Tag Archives: Nici Griffin

Doubles

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Here’s Barley. It’s part of tincanknits wonderful Simple Collection, a freebie set of patterns aimed at beginning knitters. The patterns work equally well for experienced knitters looking for a relaxing rewarding knit. This is Barley the hat, not to be confused with Grain the shawl, Harvest the cardigan, Maize the fingerless mitts, Rye the socks, Oats the cowl, Flax the pull-over sweater, Malt the blanket, or Wheat the scarf. The patterns come in multiple sizes and are designed for worsted weight. But some of the patterns, including the hat, the pullover and the socks, also have lightweight versions.

It’s such a generous gift to the knitting universe. I knit this Barley in excellent worsted weight with possibly the longest name in the knitting universe: West Yorkshire Spinners Bluefaced Leicester Aran Prints. It’s the Blue Tit colorway.

Aptly named.

Here’s a look at the crown decreases complete with a pompom.

Why knit doubles? It’s a legitimate question for sure. I enjoy seeing how the same pattern knits up in different yarns. And if a pattern reliably produces a good result, I enjoy that predictability. I will especially retreat into that predictability if I’ve just finished a knit that I’m not completely satisfied with.

So, next up is Barley knit again, this time in Dark Pink from Novita 7 Veljesta Solid.

Here’s another look at Barley’s crown, this time not obscured by a pompom.

Neat and organized as any good crown should be. Barley gives a new knitter the chance to practice garter stitch in the round. It also builds skills in terms of learning to read your knitting.

Next up is Nici Griffin’s Escape Beanie. There’s a cowl and fingerless mitts that complete the set if you’re into sets. Personally I’ve always favored a mishmash look in my handknits. But lately this aged hippie is starting to see the value of sets.

This first Escape is knit in Shalimar Yarns Breathless DK. Drat. Yet another wonderful yarn you can’t buy anymore: 75% merino, 15% cashmere, 10% silk. I unraveled a little-used small shawl and knitted up part of the yarn in this Escape.

Here’s another Escape, this time knit in Schachenmayr Merino Extrafine 120, another excellent DK weight yarn. This DK is beefier than Breathless. I needed 54 grams of yarn and only had 50 grams of the Royal colorway. You probably spotted right away what my solution was.

Here’s a closer look at its bullseye top.

I’m actually quite satisfied with my solution. Before changing colors, I knit one round so that I’d avoid any of those half-one-color-half-another stitches. That round fades nicely into the pattern. No worries. Embracing one’s lemons can yield good results.

Next up is yet another in a series of Just a Hat‘s I’ve knit. It’s such an excellent unisex hat, a freebie from Galina Shemchuk. Shemchuk’s pattern used to be downloadable on Ravelry and savable to your Rav library. No more. Fairly recently she took the unusual step of photographing the pattern and adding it to the project page in that form. A little odd, but it works.

I knit this Just a Hat, my 5th, in Sugar Bush Yarn’s Bold. This is the Sultry Dusk colorway. Some skeins of this excellent superwash worsted may still be available for purchase, especially in the variegated colorways. But it too is now discontinued.

One more double today. My 6th Just a Hat, this time knit in Viking of Norway Raggen, another superwash worsted. Good news. Raggen isn’t discontinued. When it happens, this knitter won’t mourn its passing though. I found it splitty and sometimes the plies even unraveled as I knit. Maybe I got a defective skein. Two skeins, actually.

Nice hat, though. And in a hat maybe Raggan won’t pill as badly as it’s pilling in a pair of socks I knit with it. Just in case you want to see a solid color crown, have a gander.

Did I really just use the word gander? No, we will not talk about geese, ganders, or goslings on this blog. It’s almost mid March. I’ve already seen Canada Geese overhead no doubt scouting out places to land and nest. “Nothing to see here…move along, move along.”

Almost warm hands

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The current series of blog posts is focusing on hands. OK. The last one and this one is not exactly a series. But on this little blog, it’s close. My last post was all about mittens. This one is all about mittens that are missing their fingertips. They’re almost as warm as mittens.

These are Aimee Alexander’s Farm to Market Mitts. I’ve posted about Farm to Market a number of times, since this is the 7th pair I’ve knit. This time I used Plymouth Yarn’s DK Merino Superwash. The yarn has great stitch definition even in its DK version.

These are totally fun to knit. At one point in the cabling you need to use two cable needles. But don’t be daunted by that. It’s easy peasy. You will be putting one set of stitches on a front cable and another set on a back cable, and you simply work the cables in the order the pattern directs. The palms of the mitts are stockinette.

The instructions are arranged very helpfully, with both line-by-line and charts. Plus an extra chart tells you what round of the cable chart you should be on as the mitt progresses through the thumb gusset increases. Very useful for keeping a distracted knitter from goofing up.

Next is a new pattern to me, Nici Griffin’s Escape Mittens. I used the same Plymouth Yarn DK Merino Superwash.

The mitts took only 44 grams of yarn and worked up totally cute! They look kind of shrimpy off my hands. But even my large hands fit very comfortably in them because the stitch pattern is super stretchy.

Excellent pattern, very clearly written, with both charted and line-by-line instructions.

Sensibly, the palms of the mitts are smooth stockinette.

Today I’m apparently in a tell-it-in-purple world. The next pair is Clara Parkes’s Maine Morning Mitts. A freebie.

I didn’t think I had enough yarn to finish these in my purple leftover Queensland Brisbane, a lightweight bulky. So I started with wine colored Brisbane. It worked out rather cute.

Off the hand, these guys look a bit like two Saguaro cacti. Skinny. Ungainly. Prickly. But slip your hands into them and they stretch to wonderfully cozy.

You probably already know the little trick for keeping your ribbing color changes nice and crisp?  If you just join the new color and rib away the first round will have half ‘n half stitches (half one color, half the next) in the purl sections. But if you knit all the stitches of one round in the new color, and then start ribbing, you avoid the dreaded split-color purl stitches.

Yesterday it was 93 here. Today’s almost as hot. Much of the United States is suffering under dangerously high temperatures. And I’m writing to you about how to keep your hands warm in chilly weather. Think cool. Knit warm.