-on:

There's a face that says: "It's 85 degrees, can I take this wool thing off my head now?"


Project Notes

Yarn: One skein Noro Silk Garden, almost one skein Berroco Ultra Alpaca-- and after two hats, there's very little left of either. I've never worked with Noro before, and I think I'm in love.

Pattern: Turn a Square by Jared Flood-- and whilst collecting the link, I noticed that I worked the decreases incorrectly. D'oh.

Etc: Thank God for beanies-- they saved this project from utter ruin. I still have a moderately alarming backlog of hats to share, but by my unofficial count I have a mere 11 hats left to knit!

Baby Viking Hat

Dun

DUN

DUN....

DAH DAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

RAWR!!!

Project Notes

Yarn: Cascade 128-- rustic and sheepy, but still soft enough for a Baby Viking's tender noggin. The horns are Lamb's Pride Worsted.

Pattern: My own! Designing this hat was probably the most fun I've had so far during this project. Eventually I'll write it up...

Techniques: I figured out pretty early on that I would have to use short rows for the horns, which scared me a bit. I've blindly followed pattern instructions for short rows before and had good results, but I'm amazed by how much better I understand the concept after just messing around for a while. After the first couple of botched attempts, something clicked-- the next horn was perfect.

The Bottom Line: This came out almost exactly as I envisioned-- no small victory, if I do say so myself. It also fits perfectly, and looks cuter than I thought possible on its new owner:

He looks ready to pillage a Labor Day picnic, don't you think?

Lina

There are times in life when you are forced to discard your expectations-- in a way, Lina here is a microcosm of my life right now:

I call it "Lina Meets Irene"*

She's still a lovely hat, she just won't fit the adult head I had intended her for. I'm sure there's a young girl (or young man) out there who loves this color as much as I do.

Project Notes

Yarn: String Theory Merino DK-- not quite enough left over from the Ramona Lace Helmet, but too much to waste. It's such a joy to work with beautiful hand-dyed yarn.

Pattern: Lina by Johanna of Joko Knits-- a very well-written pattern that includes an excellent description of how to cable without a cable needle. I'm always interested to see how different designers manage crown decreases with intricate pattern stitches-- these ones were particularly ingenious.

The Bottom Line: As my pile of yarn remnants grows, I'll be looking for more creative ways to use them up-- and I'm going to have to be flexible. The same can be said of the storms-- literal and figurative-- blowing through my life...


*Irene wreaked havoc on my weekend camping plans but, thankfully, did no worse to me-- if you've been flooded out, lost power, or otherwise sustained damage to limb and/or property, my sympathies!

Racing Stripe Beanie

The hats have been flying off my needles lately-- I finally decided to take the tersely-worded advice of one of my knitting friends: "Beanies." The one-hat deficit that August inherited from July has been made good... yes, friends, the word of the day, week, and month is beanies!

Starting with an utterly boring but (I think) stunningly perfect example of the genre, made from stash and scrap yarn and my own basic recipe:

For the record, he asked to be posed in front of the flowerbed!

It took me three tries to get the stripes just right-- isn't it funny how something as simple as a stripe can be so tricky? How one row more or less of a color can be either horribly wrong or magically right?

The yarn is Knitpicks City Tweed-- with a wee bit of Quince & Co. Osprey.

I have also been pondering the ideal depth of the beanie-- should it cover the ears entirely? Or leave just a bit peeking out? A folded brim cap gives one options, but the beanie must take a stand. Personally, I like a beanie that grazes the top of my earlobe-- any longer and my earrings get caught in the brim.

An earlobe is a very strange looking thing, no? Perhaps it should be covered...

I still have some July (and June!) hats to catch up on, but I'm nearing the home stretch-- only 16 hats to go!

Tying up loose ends

Quite literally... har har

My feelings for this project have been on quite a roller coaster for the past, well, month-and-a-half-- but I think I may finally be over the hump. This weekend I sat down and wrote a list of the people I still want to make hats for, as well as potential yarn and pattern pairings. Lo, and behold-- I have only 18 hats left! It was sort of an "Eye of the Tiger" moment.

And today I got another little boost-- I made Project of the Week on the Kelbourne Woolens blog! This thrills me to no end-- I love The Fibre Company yarns and Courtney and Kate are such talented designers.

Still, it's been a while since I've posted a finished hat-- when I think how long I start to hyperventilate a tiny bit-- but I'm hoping to fix that very soon. As for all those ends... if I weave in at least one per day, I should finish by December 1st!

Mother of All Gauge Swatches

With a deadline looming-- four hats to finish by Monday-- the last thing a prudent knitter would do is start a 6-color Fair Isle tam in fingering weight yarn. But since I abandoned all prudence with regard to knitting long ago, I could not resist:

I dare only show you a small detail-- the swatch in its full glory is terrible to behold.

If you tally up the hours that I have invested in this swatch, you will understand why I have not finished a single hat this month. The color scheme has undergone numerous changes-- last-minute color substitutions were mail-ordered. This is the big one.

Just thinking about the number of ends I will need to weave in is beginning to give me a slight twitch. Wish me luck!