Hats

It’s been a while. And the reason for that is that here at MmmYarn I have had a whole bunch of knitting failure. Go figure. All these years of experience and this is where I am, at total knitting system collapse. It’s discouraging.

All right, before I get into all that, I guess I did do one thing right in the past month. I finally brought myself to finish the little hat that Mr. MmmYarn started last May, when he asked me to teach him to knit when he was practically crawling up the walls with boredom being cooped up all the time. I had him make a garter stitch band and then work in the round up the body. Last week I finished the last 7 rounds of the body and the crown and sewed that little seam at the band.

Pattern: Mr. MmmYarn’s own
Yarn: Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool Quarters, color: Huckleberry (how very Nelson Munz)
Needles: size 6
Size: infant
Started 5/5/2009 and finished 2/2/2010

Matt always did have great taste in yarn and colors and his stitches are wonderfully even. He wanted to donate this to the hospital as a chemo cap but they won’t take this where I inquired so I am going to add it to the Afghans for Afghans pile. He would be OK with that.

How bad can the rest of it be, you ask? Here is the list.

The secret fuchsia pullover project is still in progress. Yes, still. I can’t believe it, either. I wove in all sleeve and body ends and made a neckline with facing. 4 times! The first time I had the decreases and increases reversed, increasing where I should have decreased and vice versa. So rip rip rip it went and I started again. And made the same mistake a second time. Gah! So out it went and this time I got the shaping right. Only now I had too many stitches on the neck and not enough on the body and everything was weirdly askew before I even noticed the problem. Out one more time. Do you want to see what I ended up with? It looks pretty good with its solid fuchsia lining:

So I guess not a total failure, but definitely a time-suck. Now it’s in the procrastination pile because I dislike putting buttonhole stitch around buttonholes. I am hopeless. That kid is getting bigger by the minute.

The little brown and blue double knitted hat that was coming along so slowly suddenly got faster when I got out of the double knitting part. The problem is my gauge toward the end of the pattern chart, where only a couple of stitches were in the pattern and the rest were all one solid color or another, is completely off the rest of the hat. It looks ridiculous and is sitting in the pile of things that need to be ripped and re-worked. I am only going to rip it to the point of major gauge change. The rest will come out in blocking.

Next up is sock failure. The first Froot Loop sock looks pretty good here, right?

Well, way way way too small for my foot. I worked about 6 inches of cuff before a try-on and that cuff will not go up over my heel. Or really anywhere near my heel. So I’ve cast on again with more stitches so I can put a separate purl stitch between each motif but the half inch I have done looks so big that I believe it might clothe the Jolly Green Giant. While he will look smashing in robin’s egg blue socks, I do want these to be my socks. I’m going to slog along for another couple of inches and if it’s still huge, I’ll redesign it to have a purl panel on the back of the leg. Or I’ll say the heck with it and make another sock with the gull wings pattern I’ve used before. We’ll see.

Bag failure is up next. The black Origami Bag is defying all attempts at being sewn together properly. It needs two little 5″ straight seams and my seams are crookeder than the squirrelly part of Lombard Street. Perhaps I’ll try drawing lines with a ruler and tailor’s chalk and see if I can manage to follow them. Or perhaps I will throw the darn thing in the garbage chute.

Non-knitting has been busy, too. The other things that kept me from writing here are more bank stuff (closing accounts for someone who is deceased is a long-term project) and I became an iPerson. I switched over to using our Mac computer because my little Windows computer is having several aggravating-but-not-fatal hardware problems that are more pricey to fix than the computer is worth. I do have Windows XP as a VMWare instance so I can keep Sweater Wizard and some of my card games and continue to play online Scrabble with my mom. There is a learning curve with the Mac: I keep using the wrong keyboard shortcuts and doing things I don’t mean to do. I will figure it out.

Oh, one more small thing is done. I managed a tiny sock. Yep, just one. It needs a mate. Sigh.

Size 1 needles + double knitting + following a chart + adult size hat + moving bus = slow going.

I like the brown and blue.

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.

2009 is sure wrapping up quickly. I don’t really want to greet 2010 without Mr. MmmYarn but the cosmos don’t exactly give a person a choice in these matters, so I put the champagne in to chill and bought a bottle of crème de cassis so I can make kir royale, my New Year’s Eve drink of choice. And the eve after and at least one more after, if not two, because there’s only so much booze I can drink in a sitting whether I’m trying to keep track of a pattern or not.

Now, Stollen, on the other hand, is something I can eat a lot of in one sitting. I did make my Stollen the other day and it turned out well. Here is half of it:

The key to its great flavor is to soak the raisins in rum for a week before baking your Stollen. My raisins soaked for a month so they were super-tasty. This year I added a bit of orange zest left over from the San Diego Sunshine bread and it added a subtle new flavor that went wonderfully with the rumminess:

Lest you think this has become an alcohol-fueled blog (sheesh, I had Glühwein in my last post, now champagne and rum in this one), I have to tell you I did get my exercise and vitamins yesterday. I trekked to two different drug stores, searching for contact lens solution to use up the last of my FSA dollars for 2009. The second (and final) one I went to was on Clement Street. The ethnic markets there always yield some interesting items. The market I went to had dragon fruit again so I picked one up as a treat:

So very tasty for my well-deserved snack after walking at least 6 miles, nearly half of it with a full backpack. And beautiful, too; the interior contrasts nicely with the exterior:

I don’t know how the Vietnamese (my fruit came from Vietnam, its little label said) eat their dragon fruits, but I use a spoon to eat the white parts out of the peel.

Today I’ve been cleaning up my filing cabinet. Did a lot of paper shredding. I also scrubbed my bathtub yet again, something I’ve been doing probably twice a week out of pure enjoyment since I made my own scrubby stuff. Last month I checked out “The Urban Homestead” from the library and while many of the suggestions I can’t implement where I live (no garden or chickens for me), I can use the natural cleansers. I followed the instructions and mixed baking soda and liquid castile soap into a paste, then added about half a teaspoon of peppermint extract from the baking shelf. My tub is minty fresh and sparkling clean when I’m done. My hands are minty and don’t have that horrible dry feel I get after using commercial cleansers. Plus the scrubbing part is far easier, requiring much less labor than I needed when using my usual generic Ajax/Comet-like stuff. I’m sold! Yes, the rest of the place is in the same mess it’s always in. I guess if I were to have a visitor I’d have to show the bathtub last or else it will show up everything else.

Anyway, you didn’t come here for culinary exotica or cleaning tips. This blog is about yarn and I have been knitting.

First up, a hat for a good friend who’s going through a rough time. She made herself one of these hats, then remarked to me in November that she had bought some black yarn to make a second one but wasn’t looking forward to slogging through 40″ of ribbing. I volunteered to be the slogger and she gave me the yarn.

I guess I don’t need to buy a hat form if the 8-pound exercise ball doesn’t mind being a model.

Pattern: Esprit Chemo Turban by Ann Cannon-Brown
Yarn: 2.33 skeins Cascade Fixation, 98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic, color 8990
Needles: size 7
Size: adult
Started 11/17 and finished 12/6/2009

It was an interesting knit because I rarely use an elasticized yarn. I started with size 9 needles and my gauge was far too small. I also didn’t like the feel of the yarn on needles that size. With too small gauge you usually go up in needle size to correct the problem. However, I know my knitting style so I went down to size 7 and found that got me bigger gauge and was more comfortable because I was no longer fighting with the yarn. Go figure. She says the hat fits her perfectly and I delivered it right in time for her to wear it to a holiday party.

Next up, the latest brown socks for my mom (must get better photo in daylight when I next visit):

Pattern: Sam by Cookie A., as published in Sock Innovation
Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage Hand-Painted Sock Yarn, 75% merino superwash, 25% nylon, color 9931
Needles: size 1 (ugh)
Started 10/28 and finished 12/12/2009

I picked this pattern because my mom wears short shoe-like hiking boots and therefore can wear socks with a heavily-textured pattern on the cuff. Any stitch pattern up the ankle would probably be uncomfortable on someone with tall hiking boots. I hear she is the envy of her hiking friends, having seamless and custom-made socks.

Pattern modifications… maybe. I don’t really know. I worked the cuff pattern as written, then stopped reading the pattern and did my usual heel and foot.

The last item for today is the Noro scarf I had on the needles for ages, modeled by Sancho Panza:

Pattern: garter stitch with a yarn over row every 5th row
Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, 70% wool, 30% nylon, color S102
Needles: size 3
Finished size: 7″ x 68″
Started 11/9 and finished 12/18/2009

Absolutely love the highlighter pink and yellow in this scarf. I am tempted to keep it; for now, it will go in the sale box and we’ll see if I fish it out of there.

Up tomorrow: hats!

When a bird is molting, its feathers can look ruffled and scruffy until the new, smooth ones come in. So, here I give you a molting Peacock Feathers shawl:

I don’t know what else to call feathers that have gone this far off course so quickly. You’ll notice the shawl is off the needles. Sigh. A few nights ago I noticed a mistake about 11 rows back on one half. I say “about 11 rows” because I’m still not sure where I went wrong but could see exactly where I went right. After nearly an hour of tinking in an attempt to locate precisely where things went awry, I gave up and frogged. I am tonight just past where I was several days ago.

The feathers that aren’t wonky are looking pretty nice:

It has again been more than a week since I posted, and so I have a few more finished projects to share. At long last, the golden October scarf:

Pattern: own (3×3 slanting rib)
Yarn: Tausendschön Handgefärbte Sockenwolle, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, color: Goldener Oktober
Needles: size 3
Size: 4.5″ x 59″
Started 8/27 and finished 10/2/2009

And, of course, another hat. Because it wouldn’t be a work week without a hat:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Steinbach Wolle Aktiv Effect, color 63984, held together with KnitPicks Essential, color 23696 (Ash), both 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon
Needles: size 4
Size: adult large
Started 10/2 and finished 10/10/2009

I forgot to share one more thing from when my houseguest was here. Fabulous housekeeper that I am, I pretty much piled everything that was lying around the living room in the bedroom, intending to not show off the bedroom. However, during the 3-minute tour of the apartment, she did peek in and saw, amongst papers to file and the Goodwill pile, the tub of scrap yarns I didn’t shove back under the bed (you know, out of sight, out of mind, and I’m trying to remember to use some of it every week). Her comment: “that’s a big stash of yarn.” Her exact word was “Vorrat,” which means stockpile or hoard. My reply: “that’s not even my stash, those are just the scraps.” Ahem. Perhaps I should have kept my big mouth shut.

Excuse me while I go play in what non-knitting guests refer to as an impressive stockpile. Until I post again, see if you can come up with a badass name for knitting needles. I refer you to one of my favorite Savage Chickens comics.

Uff, it has been a busy week. I did hold my yard sale (or, since I’m lacking a front yard, a “sidewalk out in front of the building” sale) on Saturday morning. In the rain. I checked the weather report at 7pm Friday and Saturday was still predicted to be sunny. I woke up in the night to the pitter-patter of the gigantically scary thunder of the first real storm we’ve had in years. But when my friend phoned me in the morning and said she was game if I was, we went for it. The sale was successful in that I have less Stuff and some cash for Stitches West but I wouldn’t say the payoff in terms of money for my time was worth it. I also somehow knotted up my calf muscles going up and down the stairs (I live on the 3rd floor) 40-ish times and spent Sunday and yesterday gimping along like a  Frankenstein monster. Today I have recuperated to more of a cautious Beldar Conehead-like shuffle.

Being somewhat immobile has a few knitterly payoffs. Before Saturday’s sale the piles of yard sale stuff were blocking access to the big closet. This week’s project was to organize the now-accessible closet but it’s dangerous to be on the stepladder with my calves like this, so I sit and stretch my calf muscles while I have plenty of time to knit. The brown-based hat is done:

Pattern: own
Yarn: leftover Opal color 124 (faux Isle) held together with about 3/5 of a skein KnitPicks Stroll color 23697 (brown), both 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon
Needles: size 4
Size: Adult average to large
Started 9/6 and finished 9/11/2009

The little Brittany Jumper you saw the other day needed to be longer, so Saturday evening I ripped out the bodice. I had to use scissors to cut off the straps because I had done such a fantastic (read: neurotic) job of weaving in those little cotton ends. Added another 1.25 inches in length and re-knit the bodice and wove in the ends Sunday morning before I hobbled down to the Laundromat. The dress took to machine washing and drying just like a store-bought cotton garment, how about that? See:

Pattern: Brittany Jumper by Jil Eaton, as published in Minnowknits, Too
Yarn: Tahki Cotton Classic, color 3486 (bright coral) and color 3476 (peach), 100% mercerized cotton, probably about 1.5 skeins each
Buttons: JHB #21088 (Beatrix Potter Collection)
Needles: size 5
Size: 18 months
Started 9/1 and finished 9/15/2009

I made several alterations to the pattern. First off, stripes instead of solid. Next, I worked one purl round before starting the lace pattern so it curls less than without that purl round. Size 18 months isn’t in the book so I calculated the middle point in inches between size 1 and 2 and made that. My gauge was 6 instead of 5 stitches to the inch so my stitch count was completely different. And the pattern for size 2 wanted 48″ around. That’s just plain huge; it would swim on me! So I brought it down to 34.5″ around which I thought was plenty for such a little kid. I knitted the bodice as published. I worked crab stitch around all bodice edges at knitting group on Monday night and tonight got right to embroidering the little tea-dyed onesie’s sleeves as soon as I walked in the door so I could get finished photos in daylight.

I really like the buttons I found and am very proud of my freehand butterfly:

Tomorrow I need to get this off in the mail. The birthday girl’s 1st birthday is tomorrow but the party isn’t until Saturday so this should get there in time for present-opening. The cotton is perfect for her as she lives in southern California where you don’t really need wool.

My potholder mystery yarn swatch hit the washer and dryer, too, and I can report it must be acrylic. It survived washing and drying with nary a change in gauge.

What I should be doing tonight is sticking more price stickers on items for my yard sale coming up this Saturday. Finally having set a date means there is actually a sense of urgency to doing something with the very large pile of stuff that has taken over our office / project room. Tonight, though, I would rather work on this hat (photo from a couple of days ago) that is using up some scrap sock yarn and a skein of the KnitPicks yarn I bought last week:

I was getting up every few rounds to price another half a box of stuff but now I got sucked into Bloglines and remembered I had more little stuff to show you here. See, if I post here, I’m not a total procrastinator tonight. Mmm… rationalizing.

My brother’s daughter turns one year old next week. This completely escaped my notice until last week so I made her a little Brittany Jumper that’s almost done. It went for a walk in the park with me over to the small waterfall:

I do wonder whether the skirt part is long enough. I trekked around for 3 hours on Sunday and again an hour yesterday looking for an off-white t-shirt for a small person, unsuccessful all the way. I finally found a white onesie that is really long compared to the dress. I made the skirt part an inch longer than the pattern dictated but the onesie sticks out the bottom quite a ways. I’ll take them both to my little knitting circle at work tomorrow for a second opinion on the length of the dress. But white… I really wanted off-white. We fiber artists never let something as basic as the wrong color get us down, right? So last night, instead of continuing to price yard sale items, I boiled up some English Breakfast Tea and dyed the onesie:

It’s now a good off-white. All the websites I looked at yesterday told me tea dyeing yields blotchy results but I don’t see blotches at all. I’ll take it out in the sunshine tomorrow to check. I plan to embroider some little lazy daisy stitches on the sleeves using the same yarn as in the dress. Thank goodness Lilli is too young to know it’s her birthday because I have a feeling this gift will be late.

And since this week’s theme was small things, I’ll show off the scarf that is my current bus knitting:

The green colors barely show up in the photo, but trust me, they’re there. All right, back to the stickers.

Edited to add: I just learned Worldwide Spin in Public day is September 19, the same day as International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Can you say YAAARRRRN?

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.

We hear from Mr. MmmYarn’s sister that our 2-year-old niece enjoys Bee Movie and uses the expression “thinking bee” relatively often so I came up with a design to help her in this when the mood strikes:

Pattern: own
Yarn: Universal Yarn, Inc. Dolce Merino; 50% fine merino, 50% microfiber; half a skein color 442 (black) and half a skein color 404 (freesia)
Needles: size 4 for the hat, size 2 for the i-cord antennae
Size: toddler
Started 3/30 and finished 4/6/2009

This is the same yarn I used for Mr. MmmYarn’s Viking hat a few weeks ago so I was able to simply launch right into the hat. I hope the recipient enjoys it. She leans towards pinks and purples in her usual wardrobe but to be able to properly think bee you must reach for black and yellow.

Socks for Mr. MmmYarn are bus knitting, and since I missed several days of work last week, there is not much progress:

Mr. MmmYarn is ready to terrorize not his dreams, but the neighborhood when he steps out in his stylish helmet:

His head will not be green. Presumably.

Pattern: based on Baby Brunhilde Hat by Sarah Fama for Bella Knitting, but I modified it a lot
Yarn: Hat + Wings: Universal Yarn Dolce Merino, 50% merino wool, 50% microfiber, 1.2 skeins color 441 (charcoal gray) and a little bit of color 402 (whisper white); Braids: Cascade 220, 100% wool, color 9463
Needles: size 4
Size: adult
Started 3/9 and finished 3/14/2009

Modifications, modifications. Well, first, this pattern is for a hat for a baby girl so I sized it up for an adult man. A change in yarn meant a change in needle sizes, and I had to change the stitch count to make it all work. Mr. MmmYarn likes a brim on his hats so I worked the rivets section opposite from how it’s written in the pattern, in purl, with the bobbles in knit, then made a turning row to create the brim. We had four trying-on sessions, the first three of which resulted in size rejection, so I got to make those bobbles four times. The bobbles on this go are the best yet:

Here’s how I worked them: knit into front, back, then front of 1 stitch, purl these 3 stitches, knit them, purl them again, then slip 1, knit 2 together, pass slipped stitch over. That last bit made for a much neater finish than knit 3 together (or purl 3 together, as the original pattern stated). On round 14 I knitted the cast-on round together with the live stitches, fastening the fold-up brim neatly in place. My last modification was to work a double-decrease on 4 points for the crown, creating more of a helmet look in my opinion. The wings and the braids I worked as written.

Mr. MmmYarn is happy with it, although it is startling to see my husband in braids. From a distance they look real.

* Today’s Viking quote brought to you by Ralph Wiggum.