Another Hat

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Michele at PDXKnitterati has a new pattern coming out, it's her Checkerboard Scarflet . I looked over her pattern this morning and it is easy peasy, great for the beginner knitter. She'll be making the pattern available soon.

Oh, and I saw this on a Finnish Blog, where someone knit up my Regina Mitts and modified them to make them full mittens rather than fingerless mitts. I love how they turned out. It seems like everybody else takes better photos of their knitting than I do, so I always think my patterns look better when other people do them.

Utopia Cable Hat

This is just another Utopia Hat which I worked on a while back. It was a refreshing change to have something small and easy to knit. This pattern is so easy to knit that it makes for good mindless TV knitting, or knitting while sitting next to Missy who is playing Dora the Explorer games on the NickJr website. This hat is for Cap Karma and it will be going to a local chemo patient.

Does anyone have suggestions for online toddler game websites? I think Missy has gotten tired of the selection on the NickJr website.

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I was slightly derailed last night when I looked at my knitting and discovered I missed a cable crossing ... 15 rows down! It took me nearly 40 minutes to drop 8 stitches down 15 rows to fix this, inserting the missing cable crossing and working the cable crossings as necessary as I slowly worked my way back up. For some odd reason, I kept getting a gap or looseness to the left of my cable panel, so I had to do some tweaking to try to tighten it up. It was actually risky of me to attempt this at night, while tired, and with limited lighting. Sorry, I didn't take a photo of my boo-boo because I was too lazy to get out of bed to grab the camera. I really should get into the habit of looking at my knitting more frequently so that I don't discover these mistakes 15 rows later.

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As I passed by the 76 gas station with the red sign this morning, I noticed that the premium unleaded was $2.99. I can't remember what the regular unleaded price was. Perhaps I'll run over to Costco to see what gas is selling for over there...

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But first I need to deal with the "overdue" book at the library, which has a $1.25 fine now. It's a childrens book I returned last Friday on Halloween. I returned a bunch of Missy's books that day and they all got scanned in as "returned" except for this one book. I only discovered this last night when I logged into my library account. This is the second time this has happened in the past few months, it's rather annoying to have to go deal with!!

Last time this happened, I called them and they said they would do a "search". Later that same day, I went to the library and picked up the "overdue" book from the children's section. It was just sitting there on the shelf! So it had been returned, but they didn't scan it in as "returned" in their computer system. I wonder what would have happened if someone else tries to check out a book that is tagged as "checked out" by their computer system? Anyhow, I have to wonder whether their "search" would have come up with the book if I hadn't personally gone to the library to help them with it.

Anyhow, you're probably wondering whether I missed returning the one book in question last Friday. I can tell you with 100% certainty that it was returned. I have a checklist of all the books we check out and their due dates. I mark the ones I am going to return, go fetch the books and place another mark to indicate that I have it and then place it into the big bag I take to the library. The bagging process happens on the kitchen coutner, then it goes into the car so Missy can't pull anything out before we get to the library.

Well, there's one good thing about the Big City. I've never had this problem at the library in San Francisco. They've never missed scanning one of my returned books.


Copyright © Smariek Knits 2005-2008. All full copyright rights are reserved by Smariek Knits.

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Chemo Cap for Cap Karma

Here is another hat I made for Cap Karma. This will go to a local cancer patient.

Pattern: Utopia Hat

This is a lavender/purple hat. I love how stretchy this cable pattern is. It makes it very forgiving so that it can fit a number of different head sizes. This hat pattern seems to be a popular one, over 150 of these hats have been made by Ravelry members. The only change I made in this lavender version is that I changed S2TKP in decrease row 4 to SK2TP. I haven't decided which I prefer. Same shiskabob, different texture, I suppose. (I left the S2TKP as is in decrease rows 5 & 6).

There are different ways to change the finished size of this hat or to compensate for differences in yarn/needles/tension. For example:

-- Casting on more/less stitches in multiples of 24.
-- Choosing a needle size appropriate to the yarn you are using, +/- a size.
-- Working the K2P2 ribbing for more rounds.
-- Adding an extra repeat of the Lower Half Cable Pattern and/or the Upper Half Cable Pattern.

I should try knitting this pattern using some lighter weight (sport?) yarn to see how it comes out.

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Accidental Hat #2

Note:
1. More Free Patterns can be seen along the sidebar (on right side),
or you can use the Free Patterns label to view all posts.
2. Free Pseudo-Patterns or Pattern Outlines can be found using the Free Pseudo-Patterns label.

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Here's another hat for Cap Karma, it will become a chemo cap for a local cancer patient. Sorry, the photos don't look very good due to poor nighttime lighting. I'll see if I can take more photos during the daytime.

I made another Accidental Hat. You can read about how this hat came about here. It's interesting to see how differently these two hats came out, both knit with "worsted" weight yarn. Both hats were knit using the same pattern and the sizes came out significantly different. This showed me that you can't get the same results using yarns that are labeled as "worsted" because not all "worsted" weight yarns are alike. The Red/Blue hat was knit with a lighter worsted weight yarn which resulted in a small size hat that fits snugly on my head. The Green hat was knit with a heavier worsted weight yarn which resulted in a larger hat which fit DH's head. Here are the differences:

Red & Blue Hat (Hat #1)

-- Size: Snug Small size
-- Yarn: 12-13 WPI light worsted weight yarn (thinner than the green yarn in hat #2)
-- Needles: 5 mm (US8)
-- Knit at a gauge of around 19.5 sts per 4 inches
-- Length from brim to top is about 8.75 inches

Green Hat (Hat #2)

-- Pattern changes: Knit exactly the same as hat #1, with the exception of 4 rounds of K2P2 ribbing (instead of 5 rounds). Decrease section is knit the same, the only change is alternating colors every 2 rows.
-- Size: Medium/Large size
-- Yarn: 10-11 WPI heavy worsted weight yarn (thicker than the blue/red yarn in hat #1)
-- Needles: 5 mm (US8)
-- Knit at a gauge of around 17 sts per 4 inches
-- Length from brim to top is about 9.25 inches

This photo shows the alternating colors in the decrease. I changed colors every 2 rows. I think these concentric circles make the hat more interesting.

These photos give you a better comparison of size between the two hats. You can see that the pattern shows up better when there is more contrast between the two colors. You can barely see the pattern in the Red/Blue hat.

Here's an outline of how I knit the Accidental Hat:

Using worsted weight yarn and 5mm (US8) needles, cast on 96 stitches with Color 1, join into round.
Knit 5 rounds of K2P2 ribbing.
Work rounds 1 to 28 of the chart (click here to download Accidental Hat Chart from box.net).
Purl 2 rounds with Color 1.

(Decrease in Hat #1 was worked in color 2. Decrease in Hat #1 was worked in Color 1 and Color 2, alternating every 2 rows.)

Work decrease as follows:
K10, K2Tog
Knit
K9, K2Tog
Knit
K8, K2Tog
Knit
K7, K2Tog
Knit
K6, K2Tog
Knit
K5, K2Tog
K4, K2Tog
K3, K2Tog
K2, K2Tog
K1, K2Tog
K2Tog
K2Tog (4 sts)

Cut yarn and thread through remaining stitches. Weave in all ends.

Stitches used in this hat include:
Knit-Two Purl-Two Ribbing, BW1 pg 39
Pattern # 119, KFPL pg 44 & 112.
Reverse Stocknitte Stitch, MT pg 3
Stockinette Stitch, BW1 pg 10

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Accidents happen

Pattern: My own design
Yarn: Mystery worsted weight
Needles: 5mm (US8)

This hat will go to Cap Karma, and will be a chemo cap for a local cancer patient.

This is my Accidental Hat. It was not intentional.

I started out with 2 remnant balls of mystery worsted weight yarn. I had no idea how much yarn was in each ball. One was a dark navy blue, the other was a dark burgundy red. An idea popped into my head to turn this into a hat. Surely there should be enough yarn to make a hat if I combined the 2 remnant balls of yarn.

So I started out by casting on 96 stitches (seems to be my most often cast on number for hats) with the intetion of knitting my Utopia Hat, because I like that pattern and have been wanting to knit another. I worked some ribbing and then tried to imagine what this hat would look like with the bottom half in one color and the top half in the other color. I just couldn't see it working out. Now what?

I scrambled to try to find something that I could do to turn this into a hat. So I perused my pattern books and found something that I had been meaning to adapt. Then I started with the color work I hadn't originally planned on doing. I mean, working the bottom half of a hat in blue and the top half in red would certainly used less yarn than stranding an unused color along the back. I wasn't sure if this would work out, whether I would have enough yarn to pull this off. But I went ahead with it anyways. It wasn't exactly the mindless knitting I originally thought this would be.

Well, here it is, my accidental hat. It's a ladies x-small/small size, and a bit snug fitting because I tend to knit tighter when working with 2 colors. I'm always afraid that the unused color in the back will show. The fabric would probably be smoother if I hadn't tried to weave in the unused strand as I knit, however I really do like the neatness of having it weaved in rather than hanging loose on the backside, especially when there were sections where the unused color spanned across as many as 11 stitches before being picked up again.

This is what the back of the hat looks like, neat and tidy. Don't you think this looks better than having loose strands that may snag on stuff (barrettes?). I really do need more practice in weaving in the unused color without knitting too tightly. I'm normally a loose knitter.

I tried taking a dozen photos of Miss M wearing this hat. Unfortunately they all came out badly because she can't be still long enough for me to get a focused shot. I know the photos above aren't very good. I've never been very good at photographing any red knitting, and I guess this hat has enough red to throw off my camera's auto-focusing. My camera just would not focus most of the time, and when it did manage to focus (it beeps) I couldn't hold the camera still enough.

I have to say that it was a refreshing change to do plain knitting after all the cable work I've been doing lately. I still have to share a photo of my latest cable scarf, which you saw a peek here. I still haven't weaved in the ends or blocked the scarf. I did take out my blocking pins and was surprised to see rust stains on them. I guess they weren't rust-proof. Now I need to find some pins which won't turn rusty on me.

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Well, it's been over 3 months since we moved in to our new house. We are still unpacking boxes. We are still trying to find a place for everything (doesn't help that we have less space now). A while back I mentioned not being able to find my camera for several weeks, then I couldn't find (still haven't found) the Terminal Adapter I needed to be able to charge the camera battery (I had to buy a replacement). There are still a few things I am trying to find, like ... The Sims Makin Magic CD and a USB wireless nic. DH was looking for the latter so that he could plug it into his desktop computer. His desktop computer used to have a cable to the DSL modem which sat a on the computer desk. Due to where the phone jacks are in the house, the DSL modem is now by the kitchen/family room, and we are certainly not running a long cable from the computer room to the box. We keep finding odd things about our new house. For example, there is a phone jack in every bedroom except the one we are using in the office, viz. the one where we would have liked to hook up the DSL modem. Another oddity is a light switch that is in the family room which is not linked to any of the power outlets in the room. We call it the "mystery" switch because it doesn't do anything.

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A short while back I mentioned getting a 500 GB external drive since I was running short on space on my little laptop. Well, we have recently acquired two more 500 GB drives (these slightly used HDs obtained at the bargain price of $25 each), however they're internal SATA units (not sure if they're SATA I or II) so we will have to get some sort of external HD enclosure. We're thinking of this Vantec NexStar 3 which holds 1 HD and supports USB 2 and eSATA (not that we have this); the Central Computer website says it only supports up to 400 GB, but this is incorrect, it really supports 1 TB. We're also thinking about this Vantec NexStar MX which holds 2 HDs. Which one to get? Two single drive enclosures or one dual enclosure? Decisions, decisions...

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I'm starting to wish I hadn't picked up that big box of PG Tips. I've been drinking 2 big 20 oz mugs of the stuff after 3 PM and I think it is interfering with my sleep. Even so, I want to pick up a box of the their Special Blend.


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Andohalambo ch2-22

Here's another Andohalambo Hat. It looks much better in purple. Or maybe it's because I like purple more than blue. This hat took me a while since it lived in the car and I only got to chip away at it a very little bit at a time. This hat is a chemo cap for Cap Karma.

I haven't been doing much knitting lately. Much of my knitting has moved to the new house. We thought we were moving this weekend, but that didn't happen. We weren't ready. Still waiting on shutters for our living room & dining room, both rooms face the street. Still waiting on carpets. Still waiting on getting the electrical system upgraded; none of the outlets are grounded, and we need to add a few new outlets in various spots. We also need to do a little painting in our bedroom where part of a wall was knocked out to remove a pocket door.

We had a pocket door removed from the master bathroom on Friday 7/20. When DH arrived at the house on Friday morning, he discovered a note on the front door from PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric) informing us that they turned off our electricity the day before, Thurs 7/19 around 3 PM. Geez, they didn't even bother to leave a courtesy notice a few days in advance informing us that they were planning on turning off the electricity. That would have been nice so that we would know that we needed to set up service with them.

We had thought all our utilities were set back in June. We had received a notice on our door about calling a phone number to get our utilities set up. DH called the number, and we thought we were all set with everything. Well, apparently that only set up service for water and garbage. Oops. We didn't know that it wasn't the "one stop shopping" we thought it was, so we had assumed that calling that phone number had set us up for water, garbage, gas, and electricity.

We were a little worried about having our electricity shut off on the day we were expecting people to work on our pocket door because they had battery powered tools and were expecting to be able to charge their tools at the same time. Fortunately, we were able to get PG&E to stop by and restore electricity. So there were no delays with our pocket door removal.

The pocket door in our master bath was broken, it didn't slide open/closed. We had it removed and replaced with a regular door that swings into the bathroom. Much better. We also have a broken pocket door between our kitchen and dining room. I suppose we'll eventually fix that too. I really hate pocket doors. I understand that they are space saving, but they don't seem to work very well.

We got our dryer to vent to the exterior of the house. They just ran a hose from the dryer to the part of the wall (in the garage) where they could make a little hole to exterior venting. The previous owners had this little box contraption that was supposed to catch lint; you place water into the box, and then connect the hose from the dryer to the box.

I've packed some of my knives. The 8" chefs knife, 3.5" paring knife and steak knives have been packed into the boxes they came in. I think I can make do with using just my 6" chefs knife; it's the one I use most often anyways.

I've cleaned and lined half of the shelves/drawers in our new kitchen. I've already started to unpack some things into our kitchen cabinets/drawers to free up the boxes for packing more stuff. Everything will eventually get moved around until I figure out how I want things placed.

Been so busy lately that I almost forgot to mail in a Sears rebate for 12% cash back on the stove we bought. It had to be postmarked by 7/23, and I only remembered it on 7/22. That was a close one!

This photo was taken a couple weeks ago. You can see that our family room is filling up with boxes! We've actually moved more boxes into this room since the photo was taken. And there would be a lot more if I hadn't unpacked a bunch of boxes to reuse for packing more stuff. There's only so much we can unpack at the moment. Once we get our shutters in the living room, we can start moving boxes into that room instead. And we can start unpacking some of these boxes after we've moved some furniture (bookshelves!).

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So I thought I was done entering books into my Shelfari bookshelf, but I kept coming across more books to enter. Now according to my profile, I have 650 books and 2054 tags. How did that happen? And these aren't even all the books because I've tried to enter many which aren't in the Shelfari book database yet, probably because the books are too old or obscure. For example, I could only add one of Richard Kirk's books, Lords of the Shadows, which is #4 in his Raven series. I could not add books 1, 2, 3, or 5 of the Raven Series (Swordmistress of Chaos; A Time of Ghosts; The Frozen God; A Time of Dying). I'm still entering a few more books, so the final book count will probably be closer to 670.

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I finally got around to going to downtown SF to check out the new Westfield shopping center. It was a brief visit. I checked out the food court to have lunch at Bistro Burger. Then went up to the 4th floor to Cocola for a little more quiet while mom had coffee and M had fruit salad. Then we walked across the 4th floor towards Bloomingdale's. I needed to change M's diaper. I saw a restroom sign in between Borders and Bloomingdale's and thought I'd do the diaper change there. After walking a gazillion miles down a maze-like corridor, I discovered that there was NO diaper changing station in their public restroom. That was surprisingly disappointing for a "new" shopping center. You'd think they'd put a baby changing station somewhere in their public restrooms. Aren't they as standard as wheelchair ramps? So I had to walk back out through that long corridor, and then hunt down a restroom in Bloomingdale's. Yes, they had a changing station. :-)

The oddest changing station I've seen was at the Macaroni Grill Restaurant at the Hillsdale shopping center in San Mateo, CA. The table was set so high, it was at chest level! That was a bit awkward for me.

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I'm on page 312 (out of 759) of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling. DH finished the book earlier today. He keeps telling me I'm "getting to the good part". I think he'll just keep saying that no matter where I am at the book, lol. It took me one week to reach Chapter 14, pg 268. My goal is to reach pg 500 by next Saturday, and finish the book by the Saturday after that, just in time to return the book to the library.

I checked out an audio book from the library, With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George, and discovered that I was missing disc #9. I had discs 1 through 8. Now what do I do? How do I find out how the story ends?

I have started to watch The Sculptress, a movie based on Minette Walter's book. It's a long movie, so it'll probably take me 3 or 4 sittings to get through it all.

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Andohalambo Hat (ch 2-21)

Here's another hat for Cap Karma.

This purple variegated yarn is the same as the blue variegated yarn I've made numerous hats out of. I wanted to find a way to get the colors of this purple yarn to stripe/pool differently. If I made a stockinette stitch hat from this purple yarn, it would stripe similarly to my Quinquevulnera Hat. Well that's kinda boring! So I came up with this slip stitch pattern for the purple yarn, and I am quite pleased with how it turned out. It's something different. The pattern makes me think of arches, like the ones you might see in an aquaduct. The slipped stitches add an interesting texture to the fabric. The stitch pattern is from BW4 pg13. This hat is very easy to knit, once you have memorized the pattern (very easy!), it becomes perfect Mindless Knitting for in the car or in front of the TV...

While my Andohalambo Hat and my Striped Slip Stitch Hat both use the slipped stitch technique, this Andohalambo Hat differs in that it uses one variegated yarn, while the Striped Slip Stitch Hat uses two different solid colored yarns.

I managed to get Pooh Bear to pose for me. At least Pooh Bear can sit still... :-)

M always notices any new hats I finish and was very quick to get her hands on this one to try it on. So I grabbed my camera and was pleasantly surprised to find two fairly decent photos of her wearing the hat. She usually moves around way too much/fast for my camera to auto-focus, most of my photos of her are blurry "action" shots.

Then she decided to take a swig out of her sippy cup, so I took that as an opportunity to try for another shot. Please excuse the messy in the background, the entire house is her toy box...

Stitches used in this hat include:
Alternating Slip-Stitch, BW3 pg 13
Knit-Two Purl-Two Ribbing, BW1 pg 39

Please email me if you would like your photo and a link to your blog (if you have one) to appear in My Readers' Gallery.



Andohalambo Hat pattern can be downloaded here:
Andohalambo Hat pattern from Box.net (no registration required, just click on link & save file)


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Utopia Hat

You saw this hat a while back in May, you can see the top of the hat here, and close ups of the grey & white/beige hats here. I was looking at the files on the computer, saw Utopia.doc word document and thought oh goodie, I already typed up the pattern. Nope, no such luck. I opened the Word doc and it was empty. I also got this enable/disable macro popup window which would always pop up whenever I opened the Word document or just launched Word. It's probably a side effect of launching Word for the very first time on my "new" laptop. Anyhowz, that problem disappeared on its own. So I finally got around to typing up the pattern. These hats are for Cap Karma. I did try to take photos of the blue hat while M was wearing it, but they all came out blurry! Hard to capture someone who doesn't understand the concept of being still long enough for my camera to auto-focus and take a picture.

You can knit as much ribbing as you like before starting the pattern. I think I knit 4 rows of ribbing in the grey hat, and 5 rows of ribbing in the blue hat. I don't think a fold-up brim would work very well for this hat as it would cover up much of the cable pattern on the bottom half of the hat.

The pattern is pretty easy to memorize once you've done the first 6 rows of the pattern, then it becomes mindless knitting. Great pattern to knit while watching TV.

There are two different decreases for this hat. There is the "plain" decrease which you see in the blue hat. And there's the "twisted" version which you see in the white/beige hat, where there is an extra cable twist at the top. You can see more photos of the grey hat and white/beige hat here.

Stitches used in this hat include:
Knit-Two Purl-Two Ribbing, BW1 pg 39
Pattern 36.2, HG5 pg 81



Please email me if you would like your photo and a link to your blog (if you have one) to appear in My Readers' Gallery.
Note: Tips for resizing hat can be found here:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2008/01/chemo-cap-for-cap-karma.html.



Utopia Hat Pattern:
Utopia Hat Pattern from Box.com (no registration required, just click on link & save file)




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Just photos of some hats

Just photos of some hats...

It's my Utopia Hat. Typing up the pattern is on my "todo" list, I just haven't had time with all the house things.

This grey one has the same "plain" decrease as the blue one.

This white/beige hat has a "twisted" decrease, you can see the difference when you compare the top of this hat to the top of the blue or grey hat. I haven't decided which one I like best.

I was pleasantly surprised by this white/beige variegated yarn. The cables actually show well! I was afraid it would turn out to be a flop like all the other cable hats I made with that blue/white variegated yarn that I had so much of.

All these hats are going to Cap Karma as chemo caps.

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Well, that's all for now. I have lots to say but no time to organize my thoughts or photos. I thought I'd be relieved after getting the keys to the house, but I find we're just as busy trying to figure out what we need to get done before we can move in. We spent the weekend driving over to the new house and doing a bit of shopping/research. It's so tiring to drive an hour to get there, and also try to work around M's feeding & nap schedule. And we get very little done while we're in the new house due to M's constant need for attention.

We managed to get utilities going. Next thing on the list is to tackle some of the "must do" things on the Termite Report. The big one is the soil treatment for subterranean termites. We also want to look into getting all the electrical outlets grounded cuz they're currently the old 2-prong types. And it looks like the water heater needs replacement.

Still deciding on window treatments. Maybe wood blinds, or a combination of shutters & blinds. Still need to decide where to use vertical blinds and where to use horizontal blinds.

I think I've found a possible dining room table at Ikea. We'll see. Need to shop around a bit more.


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Utopia (218)

Another hat for the Cap Karma Chemo Cap Project. This is my own design. I love how it is a unisex cable hat. Hmm... I guess most cable patterns are unisex, lol. Sorry, no models for the hat, they're all sleeping in the crib right now.

My personal goal is to meet or exceed the previous year's number of hats. This is Cap Karma's 2nd year, and the blog was started in Oct 2006. So I will consider a "year" to begin in October. Hey, who says the year has to start in January?

In Cap Karma's 1st year, I was only able to knit 10 chemo hats, 9 of which went to Cap Karma and 1 went to someone I knew. I'm doing much better this 2nd year, I think it's because M is no longer a newborn and I managed to find a little more knitting time. The hat you see above is hat #18 for this year. I hope to make a few more before the end of September...

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Beverly's Chemo Hats

Look at all these beautiful hats! Beverly knitted these chemo hats with Lion Brand 100% Cotton yarn. I'm posting her photos here because she doesn't have a blog of her own; click on the photos to see a larger version. She did a great job with the Fair Isle patterns! It's a technique I should become better acquainted with. Hats look more interesting with in more than one color...

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Chessboard Hat

Note:
1. More Free Patterns can be seen along the sidebar (on right side),
or you can use the Free Patterns label to view all posts.
2. Free Pseudo-Patterns or Pattern Outlines can be found using the Free Pseudo-Patterns label.

You're probably wondering why I call this a chessboard hat when everybody under the sun would look at the squares and think checkerboard. I just had to be different. :-)

I was still in a 2-color knitting phase after knitting the Oblique Hat, enjoying getting more comfortable with working with yarn in both my hands, so decided to do something different in my next 2-color hat. This one was inspired by something I saw in a Vogue Stitchionary. The pattern is pretty easy to work, so I consider it "mindless knitting". It's easy to work while watching TV (which is when I did most of the knitting for this hat). You can easily work it without the use of a row counter; you just need to pay a little attention to the colors and remember where to switch colors. My hat above is a bit on the long side, as I wasn't paying attention and just continued around and around a little longer than I had intended before starting the increase, a side effect of watching tv while knitting. This is chemo hat #17 for Cap Karma this winter.

This is a great pattern for using all those little bits of leftover yarn. The minimum amount you would need for a square section is just enough yarn to work 4 rounds, and that's pretty easy requirement to meet! The possibilities are endless. You can change Main Color and/or Contrasting Color however you like, however I suggest you do it on Rounds 1 or 5 if you want to maintain the 4x4 square patterns.

Stitches used in this hat include:The 4-stitch by 4-stitch square checkerboard pattern was inspired from something in VS3, will need to look up the page number
Knit-Two Purl-Two Ribbing BW1 pg 39

Please email me if you would like your photo and a link to your blog (if you have one) to appear in My Readers' Gallery.

Chessboard Hat pattern can be downloaded from Chessboard Hat pattern on box.com (no registration required).

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Oopsie ... short on yarn

What do you get when you try to knit the Oblique Hat with 2 leftover balls of yarn and run out of one color just before the decrease? I started out with 2 balls of yarn which were about the same size and I thought I had enough to make this hat... but I guess one ball was more densely wound and the other was more loosely wound cuz I ran out of the blue. I was getting worried about whether I would have enough red left, so I skipped some of the knit rounds in the decrease. Good thing I did that because I definitely would not have had enough yarn left over. It was very very close.

This is chemo cap #16 for Cap Karma's 2006-2007 season. I think this hat shows off the diagonal pattern of the Oblique Hat so much better than the photo you see in the pattern post.

When M saw the hat in the morning, she decided she wanted to put it on. When I did that, the hat covered her entire head down to her chin, LOL. She lifted it back up and then I decided to take a photo of her with the hat on. It actually came out relatively in focus. It's always a challenge for me to take photos of moving objects, and toddlers do not sit still!

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Cap Karma Ladies

M and I had quite an adventure last Friday when we went to the San Francisco International Airport to meet many of the other knitting ladies in Cap Karma. We met in a TSA conference room (which they call their "lunch room"!), which was large and spacious for us to spread out our knitting. It was great to meet these ladies I had known only by name or by photos of their knitted items. And what a bunch of talented ladies they are!

In the photo below, you can see many of the chemo caps that were made for Cap Karma; these hats are going to chemo patients in local hospitals. V brought 3 shopping bags full of caps so everyone could see. Since all the caps get sent to her, she was the only person who really saw all of them. This get together was a nice opportunity for us to see what everyone else had knitted, and also share ideas & tips. Yes, we can see all the caps on the Cap Karma blog, but it's so much better to see the caps in person, confabulate amongst ourselves about the cap designs and share knitting tips.

There were also some hats knitted for the Ships Project; these hats will go to our troops.

Here are three Striped Slip Stitch Hats, each knitted by a different person. Aren't they cute? It's neat to see how the hats turn out when knitted by different people. Somebody (sorry, I forgot who made the comment) said that she couldn't believe they were knitted from the same pattern.

It wasn't just all about caps. It was show & tell for other knitted items too. There was a great pair of socks too, but I don't think we got a photo of that.

This is a green shell that is being knitted with some novelty/luxury yarn which I forgot the name of.

V was really smart to bring a little bunny treat for M. M loved it, and it kept her occupied and quiet for most of the time we were there. I guess I should mention that M is not one of those toddlers who will play quietly in a corner with her favorite toys; she likes constant attention.

She's getting better at using utensils...

She pretty much chipped away at most of the icing during the time we were there. She hadn't figured out that she could cut into the bunny...

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I keep forgetting to mention this, cuz I'm not always thinking about diapers when I'm in front of the computer. I have another two codes for the Pampers Gifts to Grow program, combined they are worth 5 points. Email me if you are interested.


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Oblique Hat

Note:
1. More Free Patterns can be seen along the sidebar (on right side),
or you can use the Free Patterns label to view all posts.
2. Free Pseudo-Patterns or Pattern Outlines can be found using the Free Pseudo-Patterns label.

I wanted to try a new technique of knitting with 2 colors. Some will say, "but you already did a 2-color hat with your Striped Slip Stitch Hat." Yes, that is true. However these two hats are different. The Striped Slip Stitch Hat uses the slip stitch technique which only requires you to knit with one color on each round. This Oblique Hat requires knitting with both colors on each round. I've designed this hat based on a combination of VS3.10xBW1.10.

I'm sorry, the hat pictured above doesn't really show off the diagonal pattern of this hat very well. I used a blue/white variegated with a white solid. It was a poor choice to pair together because you "lose" the pattern when the white in the variegated yarn is adjacent to the white solid yarn. This hat would look lovely in two solid contrasting colors. To "see" the pattern in the photo above, first look for the diagonal white line, then you'll see the stripe created with the variegated blue yarn.

You can see a better photo of the stripe created by this pattern in this other Oblique Hat here:
http://smariek.blogspot.com/2007/03/oopsie-short-on-yarn.html

It looks something like this:

Knitting this hat was a bit awkward at first when I had to switch yarns on my right hand every 2 stitches. I had to be careful not to get the balls tangled up! Then I eventually figured out that I could hold the Main Color with my right hand and the Contrasting Color with my left hand (kinda like how you would knit Continental style) ... slow going and differently awkward for me. I guess it just takes getting used to. I think I had a tendency to knit a little tighter because of the newness of knitting with both hands this way. As a result, this hat is a snug ladies small. I continued the pattern in the decrease. Other than the awkwardness of holding 2 yarns, this hat is pretty mindless knitting once you get the hang of the pattern. After you have made this hat once, you can make it again without referring to the pattern. It's great for knitting in the car or while watching TV.

Yay, after finishing this hat, my big blue ball of yarn is now garlic sized. It's the 5th hat made from the big ball you see in that post. This Oblique Hat is my 15th hat for Cap Karma this year. That's more than I made last year, so I must be doing a lot more knitting this year. :-) I'm hoping the knitting will get better as little M gets older...

Stitches used in this hat include;
Blue Bias, VS3 pg 10
Stockinette Stitch, BW1 pg 10

Please email me if you would like your photo and a link to your blog (if you have one) to appear in My Readers' Gallery.


Oblique Hat pattern can be downloaded from:
Oblique Hat Pattern from box.com.


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