Red hat days

Recently I noticed that I’ve been knitting a lot of red hats. Not that it’s been red red red all in a row. But I looked over my “knits4blog” file and found an abundance of red hats that I’d not yet featured.

This first one is the great Wooly Wormhead’s freebie, Meret, left free to be a beanie instead of a beret. That’s just a matter of not blocking it as a beret. My Meret is knit in Malabrigo Rios in the Cereza colorway. It’s a rich red with undertones of almost black. My apologies if that sounds wine-connoisseur-silly (“woody, with a hint of apricot and mushrooms”). But then lots of us are yarn connoisseurs in this robust knitting universe.

I was a smidge disappointed that the crown decreases turned out rather porous. It’s not beyond the pale though that sometimes we might need an air conditioned beanie.

Next up is yet another version of Jesie Ostermiller’s Portsmouth Beanie. This is such an excellent unisex hat pattern. This time I knit it in Anzula’s For Better or Worsted. 80% merino, 10% nylon, and 10% cashmere. This is the Watermelon colorway. I’m pretty sure it’s the 10% cashmere that keeps me reaching for this hat when I’m looking for cozy.

I’m frugal enough that I very much enjoy knitting multiples of purchased patterns. Six dollars for three hats–with likely more in the future–would please even my rubber-band-saving grandmother.

What would especially tickle Gram is that I knit this version in yarn I frogged from a prior, less successful, hat. I unraveled the hat, wound the yarn onto my swift, tied it in a few places, and then steamed it. That did an excellent job of unkinking the yarn and saved me the trouble of washing and reskeining it.

Here’s another version of Galina Shemchuk’s excellent freebie, Just a Hat. It’s a somewhat new hat pattern that’s drawn a lot of attention with 450 project pages in just a few years. There’s a lot to like about the pattern. Unisex. Very forgiving size-wise. Tidy crown decreases. And free.

 

I knit my Just a Hat in Malabrigo Rios using the Desert Rose colorway. This hat seems to look especially nice knit in a yarn, like Rios, with shading and depth to make the hat’s furrows furrow just right.

This next hat is Hill Country Hat by Clara Parks, the only bulky weight in this post. It’s part of her “Knitters’ Book of Wool” but the pattern’s been released as a freebie.

I’ve knit Hill Country (ahem) eight times and already posted this hat’s predecessors. If you search on this blog you’ll find them all and be able to see the interesting stitch choices that make this bulky-weight a standout. What makes my latest version different is my unusual yarn choice: Lana Grossa’s Fusione. If you want to give it a try in this yarn, I’ll just wish you luck because it’s discontinued. Personally, I liked its 30% cotton, 26% alpaca, 25% wool, 19% nylon mix, for some purposes anyway. Very cozy. But I didn’t like it’s-time-to-take-out-a-mortgage price. And then I bumped into a huge markdown on the stuff and I was all in. This Hill Country wiped out my stash though.

Admittedly, not the best choice if you’re looking for stitch definition. But it will keep some head totally warm.

Last up is another Maria Socha beauty: Rioska. Mine is knit in Sugar Bush Yarn’s Bold, unfortunately another discontinued yarn. It’s a worsted weight with excellent stitch definition. I’ve often knit with solid shades of Bold. This was the first time I used a variegated shade: Rose Garden. I was concerned that the mock cable details would be overwhelmed by a too busy yarn. But I’ve decided that the result is excellent.

So pretty, including Socha’s trademark well-planned crown decreases.

Second chances

This is my Swarf, half scarf half cowl. It’s an interesting Cecelia Compochiaro design included in Modern Daily Knitters Field Guide#19.  A lot of knitters–possibly recalling the “dickies” of yesteryear–have enjoyed the knitting and the wearing of Swarf. Swarf is sort of a dickie on steroids.

Swarf was my first formal venture into marling, the technique where a knitter combines two strands of different colors that evolve in sequence as the garment evolves.

That’s ribbing on Swarf’s back including where it looks like a mixture of Kraft Spaghettios and Kraft Macaroni. Compochiaro gives lots of hints about how to decide what colors will look good marled together. I guess I fell asleep during that part. That dark gray and yellow wasn’t helping out the overall look either.

I was disappointed. My beautiful Camp Colors Fingering Weight yarn set had turned into a mess. More of a Scowl (half scarf half cowl) than a Swarf.

Before:

After:

Except for the Spagettios section, it didn’t look too bad worn. But the wearing of Swarf was a pain. I had a lot of trouble getting the back to lay flat and unruffled and to stay that way. I’m sure the rounding of my upper back wasn’t helping. It also moved around some in the front. And anyway, I was mourning for my beautiful yarn and those deep saturated colors.

Time to frog. Even though the yarn spent only a few days in my Swarf, it was tightly kinked. I was defeated by the thought of soaking the yarn to relax the kinks and daunted by the thought of drying it. Ernestine, one of my guildmates, suggested that I wind the yarn onto my swift, tie it in a few places, and steam it. That turned out to be an excellent idea. It didn’t release every stinkin’ kink, mostly because I was concerned that too much steam might damage the yarn. But the technique worked really well. I could watch the yarn relax as I steamed.

My yarn was ready for its second chance. Samantha West’s excellent freebie, Diagonal Lines Hat, looked like a good candidate.

Pretty nifty. And a fun knit. The diagonal lines section is easy peasy stranded work, with no long floats to catch. The only modification I made was in the ribbing section. I separated the ribbed stripes by one round of all knitted stitches. That eliminated those half-one-color-half-the -other purl stitches and kept the stripes crisply defined.

Nicely behaved crown decreases. No pointy hat syndrome.

While knitting Diagonal Lines, I discovered that the almost-black dark gray was bleeding like crazy. It dyed my stitch markers and my white Bryspun needles. And my hands and fingers, of course. Unfortunate. I decided to steam the hat rather than do a wet block. Dollars to donuts the dark dye will bleed all over the other colors at the first washing. “Color Catcher” will hopefully come to the rescue.

I’ll need to not give this hat to Steve. Sweating might make it look like he’s tattooed a skullcap on his bald head. With that, I decided that my 50 grams of black (yet unused) and the remaining dark gray would be relegated to my stash for sewing facial feature on stuffies.

The remaining colors, light gray, medium gray, yellow, and burnt orange, were still looking to claim their second chance.

Next up is another Samantha West freebie: A Little Alien Hat.

Steve is my test for whether non-knitters will be able to make out a knitted motif. He earned that role after I asked him whether he could see what picture was knitted (at a very tight gauge) into a hat. He looked and said he saw skeletons dancing on gravestones. It was actually a castle with pennants flying from turrets. Steve looked at my completed hat and quickly said it was the Roswell Alien.

Success!

I added stripes to the ribbing and changed colors about an inch before the crown decreases started just because, well, because I had lots of colors. I planned to knit the aliens in yellow rather than burnt orange but there wasn’t enough contrast between the yellow and the gray to make the motif pop. I added one extra round of salt ‘n pepper bands to frame the alien section. I also shortened the hat to eliminate the folded ribbing, starting the crown decreases 6.5 inches from the cast-on edge (as in Diagonal Lines).

West uses the same crown decreases here as in Diagonal Lines.

I had smallish amounts of yellow and orange left in my Camp Colors’ stash and the medium gray. I’ve knit Melinda Vermeer’s Bayfront Cap nine times before and thought it would be a good choice for the yarn.

Bayfront didn’t disappoint. At first it just looks like an interesting take on a ribbed hat, with 3 by 3 ribbing that widens out to 3 by 9 in the body of the hat. Then you get to the crown decrease section.

Gulp. Every time I knit this very organic-looking crown I’m reminded again about how much I love to knit hats.

Dish towels

These are not dishcloths. These are… dishtowels so stop your tsk tsking.  More uses for kitchen cotton. More uses for slip stitch/mosaic knitting. More patterns by Amy Marie Vold.

This is Cannery Rows. It’s part of Vold’s Pickling, Canning, Preserving e-book or can be purchased separately. I knit mine in Paintbox Yarns Cotton Aran. My sense is that Cotton Aran is an almost middle ground between Lily’s Sugar ‘n Creme’s rustic feel and the more refined KnitPicks Dishie. But Dishcloth cotton all.

My younger brother and one of his daughters requested these. Here’s the these.

And a closer look at the big-red-jar one:

Great pattern.

Some of my kin have sworn off automatic dishwashers. Well, maybe one of us doesn’t have one. And the other prefers not to use theirs. All those tussels as kids about who was going to wash and who was going to dry, and now this. Life is long. Truth be told, the absorbency of kitchen cotton–even after multiple trips through the washer and the dryer–isn’t the best for drying dishes. So my family doesn’t actually use these as dishtowels. These heavy cloths make excellent (and stylish) landing pads for freshly washed draining/drying dishes.

There’s another of my Cannery Rows to check out here, late in my post on red knits.

These next two DK weight towels are an experiment. I’d never knit in hemp or in flax and I wanted to give both a try.

This is Vold’s Tumbling Blocks Cowl. It’s available separately or as part of a Cleaning Blocks e-book. I knit my Tumbling Blocks in Elsebeth Lavold’s Hempathy. Hempathy is 41% cotton, 34% hemp, 25% rayon.

Here’s how it looked just off the needles, before I tossed it in the washer and then threw it in the dryer:

Nice. A little floppy feeling. 12 inches wide by 17 inches long, worked exactly the number of repeats the pattern called for. I was satisfied with the blocks but was underwhelmed by Hempathy. It was easy to knit with. But it seemed too loosey goosey. And that reminds me of the unfortunate news that very untidy Canada Geese pairs are, even as I write this, stomping around on the lake ice demanding spring.

Before I frolic off to plan my goose defenses, here’s a look at my Tumbling Blocks after washing and drying.

It bloomed! And the feel of the fabric is wonderful. Not floppy. Not scratchy. The final dimensions of the towel are 11 inches by 15 inches. So washing and drying caused the yarn to pull in 1 inch in width and 2 in length. I knew something would happen. But still this surprised me. Not only did the dimensions change, the block pattern crisped up.

Next up, same pattern different yarn. This is FibraNatura DK Flax. The ball band said “100% linen/flax.” Flax is the name of the plant and linen is the name of the fabric produced by the plant, so says this informative Noble Knits article. As compared to my Hempathy version, this Tumbling Blocks was a disappointment just off the needles.

The pattern was indistinct. The fabric was more floppy and undisciplined as compared to Hempathy. Unwashed and undried the towel was 13 inches by 16 inches.

But check out the “after” photo:

The fabric bloomed in a way that really made the blocks pop. The final dimensions of the towel are 12 inches by 18 inches.

FibraNatura Flax was quite different from working with Hempathy. Even less yielding. A little harder on the hands. As I knit, some fluff was fluffing off and I found myself sneezing sometimes. It had looked pretty sad coming of the washing machine and I was impatient to see what was happening. So I checked on the towel after about 5 minutes of drying. Shed fiber filled the lint collector. I emptied the collector three times before the drying was complete.

I was happy that I thought to wash and dry the towel only with blue jeans. Mark this down as a most prodigious shedder. I’m thinking that will calm down a lot with subsequent washing and drying. I hope so. Otherwise one day I’ll put it in the dryer and it will have disappeared like the Cheshire Cat.

‘All right,’ said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone. Alice In Wonderland.