Best wishes to all for a wonderful holiday season. I hope yours is filled with family, friends, yummy food, and lots of yarnie goodness!
If you’re interested in knitting a few of these baubles, check out Seven Chen’s freebie Spiral Tawashi on Ravelry. Chen has assigned this creation to the “cleaner/scrubber” category. That’s the perfect category if knit in the recommended Daruma “Cafe Kitchen” acrylic. The yarn “contains silver ions (Ag+)” that supposedly provides antibacterial and anti-smell properties. So says the manufacturer of the yarn, anyway. Seems a tall order given what a scrubber contends with. But, maybe. I knit mine in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted and stuffed the “scrubber” with polyfill. No kitchen duties for these scrubbers.
Such a festive touch on a holiday tree or even just sitting around in my Gram’s wooden bowl. The spirals on the tops and bottoms knit up perfectly and easily.
Goodness knows I have a LOT of oddments of Lamb’s Pride left over from my Gartergantuan.
Happy holidays to all!
P.S. So sorry for having to turn off the comments section. Because I really enjoy receiving your feedback. Something went haywire on my spam filter plug-in and…well…and. I’ll spare you the details. Having my son assist with a fix is definitely on my new year wish list.
This is my third in a series of posts on how the same yarn works up in different patterns. Maybe it’s getting old? But I’ll press on anyway.
This is Jared Flood’s Quincy. It’s the fourth time I’ve knit this pattern and this Quincy’s for me. Actually, I kept one prior Quincy but somehow it managed to escape from my hat drawer. It’s a seriously excellent pattern. It feeds my insatiable appetite for cool things to knit in garter stitch. I really enjoy knitting applied I-cord onto garter stitch fabric. And the interesting Robin Hood fold is great fun to knit–with directions that need to be followed closely but are spot on.
I knit this Quincy in Berroco Ultra Alpaca Chunky. In the past I’ve knit this hat mostly in Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky. It looks great in the Brown Sheep. But the Berroco yarn is a better match in terms of yardage. It was close, but I was able to knit it with one 100 gram skein (131 yards). It would have been a knuckle-biter on yardage but I’d purchased two skeins just to be on the safe side.
The alpaca in the Berroco yarn makes this Quincy more drapey than in the more sturdy Brown Sheep. I like it anyway. And this version is super cozy and very warm.
Here’s a look at the beauty of a crown. A simple graceful pinwheel.
So with that extra skein of Ultra Alpaca begging to be knit, I looked for another bulky hat pattern. I’d been meaning to knit Fernhill again. It’s a freebie from Kate Gagnon Osborne included in Kelbourne Woolens Year of the Bulky Hat series. I knit my first version in a color-changing skein of Hayfield Spirit Chunky. It actually worked up quite nicely. (More on my first Fernhill later in this post.) But a more tame version called to me.
The Berroco Ultra Alpaca knit as this gauge doesn’t have great stitch definition. But I’m still pleased with the result. Since it’s already disappeared from my pick-your-gift stash, I declare it a success.
The crown decreases create almost a snowflake look, especially knit in this natural colorway.
Fernhill is a dainty yarn-eater. It used only 80 grams of yarn and left me with a small but still useful amount of Ultra Alpaca. I decided to knit some sheep.
I knit my sheep from the pattern in Bonnie Gosse’s and Jill Allerton’s A First Book of Knitting For Children. It’s a delightful one-piece knit that an experienced knitter can knit in an hour or two. It’s also a great first project for a new knitter. Such a sweet result.
Finally, as promised, here’s my first version of Fernhill knit in Hayfield Spirit Chunky. Somehow I managed to miss posting the project on my blog before this. It’s a completely different look with somewhat better stitch definition.
The crown snowflake still forms though here it’s obscured some by how the color change worked out.
I’ve had great fun knitting “stuff” out of the same yarn. But if you’ve grown tired of my fascination with the subject, I can say now:
This hat was a pleasure to knit. I’d had a few not-great knits preceding it. The comfort and rhythm of a well-designed pattern was very welcome. It’s a Knitty freebie: Erica Jackofsky’s Minty. I’d seen Minty pop up on various Ravelry forums for years. Recently I finally knit it. I used Plymouth Yarns Worsted Merino Superwash Solid. Great hat design with a lot of flexibility in how it can be worn.
Until I downloaded and read the pattern I was a tad put off by the I-cord side bow. But it’s actually an exceptionally good way to have this hat create its side gathers. You knit two yarn-over columns spaced equidistant in the body of the hat. Once you complete the crown, you knit a length of I-cord and thread it through the yarn overs. No welts to knit. Wearers can decide how extravagant they want the gathers to be.
The colorwork in the crown decreases is easy peasy. No longish expanses between colors mean no floats to catch. This was the first hat that my very stylish 30-something niece chose from my pick-your-hat stash. She was choosing for her two sisters as well. But this one she laid claim to immediately and wore around my house and eventually out the door.
Lately I’m trying hard to use up (basically) all the yarn I’m working with. After completing one accessory project I’ve been casting on for another in the same yarn. It’s a hoot to see the same yarn knit in different patterns. And I don’t end up with a bunch of oddments.
Next up is another pattern I’ll definitely be knitting again: Joji Locatelli’s Odd Stripes hat.
This hat is another easy knit. Two-row stripes. At one point in the round you change to reverse stockinette instead of stockinette. The effect is very pleasing. And the crown decreases retain the half /n half look. Sometimes simple things really are the best.
And if you weave the yarn tails in carefully you’ll have a completely reversible hat.
Next up is Melanie Berg’s Rainy Day set, both hat and fingerless mitts. I knit my set in yarn that’s been in my stash since 2017. It’s Lux Adorna’s 100% cashmere sport, now discontinued. I was saving the yarn for some special knit even though I’d purchased it during a shop closing and it was marked down very substantially. I finally decided now was the time and this was the pattern.
Obviously this is another very simple pattern. I wouldn’t have bothered with it but for what Berg calls the “starburst” detail. I see it as a rosette but, whatever, that detail was too hard to resist.
Here’s the starburst close up.
Here’s another look at the hat.
With its whirlwind crown.
Berg’s pattern is completely sweet. I’ve knit the mitts once before (see the second half of the post). It’s definitely a pattern worth a repeat knit. If I knit the mitts or the hat again I wouldn’t use such a limp version of cashmere. Even after a thorough soak the hat just doesn’t seem to have the oomph I’d expect.
I gave the same yarn another go in Classic Ribbed Hat, a Purl Soho freebie.
The one-by-one rib helped the yarn deliver a tad more body. A tad. I might have overdone it on the slouch though.
My plan was to knit a deep folded cuff to help keep ears cozy warm. Word to the wise (I wasn’t), figure out where that fold will end up before you knit wide stripes. Or maybe just follow the Purl Soho pattern for stripe placement and all will be well. My version sort of works even as a cuffed ribbed hat though. But if the brim is going to look right it will take more precision than most wearers will want to bother with.
Again, well-behaved crown decreases. All my fashionista fellow-knitter niece needed to hear was “cashmere” and she was “all in” on these hats. They show off her magenta-streaked dark hair quite nicely.
