Spiral Hat

Our knitting guild is involved in the 25,000 Tuques initiative. One hat for every refugee coming to our cold country. I can't imagine having to endure a first winter here when you come from a hot country. Let alone all the other problems they are facing. So I'm taking up Jed's suggestion and applying spiral stripes to my hats. I am diving into my stash for all those little odd balls of yarn that are left over from previous projects.

Here it is:  get 4 colours of yarn, small odd balls, 5.0mm/US8 circular needle (40cm/16" long).
Small Child sized Hat. It works for any size of hat.

With Colour 1, Cast On 72 sts with Worsted weight or Heavy Worsted weight yarn. Place Marker and join in the round.

Work a Brim in 1x1, 2x2 rib or whatever you like. I knit 4 rounds and then purled 1 round.

Body
In next round place 2 more Markers. You need to divide your work into 1 less section than you have colours. I have 4 colours so divide my hat into 3 equal sized sections with the Markers.
Next Round: K24, Place Marker, K24, Place Marker, knit to end of round.

Stripes:
Here we go. DO NOT TWIST stitches as you change colours. I finished here with light gray, now I'm picking up the Dark Gray which was waiting there for me.

I'm going to knit with the Dark Gray. The colours are not twisted around each other.
Here's my latest hat:

And at the change of colour:

Here we go:
Round 1:  With Colour 2, knit to first Marker, slip Marker, with Colour 3 knit to next Marker, slip Marker, with Colour 4 knit to end of round.

Round 2:  With Colour 1 knit to first Marker, with Colour 2 knit to next Marker, with Colour 3 knit to end of round.

Round 3:  With Colour 4 knit to first Marker, with Colour 1 knit to next Marker, with Colour 2 knit to end of round.

Round 4:  With Colour 3 knit to first Marker, with Colour 4 knit to next Marker, with Colour 1 knit to end of round.

Every time you come to a Marker the colour you need to knit next is right there waiting for you. You will not be able to see where the colour changes are made. It's a fun knitting trick!

Work the Crown in your normal way. If you don't have one, here's one:
Divide your knitting into 8 sections and place markers. For this hat, 72 sts divided by 8 is 9 sts.
Marker Round:  *K9, Place Marker; repeat from * to end of round.
Decrease Round:  *Knit to 2 sts before Marker, K2tog; repeat from * to end of round.
Next Round:  Knit.
Repeat last 2 rounds until 8 sts remain. Cut yarn and thread through 8 sts, cinch up and secure. You're done.

Enjoy,
Deb

Can't Stop Spiral Stripes

Having fun with stripes. I've done 3 pairs now and I can't seem to stop. Help!
First pair.

Second Pair already given away to a grateful sock wearer. 

Third pair, have run out of most of light gray so picked up some blue. This system of spiral stripes works much better with a traditional heel flap. Happier with these.

Since I can't stop I'm scrounging around for more part balls of worsted weight yarn. But I'm going to switch to hats for charity. I can use even more little bits of yarn. Yay.
-Deb
P.S. Thanks CathyK.

Spiral around and around.

No more snow but now I'm hot on the trail of Christmas knitting. I'm knitting socks. No not in sock wool, that would be crazy! I'm thinking worsted weight boot socks are much more practical to be knitting with only 23 days to go. And after all I can't be 100% sure my daughter's boyfriend will wear them. But if you're going to be part of our family, wearing knitting is required. One men's pair done.

Now I'm working on a pair of coloured socks in 3 colours. All the colours spiral up the sock.

This is what I did. I divided my sock into 2 sections, the Top of foot and the Bottom of foot. First I knit across the Top of the foot in Dark Gray, dropped the wool. Knit across Bottom of foot with Pink, dropped the wool. Knit across Top of foot with the 3rd colour, Light Gray. All  3 colours are now engaged. (On the Top of foot I have a Dk Gray stripe and a Lt Gray stripe.)

At the end of this needle, I drop the Lt Gray wool I just knit with. The Dk Gray wool is very conveniently waiting there from the previous stripe. Pick up the Dk Gray wool and knit across Bottom of foot. On and on, around and around, picking up the new colour wool that is conveniently sitting there to knit across the next needle.

The trick, and you know there always is always a trick, is NOT twist your colours when you change colours.

I want the Dk Gray stripe to continue across the new needle for a stripe above the pink. This is way more confusing than it is to work. This is where I changed colours. No break in the stripe. No jog because the stripes just continue to spiral around. I think I love this.

I've done these socks from the toe up but it would work much better from the cuff down because of the heel. So for the next pair I'm coming down from the top with a traditional heel flap and gusset. I think I could use up a lot of odds and ends this way.

Deb

Knitting with my first cup of coffee

Today started out really well. By 8am I was sitting on my couch with my first cup of coffee knitting a sock and looking at the snow outside. It's finally winter. The snow boarders are jubilant. It snowed and snowed and snowed. I love it. Even though I have shoveled the driveway 3 times and the power went out 5 times so far, it's still beautiful.

It was looking like a Christmas card out there. The air was crisp, the flakes were falling and the sound of snow blowers filled the air.

It put me in the Christmas spirit. For the last couple of years I have not been knitting much for gift giving but this year I feel the urge. I started a pair of socks last night and today given one more hour to knit I will have turned the heel. I'm working on the theory that a pair of boot socks (in DK or worsted weight yarn) can be done in one week. How many weeks before the big day? Just checked the calendar and there are 4 more weeks. Now to decide who gets socks! Wait, aren't mittens even faster. How many of those can I do in a week. Hmm.

Are you knitting for Christmas?
Deb
PS: Sharon, I also think of Purple as a neutral along with Navy Blue, two of my favs.

Blocking before the end.

Blocking, do you ever do it before you finish the sweater?

I put my Panel cardigan worked with Twisted Stitches from the Need A Plus Cardigan book on my adjust-to-size mannikin and was less than impressed since I was really careful about the gauge and thought I had it perfect. It was looking like I was going to have to work a really wide buttonband to bridge the gap in the front.

And the twisted stitches were pulling the back in quite a bit.

So I decided I would give it a soak and let it dry and see where I was.

I think I could hear my sweater saying "ahhhh, at last". It relaxed a whole lot. It looks so much better. The back Panel has relaxed and hangs straight.

The front is going to be fine once I do the buttonband. The next time I block with the buttonband in place the Front Panels will relax even more. Now I'm excited to get finished so I can wear it.

And it's RED. Just imagine the lift to my purple/blue wardrobe.
-Deb

Discomfort vs Results

How far are you willing to go for the result you want? I'm not into discomfort when I knit, at least not usually, but I took the plunge for the results this time.

A top down sweater with different coloured panels. This is a testknit for the new children's book. It's going to look great. While knitting the yoke I had 7 balls of yarn hanging from my sweater, one for each section: buttonband, front, sleeve, back, sleeve, front and second buttonband. Ugh. After a couple of rows they did settle down into some semblance of order but I was still in a tangle most of the time. I did figure out that if I lined them up and turned my sweater a certain way at the end of the row the tangle was more manageable. I was thankful I only had to do about 6" of yoke for a 4 year old size.

How to decide to take the plunge? I knew it would look great when I was done. I knew it would not be a comfortable, sit in front of the TV kind of knit. I also knew it was only for the yoke. Knowing all that, it was totally worth it. I would do it again. That's the real test of discomfort vs. results.

Here's a finished adult size:

Worth it, right?
Deb

Retreating

We had a wonderful time retreating. An odd word don't you think? Retreating from our regular life I guess?! There was knitting talk at breakfast, knitting and learning time, knitting talk at lunch, more knitting, knitting talk at dinner and finally knitting in our PJs. Isn't that your everyday life? Ha, ha.

We knit cowls. Lots of cowls. Look at all those finished projects. Most went home with a new cowl ready to wear and thoughts on what they were going to do on their next one.

They were all a little different since each knitter choose which of the 4 stitch patterns they wanted to knit. They had a couple of cast ons and neck edgings to choose from: cast on with beads or without, cast on with I-cord, add an edge with a twist. We nicknamed a new cast on "My way, your way", a variation of the long tail cast on where you can put in beads. More on this in a future post.

We also tackled that lovely phrase which I know you love to see "incorporate the increases into your stitch pattern". They were fearlessly.

A great weekend. Looking forward to our next 2 retreats in April.

Deb