Sport team hats

There are sports fans galore lingering near or in the knitting universe. I’ve got some young Buffalo Bills fans who asked for hats. This one is an easy peasy freebie: Beka Inman’s “Go Steelers.” Clearly Steeler black and gold was not going to cut any mustard. I searched around on the Bills’ website and found quite a collection of high-priced knit hats. I felt pretty smug that I could knit at least a pair, with yarn to spare, from a few skeins of Plymouth Encore.

To help match the team’s color, I downloaded this from its website:

Those Pantone colors sure get around. Too bad the yarn manufacturers don’t do Pantone even on their solids. I got a great match on the blue. The red? Not so much. But the Bills fan kids are still well satisfied with their “Go Bills!” beanie.

All together now: That is a really great pompom. The trick, which isn’t much a trick, is using the Clover Pompom maker and winding it very full with yarn. You should barely be able to swing its arms to the closed position before you stop winding. And to get multi color poms, you simply cut off one color and start winding with another. I like to have the colors end up in blocks so I group the colors together on the winding arms.

A good serviceable hat. And knit in Encore it’s easy care, though the pompom always presents a care challenge.

This next sports helmet is Carol A. Anderson’s pattern from pages 6-7 of Cottage Creations booklet R18, “More Projects for the Community and Family.” The entire booklet is downloadable via Ravelry. Or you can be old school and buy the pattern booklet direct from Cottage Creations or from the many local yarn shops that stock the booklets.

At the color change rounds, I first knit a full round in the new color. Even though the helmet is K2, P2 ribs, knitting (with no purling) the first round of the color change works just fine. The knit round nicely melts into the ribbing and you avoid any of the dreaded half-one-color, half-another-color purl stitches. The stripes are 3 rounds white, 3 rounds red (or the reverse)–including the first round in all knit–with 8 rounds of blue (again, with the first round in all knit).

This one is warm for sure. If the wearer needs to accommodate glasses or ski goggles, just work a few extra rounds after the mid-round bind-off before casting on again for the home stretch.

It’s getting close to the main US sport team seasons. Plus the kiddos are headed back to real school, COVID permitting. Time to get your needles clicking.

Patterns revisited

This is Aimee Alexander’s Antonia’s Scarf. I knit it in the now-discontinued Classic Elite Song. Song is a DK weight mix of 50% cotton, 50% wool. I wish I’d have discovered Song before Classic Elite did its swan dive. It’s excellent yarn. The feel is more cotton than wool.

I’ve knit this scarf  twice before, both times in Noro Yuzen. Even if you don’t know Yuzen, you’ll assume it’s many-colored (and you’d be correct). My Noro versions shout “look at me.” Song, by contrast, produced a subdued, calm scarf that just nestles into your coat and keeps your neck cozy.

One of the fun things about Antonia’s Scarf is that it knits up super fast. That triple wrap stitch eats yarn like crazy and adds three-quarters of an inch in two shakes of lamb’s tail.

This next repeat performer is Cecelia Compochiaro’s Swirl Hat, from Mason-Dixon’s Field Guide No 5. I knit it in my last remaining bits of Classic Elite Fresco. Fresco is, well was, a wonderful 60% Wool, 30% Alpaca, 10% Angora sportweight. I even added a machine-made pom-pom this time. Somehow the halo of the angora inspired me on that.

Great hat. Again (head to the end of the post). Such an interesting sequence knitting design. You just keep knitting the same sequence of knits and purls, each round, adjusting the stitch count at the start of a round every once in awhile. Surprisingly, the purl bumps zig first one way and then the opposite way. I didn’t understand much about why or how it worked the first time I knit it. And the light bulb didn’t go on the second time either. But it does work.

I had only 80 yard of worsted weight Rhichard Devrieze Fynn left after completing a recent project. Fynn is expensive enough that I’d saved my two skeins for years until the pandemic came along and I started to wonder what I was saving it for. After knitting myself a pair of bedsocks (yes, bedsocks), I set to looking for a pattern that would make good use of my remaining 80 yards.

Seventy-eight yards is all it took to knit myself one of the headbands from Knitwise Design’s Rugged Trail Headbands.

I’ve already found reason to wear this during the chilliest of these recent sunny late winter days. Great yarn, if you can forgive short yardage (175) and a major price tag.

Someone asked if my helmet/facemask could do any coronavirus duty. No. Too porous. But come next winter this helmet, knit in easy-care Plymouth Encore, will keep someone very warm. Three of my helmets are already hard at work on that task.

The pattern is from Carol A. Anderson’s a/k/a Cottage Creations R18 booklet “More Projects for the Community and Family.” Here’s the BIG Cottage Creations news. Almost every booklet in the Cottage Creations catalog, even the discontinued ones, are now available for download and purchase on Ravelry. Such great news!

No post on repeat performers of mine would be complete without including my newest Fetchings. These three sets of mitts are knit in my favorite yarn for this pattern: Noro Silk Garden. Unless you can find it on sale, it’s a splurge for a quick knit. But oh the colors!

These are my 8th, 9th, and 10th Fetching. Yep, I have a major stutter going when it comes to this pattern. My ten Fetchings posted on Ravelry contribute to the 21,216 total finished projects. I typically knit them just as Cheryl Niameth’s 2007 pattern directs. Some knitters lengthen the mitts some before binding off. Some work the bind-off to tame the bit of ruffle. But I find all the features somehow endearing.