Knitting FO: Birthday Hat

Last year our knitting circle decided to organize a birthday swap of handknit cowls.  We had such a great time doing it that we're doing it again this year, only with hats.  Since there were a few birthdays that were happening quite soon, I volunteered to knit one of the first birthday hats of the year on a roughly three-week deadline.  The hat ended up being made entirely out of handspun, although I could never have guessed that this is what I'd end up using the handspun for!  It started out as a bump of fiber from Hello Yarn in the colorway Garden Walk:

which I then tore into chunks of similar color, carded into batts,

and spun into into mini-skeins of individual colors.  Here they're all tied up together for washing:

Now, I wasn't 100% pleased with this yarn.  I'd originally intended to knit it into handspun Fiddlehead mittens, but didn't feel that the weight of the yarn was quite right, or consistent enough for the pattern. So the yarn hung out in the stash for another two years.  Enter the "With Love from Norway" hat pattern, some white undyed cormo handspun yarn, and destiny took over.

I'm so in love with this hat.  It's a very cute pattern, and it looks great on its recipient. I was a little worried about the color in between the orange and green (it doesn't look too amazing all by itself, it's a little... barfy), but in the progression with all the other colors it looks great!

My handspun is a little lighter in weight than the yarn called for in the pattern, so I added two hearts to the circumference of the hat and knit it on size 4 needles instead of size 6. The best part is that I've forgotten how much yarn it takes to make a hat, and I'm nearly certain that I have enough yarn to make another one. 

That's right, it's time to start thinking about holiday knitting.  Dun dun dun.

 

Holiday Problems and Solutions

Problem: Need to discourage the cat from getting too fresh with the Christmas tree.



Solution: Discover "Cat Entertainment" videos on YouTube. Here Bucky is watching a 9-minute video of birds and squirrels for the third time in a row. He's about as bad as my little sister at the age of seven and Disney's The Little Mermaid. Bonus: For the first time in nearly two years, I am able to spin on my spinning wheel uninterrupted for more than 45 seconds.



Problem: The thought of all the social activities of the season, and the end-of-the-year responsibilities of our jobs is causing the spouse and I to break out into hives.





Solution: Take three days off right before Thanksgiving to drive to Santa Barbara and go hiking and wine tasting. I didn't question his need to take so many photographs of rocks, and he didn't question my need to visit this one particular yarn shop for this one particular yarn.



No, this isn't all that I bought.

Problem: I decide that all my gift knitting is boring. Too many hats and all.

Solution #1: I cast on for a shawl. Yes, it's for me. No, I don't think it's selfish. What?



I then realize that I still have deadlines on many of those holiday gifts, and come up with Solution #2: Decide that maybe I should knit something besides hats for gifts. Wait, isn't there a handy scarf-in-progress? Yeah, let's knit that instead.



I realize that scarves are still pretty boring, and move on to mittens.



Still bored. Think some more, and come up with Solution #3: I decide that maybe I could sew some gifts instead of knitting them. Yes, this will save time! Resolve to go purchase fabric for said sewing projects.



Realize that spending money on supplies for future handmade gifts is dangerous, as it leads to spending money.



Problem: I don't have enough time to finish all my holiday gift knits.

Solution: Clearly, now is the time to photograph stash and projects, edit and upload photos, update Ravelry, and write a new blog post. Happy procrastination season, everybody!

Obligatory Gift Roundup

This year's batch of knits, some already having flown their way to the four points of the compass:

A hat for my brother:



A hat and mittens for his wife:



A scarf for my sister:



A hat for my sister (this is technically her birthday gift, but her birthday isn't for several weeks and I didn't see any point in her ears being cold in the meantime):



Some fingerless mitts for a friend:



And a blanket for my parents:



Looking over the Ravelry statistics, I knit about half as many projects as I did last year and didn't spin nearly as much either. I was going to write another big retrospective post for the New Year but the numbers are a little depressing. I'm not sure what's up with the drop in productivity, but I'm going to think about it while I relax. I might have the solution for next year. For now, I'm going to give my wrists a rest and curl up with some tea and Sweater Quest for inspiration.

Raiding the Button Jar

I finished up my last official holiday knitted gift two days ago. Technically I still have other knitted gifts, but technically those don't need to be finished until late January.

My last holiday knit needed buttons, and I thought I already had the perfect ones, but turns out I only had four and the project needs eight. We were spending Christmas Eve and the day before with the husbeast's family, and I was puzzling over whether to walk downtown and see if the LYS was open when I remembered his mom keeps a button jar.



After dumping out the whole thing, I started by weeding out buttons that were too large or obviously wrong (for example, metallic with embossed anchors). After also putting back buttons that did not come in a set of eight and seriously considering the possibility of using deliberately mis-matched buttons, I was left with three choices. I picked my favorite, stuffed them in my pocket, and walked down to the LYS anyway to review their options. They were indeed open, and I had to talk myself down from purchasing several pattern books (has anyone else noticed that Aran Knitting is back in print?). But I still liked the button jar buttons better than anything the LYS had to offer.

I walked back to the house, pleased at my own frugality, and sewed the buttons on while the husbeast's aunt baked up a storm of cookies and we caught up on life. The husbeast was incredibly happy to have me by his side for this part of his family's holiday traditions.

I'm working on my last knitted gift today, and thinking about how things in our lives grow and change. I was also thinking about Stephanie's post about the solstice and lunar eclipse, which I did not get to see due to bad weather. Endings are sometimes a necessary (and healthy) part of life, and this year has had a lot of endings for me and the people around me. But those endings have been good endings, the natural death of an old part of my life.

This year, I won't be spending Christmas Eve at the church I grew up with, or Christmas morning opening presents with my parents and siblings. Change can make me anxious, exhilarated, energized, but rarely does it bring the sense of calm I find myself searching for at this time of year. This year is the first year I stuffed a wrapping paper bow on my own cat and attempted to take his photo, and the first year I got to spend the holiday with my new chosen family instead of settling for a phone conversation peppered with "I miss you so much." I don't know that I can say it's the happiest Christmas I've ever had (there was the year I got a telescope for Christmas), but it's been Christmas times three. Today is the calm in the middle of all the traveling. And I hope all of you get some calm, peaceful, reflective time in your holiday as well as this season turns around and the calendar turns over.

The Holidays Are Here Again

and not everyone is happy about that.



But, there are upshots.



Starbuck has mixed feelings about the holidays. On the one hand, the humans have provided him with a toy tree. On the other hand, they keep trying to put that stupid hat on him.



I am zipping through my holiday knitting, which is good because I forgot that some of it needs to be ready to be shipped to North Dakota BEFORE Dec. 25th. I'm still playing the priority game (first knitting those gifts which will be given first), which has worked well in the past. We regularly exchange gifts three times a year (and this time it will be four), so there's a fair amount of wiggle room given that some projects must be finished by the 25th, some by the 26th, and some not until the 31st. I also cut down the list a bit this year, so even though everyone is getting something handmade, they are not all getting knits. Another help was the Bazaar Bizarre. Like a bad blogger I went and forgot my camera, but the new venue at Fort Mason was awesome (way less crowded). I ended up going on both days, and the husbeast and I picked our tree out from the Guardsmen Tree Lot on the next pier over. We loved getting our tree there and will certainly go back there next year. I probably spent more money than I should have, but I loved seeing some familiar faces.

Lastly, I wanted to say how happy it makes me to see all the Ravelers who have added the Sluggish Mushroom mittens to their favorites. It was a little heart-stopping to wake up the day after I posted the pattern and find so many hearts! You can now buy the pattern directly off the blog in the right-hand sidebar, in case you're a knitter who is not on Ravelry. Thanks everyone!

A New Verb

So I know I've mentioned Verb's new store a few times already here. I can't put my finger on precisely what quality it is that draws me to Kristine's yarns and fibers. I do know that, even when I'm not looking for anything in particular, I always see something I like. Every time. Maybe it's the subtleties of the color palette she gets from natural dyes, or the huge variety of fiber bases she dyes ranging from super-crunchy wool to the most luxurious blends of silk, yak, and cashmere.



Aside from the products, there's also the mentality of the shop that I really appreciate. Perhaps it's the fact that Kristine taught me how to choose and wash a fleece. Or it could be the way she supports local farmers by carrying wool from their sheep in her shop. There is always something new to learn when I walk into the shop. I've been wanting to take the rigid heddle weaving and natural dyeing workshops for a while now.



So let me tell you about the party on Saturday. It was fabulous. First of all, you walk into this amazing space. And I mean SPACE. There is enough room to wander around (and you don't bump elbows as much as you did in the old shop), big windows to let in the light, and tall ceilings to let the air circulate.



There's a central table for sitting and crafting, and a side area with a gallery space around it.



I'd forgotten how much I love Sonya Philip's work until I saw it in the shop.





There was even a yarn cake:



and a familiar friend:



I couldn't resist telling a few knitters (including Kristine's mother) that they were petting and oohing over my wedding shawl. I'm so stinking proud of that thing, even though the beads were a royal pain.

The funniest part was how I felt tempted by so many things throughout the day, and resisted. But I wasn't really tempted too much by anything in this corner:



I don't own a sewing machine, although I know my way around one from growing up with a mom who sewed everything from Halloween costumes to my senior prom dress. Every few years I think about getting a machine, but sewing has never been something that stuck with me like knitting has. So it was absolutely hilarious to me when Kristine called my name in the raffle to come claim this:



A quilt kit.

It's going to take some willpower to work on holiday knitting instead of this. We'll see how it goes. For now, I have a borrowed sewing machine hanging out in the living room and another reason to visit the shop, take a new class or two, and add another verb to my repertoire.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

I am so scatterbrained right now, I am going to do something I normally do not do: blog in list format.

1. We attended the wedding of some very near and dear friends this weekend. We stayed here. The food was amazing, the weather gorgeous, the lung capacity severely diminished due to tight-fitting bridesmaids dress and altitude. It was gorgeous, woodsy, and a heckuva lot of fun.

2. I might be going through a career transition. If I seem reluctant and/or absent-minded when speaking about my job, know that I am trying to work through some things about what I really want to be when I grow up and how to best accomplish that while still providing for my personal needs.

3. My mittens are up for voting, and the pattern has been proofread and proofknit. I am going to decide how to distribute the pattern after the contest is over. If you think the design from four posts down was nice and have access to the Ravelries, feel free to go here and cast your vote by tomorrow. For the record, here's another shot of the mittens to which I am referring.



4. I started a pair of jaywalker socks on the airplane. There will be photos forthcoming, but they are being knit out of this handspun:



5. I am excited about holiday knitting this year. I may have already begun a box full of items for gifting. I may have purchased this for the plane ride home. This is very strange to me, given my feelings on gift knitting last year. More on that later.

6. I totally thought I had more than 5 things to tell you all. Huh.

Weekend fun times!

I had some pretty good knitting time over the last week. On Friday I finished the knitting for a pair of insanely cute slippers:



I know they don't look like slippers right now, but once they're sewn up and felted they'll hopefully look a little bit like this. The knitting goes super-fast on huge needles, and it's perfect if you have lots of worsted-weight yarn leftovers. These are so cute, I'm making more than one pair. But I can't justify having three pairs of felted slippers... helloooo, more gift knitting!



My knitting group and I all cast on for these together last week, and this week we're going to sew them up. But last weekend I finished Damson earlier than I thought I would. I was able to wear my cute new shawl on Sunday morning, but I'd expected that the project would last me until at least the day before our knit night. So in the meantime, I pulled out an old, sleepy, cobwebby (not really) project:





I think I've given up on the spreadsheet, the one I made about 1/3 of the way through the project as a way to keep track of how to maximize the number of miters I could eke out of each skein of yarn. It's getting down to the wire... at one point I optimistically thought I would make a 6x6 blanket (36 squares with 4 miters to each square), but now I'm thinking I may only get 5x6. If so, then I've done 75% of the knitting.

Oh, and we carved pumpkins on Saturday:



We carved two pumpkins, and saved one for eating. I've never cooked a pumpkin before (except for baking the seeds), so this will be an adventure!

Christmas Present Recap

My Mom and sister loved their gifts, which can now officially appear on the blog attached to their ultimate purpose. First, the tiger glittens:



Pattern is Broad Street Mittens from Knitty, done on size 2.75 mm (US 2) DPNs. Yarn is all handspun: the orange is superwash BFL fiber from Numma Numma, colorway "Pumpkin Butter" and the brown stripes are Shetland Fine Wool from Pigeonroof Studios in "Bitter Orange." For some reason, I didn't expect this much variation in the Pumpkin Butter yarn, it looked more homogeneous to me in the skein (I think I was in denial). But these are for my saxaphone-playing, marching-band-addicted little sister, so she can keep her hands warm in style on the crisp (ha!) San Jose fall evenings during practices. I checked, and she can still play even if her thumb is covered.

And the other gift which has been on the blog before which I thought about blogging so much I've apparently fooled my brain into thinking I did blog about it but actually never got around to it. Huh. I guess I really was busy in October! Anyway, my mother got the Egyptian Green scarf:



My mom also loves green, so this was an obvious choice for her gift. Mom is sensitive (I refuse to accept allergic) to scratchier wools, so her scarf is 80% wool 20% silk, spun from roving dyed by the Sanguine Gryphon (obtained via The Loopy Ewe) in the Egyptian Green colorway. I spun the singles big and loose (pretty sure it was on the largest whorl), then plied the singles with black sewing thread. The pattern is the Morning Surf Scarf, which I think is excellent for a single skein of handspun. You find a needle size that works with your yarn (I used 5.5 mm, US 9) and just go! On Ravelry folks have knit this with every weight of yarn imaginable, and they all look fabulous. The only thing I would have done differently with this scarf is skipping the blocking. I didn't wash the yarn before knitting with it, and I think the blocking killed some of the natural bounce and squishy-ness that the scarf had when it was fresh off the needles. The stitch pattern would have been a little less defined, but the thick-and-thin nature of the yarn made up for it. I have another bump of this fiber in a different colorway, and I think it is destined for a similar spinning style and project.

I was a little surprised that my holiday knitting was mostly done with handspun this year, but when I stopped to think about my full-to-brimming paper shopping bag next to the Ladybug, my surprise wore off. I love my handspun, and it definitely gives me an extra sense of creativity. I don't usually try to envision a project straight from fiber to garment, but that doesn't detract from the satisfaction of telling people that I made the yarn myself, too.

It's a trap, get an axe!

On Friday I had a nice, relaxing day that I almost allowed to turn into a holiday knitting disaster. Watch and learn from my near-escape, all ye who knit gifts!

It seems like the mantra on lots of knitblogs these days is "I'm going to knit less this holiday season" and I am no exception. I decided that it's enough to have grade-related stress right around the holidays, and that I don't need to add the stress of finishing up lots of projects to the mix. I narrowed down my must-knit-for list this year from 7 people to 2. These are the two who will love and wear my knitting, or who will at least lie to me convincingly about loving and wearing it. Some people got knocked off the list because I suspect that they do not cherish handknitted items as much as I'd like them to, and others because I found something much better for them than another pair of felted slippers or cotton dishcloths. Either way, I had way less holiday knitting going on than I have in the past four or five years, and I was pretty much on top of everything. One knitted gift was finished, and the other had about two hours of knitting time plus buttons left before completion when Friday rolled around.

After a long week at work (it's the end of the semester, always a little nuts for me), I used my day off to do my get-in-the-spirit activities: hanging a wreath on our door, watching cheesy Christmas movies, eating leftover curry, and wrapping gifts. Since I leave most of my friends behind and stay with my parents over Christmas, I have to leave about 2/3 of my gifts wrapped (with very clear, firmly attached name tags) for the significant other to distribute in my absence. As I was wrapping up cleverly chosen, personally appropriate, non-knitted items and congratulating myself on planning things so I could start a new pair of mittens next week if I want to, I also started going over who I still need to get gifts for. I like to feel I am on top of things, but I'm not like my mother who has 90% of her holiday shopping done by October. My list still has a few holes: there are some people who are getting gift cards (specifically requested), some people for whom I have half a gift right now, and one who is a bit difficult to shop for; so far I've put off shopping for them. And when I finished wrapping all the completed gifts, my brain said "Wait a minute! We can just whip out a pair of fingerless mitts for the hard-to-shop-for and half-of-a-gift people! I bet we can have 'em finished before you have to leave for the party in two hours." Seasoned crafters are probably already shaking their heads at this point, recognizing the siren call. I had already looked up patterns on Ravelry, scoured the stash for yarn and appropriately sized needles, and was battling with the correct number of cast-on stitches (being reworked from the pattern for a substitute yarn) before I remembered that I'd decided not to knit for so many people this year. I got caught up in the illusion that knitting can feel instantaneous sometimes (like with my cowl). I'd forgotten how much work I would have dumped on me after this week, and my simultaneous goal that I would finish all this work before I get on the plane home, instead of taking it with me like I've done every year since I got this job. With the whole weekend stretching in front of me, I felt like time was nothing, putty in my hands, mine to shape with yarn and needles into fashionable knitted accessories with a mere wave of my wrists. It was the quick-knit delusion, people. And it nearly got me. I came thisclose to tripling the number of knitted gifts this year. The worst part is that I didn't stop because I came to my senses about time and reasonable scheduling and all that. I got frustrated trying to figure out the right number of cast-on stitches, trying to strike a balance between two different patterns with yarn and needles that would give me a gauge in the nebulous space somewhere between the two. After the third botched attempt at a cast-on, I pulled the yarn off the needles and realized I better stop because I had to be out the door in ten minutes. I thought vaugely that I would come back to the project when I got home.

Only later, as I rode the bus to have dinner with an old friend who's leaving the state, did I realize how far I'd gone. It was close. Too close. The pull of yarn and the desire to share my love of knitted things is stronger than I anticipated. I don't know precisely when or where the turning point was, but I knew I'd gone over the edge last year when I announced to my sister that I needed her to sneakily measure a sweatshirt from my brother's closet so I could knit a sweater for his 6'5", 220 pound frame. Maybe it was fate that pulled me back from the edge this year, perhaps some kind patron saintess of handcrafts decided that I couldn't be allowed to martyr myself and showed me the clock, reminding me I had other obligations this holiday season than to clothe every single relative, friend, and passing acquaintance in squishy warmth. Or maybe I just needed some distance from the stash. It's a rare occurence for me to spend more than an hour in such close proximity to the wool fumes these days. I'm not sure. All I know is that somehow I got away. Don't let it get to you, too. I'm off to grab an umbrella (the rain just decided it's TIME) so I can find buttons. My second gift knitting (for a recipient who reads the blog, so no pics) is done, all ends woven in.

Think I can whip out a hat on the plane ride home? I could do it on big needles. Maybe I'll just go peek in the stash...