Crocheting

Heeeere’s 2010. Last night I knitted, drank my kir royale, and watched some movies. One was “Blades of Glory,” the goofy ice-skating film. I noticed something I haven’t seen before: the censors are permitting a raised middle finger to be included on TV. What this says about the evolution of our society’s standards I don’t know. I found it odd.

Last night’s knitting was re-visiting an old WIP. I’ll give you the same old photo since the new knitting looks pretty much the same. Slightly narrower now, but still black seed stitch:

Today I caught up with reading my feeds in Bloglines and saw lots of folks are writing year-end or decade-end retrospectives. Instead of looking back, I give you my new year which starts out with a new-to-me bread recipe:

This is a cheddar-beer loaf as presented by Alton Brown on the “Fermentation Nation” episode of “Good Eats.” And it is very good eats, indeed:

I added the sunflower seeds because I had them, not because I was, as Alton put it, “feeling especially hippie.” Although “hippy” might be a more apt term: between the cheese, the beer, and then the sunflower seeds, this is probably not the best bread for anyone with weight loss as a personal goal.

Apologies for the over-flashed bread photos. One of my goals for my nearly 2 weeks off was to learn to use Mr. MmmYarn’s SLR camera because it can be adjusted for light settings and you get far better low-light photos with it than with the little point and shoot. I got it out, found its manual, did some learning. Then I went to take test shots and found it is without its battery. I also can’t find the charger which means the two of them are hiding somewhere together in here. Considering Mr. MmmYarn was always more neat than I am, this surprises me. Yet, here we are.

So… I am completely stuck on that project until I find all the needed hardware. This meant more knitting time. In my last post I promised you hats, and boy, can I deliver. For this we need to go back to 2009 for a while.

This first one is made with leftovers from a pair of socks I made for my mom:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Austermann Step, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, color 01; held together with Wolle Rödel Baby-Merino, 100% superwash wool, color 13065 (yellow)
Needles: US size 4
Size: adult
Started 12/15 and finished 12/20/2009

This next one made me hungry for chocolate and marshmallows the whole time I was making it, so I have named it the S’Mores Hat. I held a strand of JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool in brown and white throughout and used the brown and white yarns for the stripes.

Pattern: own (3×3 spiral rib)
Main Yarn: JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool 3/10, 55% cotton, 45% wool, color Brindle
Stripes Yarns: Madil Loden, 50% wool, 25% alpaca, 25% viscose, color 589 (darker brown) and color 588 (lighter brown); Brown Sheep Nature Spun, 100% wool, color 740S (Snow)
Needles: US size 4
Size: adult
Started 12/20 and finished 12/23/2009

One of the ladies in my knitting group volunteers at a local hospital, running a knitting circle there for… uh, complete brain failure here… I think for patients and staff although it might be only for patients. Anyway, that hospital accepts donations of hats for chemo patients. Since family members are not clamoring for gift hats, and I can only sell hats I make from my own patterns, and there are tons of really cool published patterns out there that I want to try, I plan to make some hats for donation this year. I am still knitting from my stash so the first 3 are what I pulled from the stash this past week.

First up, a lovely slouchy beret, modeled by a dinner plate. I felt a little silly carrying a dinner plate down the block to the cafe with the metal tables:

Pattern: Ishbel Beret by Ysolda Teague, as published in Whimsical Little Knits
Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18, 50% merino wool, 50% Tussah silk, color: Peacock, held doubled
Needles: US size 2 and 4
Size: adult
Started 12/28 and finished 12/29/2009

Back in 2007 I made two soft, green chemo caps for a relative of Mr. MmmYarn’s who needed them. I had yarn left over so I made two more, pretty much identical twins to the first two:

Pattern: Knit Chemo Cap by Berroco Design Team
Yarn: Berroco Chinchilla, 100% rayon, color 5567 (olive green) and color 5571 (light sage green)
Needles: US size 9
Size: adult
Modifications: Used a k2p2 rib instead of k1p1 as the pattern indicated because I like the look of my k2p2 better than the usually sloppy look of my k1p1. Not that you could really tell with this yarn.

Chinchilla is not for the faint of heart: you lose one stitch and it’s really really lost. Not to mention the difficulty in keeping track of where the decreases are, although the yarn’s fuzziness certainly hides any fudging there. I hear these hats are big hit with chemo patients for indoor wear. The rayon doesn’t block the wind at all so they’re not too suitable for keeping warm outdoors.

I make most hats bottom up because my bind off usually leaves a lot to be desired: messy-looking and too tight. Since any attempts at neatness are obscured in these hats, I was able to use a sewn bind off that I find works great with Chinchilla.

And just because hats weren’t enough to keep me busy, I turned out two more pairs of potholders:

Pattern: own
Stitch Pattern: single crochet
Yarn: mystery yarn, assumed 100% acrylic. Definitely bulky.
Hook: size I
Started 12/25 and finished 12/27/2009

Today begins a new year. I made bread, cleaned the apartment, and went for a medium-length but brisk walk before the rain started up. I read half a book, watched cartoons made before I was born (Looney Tunes and The Pink Panther) while knitting, printed out my 2010 Hooters calendar (what? what were you expecting? — really, it’s OK to click that link) and looked out the window at the gentle rainfall. It’s a good start.

Today I am unearthing my desk and found notes on a few small projects that never made it into the blog or up on Flickr or onto my notecards, or anywhere besides Ravelry, really. Thankfully, inputting a project into Ravelry requires just a couple of mouse clicks and I can have all the information there as a placeholder until I get around to washing, blocking, photographing, recording yarn and needle and pattern info, etc. While this is the post about all the small things, it makes for a big post.

First up, a hat for a good friend who is, I am sorry to say, undergoing chemotherapy. Mr. MmmYarn helped me pick out the yarn back on May 10 and his bald head gave it two thumbs up:

Pattern: Shedir by Jenna Wilson, as published in Knitty, Fall 2004
Yarn: 1 skein Malabrigo Silky Merino; 51% silk, 49% merino wool; color 420 (light hyacinth)
Needles: size 3
Size: adult small
Started 6/30 and finished 7/3/2009
Alterations to pattern: finished on 8 stitches instead of 4. The 4 on top made it too pointy.

I hope it serves her well if she needs it. The 8 points on the top came together very nicely:

Next up are baby booties made with the leftover orange and yellow yarn I used in the little sweater I finished in March:

Pattern: own, based on an old stay-on bootie pattern
Yarn: Wolle Roedel Baby-Merino, 100% superwash wool, color 13075 (orange) and 13065 (yellow)
Needles: size 2
Size: newborn to 6 or 9 months
Orange booties started 6/19 and finished 7/4/2009
Yellow booties started 7/18 and finished 7/20/2009

There’s not too much to say about the booties. You have seen their siblings here before. They’re quick and easy and I have my pattern memorized, so when I was finally able to knit again in late June they were the perfect project.

At Stitches West back in 2006 I hopped on the Charlotte’s Web bandwagon and bought 5 skeins of Koigu KPPPM and worked up a Charlotte’s Web:

Yeah, pretty awful, right? The extreme variegation of the yarn obscured the lace pattern entirely. I unraveled CW and set the yarn aside for a while. Inspiration struck in early May and used up 3 whole skeins but it took me a while to be able to pick up this scarf again and finish it:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: Sailor’s Rib as published in Barbara Walker’s A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM, 100% merino wool, 1 skein each of colors P508, P137, and P431
Needles: size 5
Size: 5.25″ wide x 65″ long
Started in May and finished 8/6/2009

I cast on 43 stitches, which allowed for a 1-stitch garter stitch selvedge on each side, then worked in Sailor’s Rib, changing skeins every 4th round (of course I carried the unused colors up the side; no monumental weaving in of ends for me!) until I ran out of yarn. Perfect.

I was bitten by the crochet bug after looking sadly at my poor, burned potholders I made probably 15 years ago. They have held up well but needed to be replaced so I whipped these up with some mystery yarn Mr. MmmYarn’s uncle sent me last Christmas. Two movies and they were done:

Pattern: own
Stitch pattern: single crochet worked in the round to make these double-thick
Yarn: not a clue
Size: a little bigger than my hands
Started 8/22 and finished 8/24/2009

The pattern is essentially the only thing I know how to crochet besides a straight back-and-forth to make something like an afghan. My American grandmother taught me to crochet when I was probably 8 or 9 years old and she launched me on potholders. You make a chain a little longer than you want your potholder to be, then work single crochet around and around (forming what she called the “canoe”) until it meets in the middle. Usually I sewed them shut but this time I got smart and crocheted the seam by picking up the outer half of each stitch and crocheting it together with its neighbor on the other side of the canoe. I like this seam far better than the sewn seam.

I did try to solve the yarn mystery. I did the burn test: the yarn self-extinguished when I pulled the match away but burned into a hard black solid that did not smell of chemicals. The yarn feels synthetic and also kind of greasy, like a wool with lots of lanolin would feel. And the potholders sank like a stone when I put them in water. All in all, the clues don’t add up to anything I can decipher. They work well in the kitchen and that’s all that really matters. I crocheted up a small swatch to throw in with my next load of laundry so I can test whether this stuff is machine washable. If it is, score one for me.

Do you ever look back fondly on how big your yarn stash used to be? Mine used to fit in the container I now use for my few winter clothes. Then it fit into the under-the-bed bin. Now it dominates my closet and the under-the-bed bin holds just my scraps. Unfortunately, that bin is now so full that the bed frame itself holds the lid shut and whenever I pull the bin out, the lid pops up festively. Clearly, some scrap busting is in order. Behold, a hat made with scraps:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Manos del Uruguay, color H (brown) and 106 (rose/purple/tan variegated)
Needles: size 5
Size: adult average
Started 8/19 and finished 8/25/2009

I worked 2 rounds of brown followed by 1 round of variegated but the colors blend so nicely that it looks like I used one yarn. I used a 4-point decrease on 8 stitches:

This hat barely made a dent in the scrap bin but it’s a start. Don’t tell anyone, but I also bought a little yarn this week. I indulged in 5 skeins of KnitPicks sock yarn in neutral colors that I can use to hold together with my thinner scraps for more hats and thereby reduce the scrap bin some more.

And that, readers, is all the small things for today. I hope you’re out enjoying your long weekend.

Bwuahahaha! This week’s bus knitting is not knitting, but crocheting:

That little blip of black and white crochet you see in the bottom left of this photo is a bag I made some 8 years ago. I’m really proud of that one as I put in a sewn lining… nearly a year after I crocheted it in a single day, ahem. Hey, I’m a knitter and not a sewer.

Now, does anyone reading this know how to make a jogless jog in single crochet so I can put some neat stripes into this new creation? Google has failed me this time: all I get is knitting references. Mmm… knitting. I think I’ll go work on socks tonight.