One from the vaults

Here's a project I finished a while ago, but the pictures were held captive on my camera until recently when I *finally* got a replacement battery charger.



It's Knitpick's Checks & Charms hat, made using the pattern-specified US 5 needles and Merino Style yarn, although I used a slightly different color scheme. I finally learned how to do proper 2-handed Fair Isle on this project, and it knit up a lot faster than I thought it would.

Please forgive the super zoned-out look on my face. I took this at about 7am one day before work when I was still commuting over an hour.

The quickest turn-around time in a while

I just finished this project on Tuesday night, and here it's Saturday and I'm already uploading it!

As mentioned previously, I started a new job about two weeks ago. One of my coworkers and his wife are expecting their first baby, and someone asked them if they had a baby shower. They answered, "Oh, we don't have baby showers in Japan," to which the office replied, "You're in America now!", and threw a shower for them.

So of course, I had to knit.



I used the Lil' Devil Baby Hat pattern, with a chart borrowed from Knitting Year-Round's Rubber Ducky Pullover. In case you're keeping track, this is the third baby hat and and sixth hat total I've made using the Kittyville hat patterns. It's knit with Lion Cotton-Ease, Caron Simply Soft, and a mystery eyelash yarn, all of which came from my friend Nora's stashbusting party (which is another entry entirely).

Here's the hat being modeled by a penguin:

Headwear Bonanza!

As I've said before, it is my firm belief that a person can never have too many scarves, armwarmers, or hats. Here are three FOs that support this theory, plus a fourth that more or less fits the category.



This is the first thing I ever crocheted. Back when I was stagnating in the "I can only knit stockinette rectangles" phase of my knitting career, I really wanted to learn how to make hats. A couple of my crocheting friends taught me how to make a basic beanie using single crochet worked in a spiral. This is the result, made from Lion Homespun in the now-discontinued disco colorway on a US K hook.




Fortunately, my crocheting abilities have progressed a bit since then, and I made this during a crochet-a-thon back in Februrary that also produced my Blue Star Cloche and Rose is a Rose Hat in the course of one week. This is the Dorothea hat from the Modern Flapper Hats collection. Like the other two, it's made with Motohiro Premium Merino (100% wool). The flower is a chain stitch flower made from leftover "Rose is a Rose" yarn and a bead stitched in the middle.




I made this in an attempt to use up stash yarn. It started life as Knitty's Coronet but went through a few alterations along the way. I had one skein each of Olympus John Lennon Peace (100%) and Katylana Soft Colorful (100% nylon), so I combined them. The John Lennon yarn is worsted weight, so I made the cable brim as instructed, but the Soft Colorful is bulky, so I used US 10 1/2 (6.5mm) needles and only picked up 54 stitches. When it ran out I switched back to the worsted yarn and US 8 (5mm) needles, increasing the number of stitches to fit. This pattern really suited the yarns well thanks to its fold-up brim construction; the wool yarn is a bit scratchy, so having it fold over the super-soft yarn works out perfectly.




This last FO isn't quite a hat, but it DOES get worn on the head, so I'm counting it anyway! I made this a really long time ago but somehow never got around to taking photos. It's the Head Hugger pattern from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, with very little regard given to yarn type or gauge. I used the instructions for the neckwarmer, knit up in the now-discontinued Lion Kool Wool, which is a thicker yarn than the pattern calls for. The flowers are made with Micro-spun leftovers from my Pippi Kneestockings. It was the second pattern I completed from SnBN, and only the second item I've made using the actual colors from the pattern (the first being an Adults-Only Devil Hat).

Ahh, natural light!

I mentioned that I ran out of yarn while making a hat but never actually posted photos of the finished product. Here it is:




Look, I actually took them outside! Much better lighting than anywhere in my house, that's for sure.

The hat is made from Motohiro Premium Merino (100% wool) using the A Rose is a Rose pattern. For the accent I used a 100% cotton yarn purchased last summer and the Star Flower Pin pattern, although I stitched it to the hat rather than using a pin and added a bead to the center.

Scarves! Scarves! Scarves! (and a hat)

I strongly believe that you can never have too many scarves. Or hats. Or armwarmers. Here are three scarves which I've made, a new one each year:



The oldest is the seed-stitch scarf in the middle. It was done back in '04, and the only reason I even know that is because I remember working on it at my mom's old apartment before she moved.



It's knit from that perennial favorite, Lion Wool-Ease, on JPN 10(5.1mm) needles. I can't remember how many stitches I cast on, but there are 20 rows of each color.

When I started trying to expand my crochet knowledge last winter beyond chains and single crochet, I selected a shell and wave scarf pattern from http://crochet.about.com/


It's looking a bit haggard at this point, I've worn it a lot, and I attempted several projects with it before this one so the yarn was already a bit stressed out from being frogged so many times. It's Diamond Diaparterre (50/50 alpaca/acrylic), the same yarn I used for my Clapotis. Strangely enough, as soft and wonderful as the Clap is, this scarf can feel scratchy at times (probably due to all that frogging). The coolest part is how, thanks to the shells, the color pattern comes out in splotches and zigzags instead of stripes.

After that scarf, I fell away from crochet again, went through a few (relatively unproductive) cosplay and (somewhat productive) knitting phases, and didn't come back to it until this winter. I put the purple merino I bought to good use and made the One-Skein Scarf from SnB: The Happy Hooker(which was a misnomer in my case, since it took 2 1/2 skeins).


I never really bother with checking gauges when it comes to scarves and just adjust accordingly to suit my specifications. In this case, I increased the repeats from 3 rows to 5 and added an extra scallop on each end to compensate. I'm still working on my crochet technique and am much better at working in the round than straight; my chain edges always seem to be tight and make the whole piece curve, even when I cast on with larger hooks (as I did in this case). Maybe a good blocking would fix it, but it doesn't matter too much when I wear it, so it's really not a priority.

I had 1 1/2 skeins left over, so I made a hat to match:



It's the Blue Star Cloche from Hook Me Up! Crochet, although the star on it is actually this pattern and made out of leftover Clap yarn. I used an I hook instead of the recommended H since I wanted it to be a bit longer.

Good FOs, Bad Photography

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly the slickest with a camera. Here are a couple FOs I made that didn't quite translate well to film (or a Sony Cybershot, as the case may be). One I could attempt to reshoot but eh, the other is no longer in my possession.

Here's my third hat based off the Kittyville devil hat pattern. I made my first a long time ago as my first experience with knitting in the round, and my second I styled after Lum from the series Urusei Yatsura (which is the hat I'm wearing in my profile pic). As an aside, since she's based after the oni, I wear the hat to school on Setsubun, and the kids love it (they always recognize the oni horns).


I knit the pattern as written on US 7(4.5mm)circs and DPNs, but this time I substituted a 2x2 rib for the seed stitch and knit the ear flaps in stockinette with garter stitch selveges to prevent curling, and on all of them I widened the ear flaps by 2 stitches. The ties are just twisted cords. I used Hamanaka Men's Club Master (60% wool 40% acrylic) that was left over from another project, and the variegated yarn is some type of Noro I got out of a clearance bin (without even realizing it was Noro, I couldn't read the kanji at the time. Had I known, I would have bought a lot more of it, it was dirt cheap). The fair isle pattern came from Big Needle Knit Afghans, and the stripes were on a whim.

Speaking of Big Needle Knit Afghans, I actually knit one for a friend of mine. My former coworker was pregnant with her third child, so I made the Morning Sunlight afghan for her:


It's knit on US size 17 circs (to accomodate the stitches), triple-stranded Caron Simply Soft (100% acrylic and machine washable, a good idea for baby goods). Easy-peasy, not much to say about it. I took these photos before blocking it (which, in the case of acrylic, means throwing it in the washer to even out the stitches), so it looks a bit wobbly.