Doubles

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.”

Mitten time

These are Susan Mills Mitered Mittens. It’s the 4th time I’ve knit them and they are tons ‘o fun to work up. I used Bluefaced Leicester Aran Prints by West Yorkshire Spinners. I’ve worked with this yarn before though not in this colorway. The patterning is reliably consistent. But it’s a worsted weight, not an Aran, to my way of thinking. Which made it perfect for this pattern.

These may look complicated but they’re easy–with one challenge (more on that later). They are knit flat in garter stitch.There’s one long seam on the edge opposite the thumb. And there’s a thumb seam on the inside of the thumb. Have you figured out yet how the mitten is formed? You work bottom up, through the thumb gusset. When the gusset’s complete you put the mitten stitches on a holder and complete knitting the thumb. With all the stitches back on the needle, you cast on stitches at each edge. Those stitches get “pulled in” by the centered double decrease–with some extra shaping at the top of the fingers–until the mitten is completed.

It’s totally fun and very ingenious.

About that one challenge: it’s keeping the double decrease centered. The instructions are to use a removable marker to clue you in on when to start the decrease. I’ve probably not confessed this before. I don’t get along well with removable stitch markers. I like to have my markers on my needles where they belong.

Keeping track of the mitered decreases wasn’t working for me until I ditched the suggested removable stitch marker. Instead, I put a “regular” stitch marker in place. Then I slipped the stitch before the marker, removed the marker, slipped the next stitch, knit the next stitch, passed the two slipped stitches over—and replaced the marker before the stitch just knit. Admittedly it’s a super clunky maneuver. And there’s the pesky problem of what to do with that stitch marker for the moment it takes to get it out of the way. Mostly I put the rubbery o-ring marker–don’t be grossed out–in my mouth. But at least I got my decreases in the right place. And I did wash the mitts before I put them into my gift stash.

I had enough yarn left to work up a sort of matching cap. It’s tincanknits Barley, with a sweet pompom added. Check here and here for other versions of Mitered Mittens. My only modification to the mittens was to work a 4″ cuff, which is a tad longer than the pattern suggests.

In this frigid cold and windy November and December, I’ve had lots of mittens on my needles. These next two pair are Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Mittens From the Top. I’ve been wanting to knit them for a long time. As is obvious from the name of the pattern, they’re knit from the top down. They are also knit flat in garter stitch.

I knit both this gold pair and the gray one below in Brown Sheep’s Lamb’s Pride Worsted. They are super warm. Exactly how warm? My brother’s stepson is a rural postal carrier. He chose this pair from my gift stash just before Christmas. Mr. Postman Nate has already asked if I can make him another pair because he “loves these things!”

We owe a lot to rural postal carriers. Another pair of mittens and maybe a matching hat is definitely something I want to do. Cold hands shouldn’t have to be part of the job. Nate is a non-knitter and he doesn’t know that camo ones would be a challenge. Plus I suspect what he most likes about these mittens is the warmth of the Lamb’s Pride mix of 85% wool 15% mohair. I’ve located some camo Aran weight wool yarn that might be warm enough. But I’m also considering simply knitting him a spare pair in some green-gray Lamb’s Wool I have in my stash.

Here’s that second pair of Mittens From the Top, this time in a nice heathered dark gray.

My pattern for this mitten is in Knit One, Knit All. I am fairly certain that my book version of this pattern has errors on the stitch count for the increases. You don’t get to the required 40 stitches at the top of the mitten with a k2, m1 worked all round. (Another Raveler has found the same problem.) This won’t make sense unless you’re working on the pattern, but at the end of the 1st increase, you need 18 stitches. After the 2nd increase you need 27. And after the 3rd one you’ll only get to the 40 required stitches if–when you get to the last 2 stitches–you k1, m1, k1. And I’m also fairly sure that you need to do the same at the last 2 stitches when you increase at the cuff to end up with the required 45 stitches.

I was really on a garter stitch mitten kick. I’ve knot nit oops not knit Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Sideways Mystery Mittens in a month of Sundays. So I had another go at this pattern, using Noro Silk Garden.

The way that the rows of color line up are the biggest clue for how these mittens are knit. The most I can say is that when you follow the instructions exactly as they are written you end up with a mitten. Really. The design of these is so odd that you end up losing confidence that a mitten can result. They’re not any kind of mitten until right at the very end. And then they are. Here’s another pair I’ve knit. Great fun!

If you have the time, consider knitting some mittens. Warm hands, warm heart. And I forgot to mention that each of these mittens fit either hand. You might even want to consider knitting them in sets of three because, of course, a day will come when one mitten decides to go AWOL.

Warm hands

I know. It’s June. My first excuse for knitting mittens is that it’s June in Michigan. This year that’s meant we’re still amid a good deal of chilly weather. My next excuse is that I don’t really have seasons for knitting. I knit year round. I knit a lot of accessories. That means you can often find me knitting mittens here in Michigan’s (sort of) “top of the mitt.”

This first pair is Susan Mills great two needle, knit-flat Mitered Mittens. It’s an excellent fun pattern. It was designed for the delightful, now discontinued, Classic Elite Liberty Wool. I totally enjoy knitting these in color-changing yarns. Here’s how the Liberty Wool worked out. This time I used Adriafil Knitcol. It’s a lightweight worsted, even close to a DK weight.

Sometimes it’s fun to see how these multi-colored yarns knit up, this time in relatively short rows of garter stitch.

Here’s a second pair. I used this skein of…brace yourself it’s a mouthful…West Yorkshire Spinners Blue-Faced Leicester DK Print.

And here’s the results.

I knit the second pair, the WYSBFLDKP version, in the small size and the Adriafil in the larger size. Both pair fit my large hands, more evidence of the highly forgiving nature of garter stitch.

The only tricky part of the mitt is likely a function of my well-documented removable stitch-marker disability. I’ve never gotten the hang of using one to mark the position of a decrease. So, instead of using the stitch marker to situate the mitered decrease, this is what I did. I put a “regular” ring stitch marker in place. Then, for the decreases, I slipped the stitch before the marker, removed the marker, slipped the next stitch, knit the next stitch, passed the two slipped stitches over—and replaced the marker before the stitch just knit. It’s a decidedly clunky maneuver, but at least I got all my decreases in the right place.

Next up is a totally fun freebie: Becky Greene’s Granny Glitten’s Mittens.

I knit this first pair in Plymouth Yarn Worsted Merino Superwash. I’ve always been happy with the stitch definition of this yarn. That’s important in a pattern of this sort, with smallish cables on the cuff and knits and purls forming the various patterns. Granny Glitten’s pattern resulted in a great fitting mitten.

This is a very folksy home-style pattern. It has a few of what I’d call quirks rather than mistakes in it. And a couple of minor errors that you’d figure out easily on your own. But this link is to my detailed Ravelry project notes in case you want to check them out.

Granny Glitten’s Mittens are great fun to knit. For me it’s the fact that the stitch patterns keep changing. No boring repetitions. I finished one pair and decided to knit a second straight away.

This time I used a decidedly unwintry shade of Sugar Bush Yarns Bold.

Again, a great fit.

I really have been on a mitten kick. This next pair is tincanknits Antler Mittens. The pattern calls for an Aran weight. I had a skein of Queensland Collection Brisbane. I was good on the stitch gauge (18 to 4 inches, in stockinette) using the recommended US size 8 needle. But my row gauge was off. As a result, these knit up super fast because I worked only 2 repeats (not 3) of the cable pattern after the thumb gusset even for this large size.

Sweet mitt. Good fit.

Lots of knitters turn to sock knitting for summer when they need a lightweight portable knit. Maybe give a thought to mittens as an alternative. Especially if you work your mittens in worsted weight these are quick rewarding knits.

Working even at a leisurely pace you’d have enough mittens for everyone come the holidays. That’s what I did when I was nine years old, sixty years ago. My mom gave me a pattern for 2-needle mittens and a supply of Red Heart yarn. And one pair of needles. I knit mittens for her, my dad, my two brothers, Gram, Pa, Aunt Joan, Uncle Hank, Uncle Lee, Aunt Dot, Walt, and my cousins. People acted as if they liked them. OK, probably not that boatload of rowdy boy cousins. Later, my mom took me to a real yarn shop and bought me one skein of yellow bulky weight yarn. She found a pattern and taught me to knit cables. I loved the feel of that yarn and those mittens. Something was different about that yarn, for sure. When we washed the mittens and threw them in the dryer I found out what it was. They shrank to ugly felted fists. I had discovered wool and my life-long obsession was set.

More cowls

Isn’t this a pretty one? It’s Kim Sequeira’s Earth Weave Cowl, a Ravelry freebie. The pattern calls for one skein of Malabrigo Rios and one skein of Noro Silk Garden. My, my. I had both in my stash. The Rios is the “apple green” colorway and, of course, the Noro is responsible for the color-changing blues and greens. This is a slip stitch cowl, a/k/a mosaic knitting. That means there only one color on each round.

Here’s another look.

Earth Weave Cowl is a fun knit and a great cowl. It has a tendency to flip over to its “wrong” (non-public) side when worn. But that’s not any big deal.

This next cowl, tincanknits Undertone, does the same flip-over. Again, no big deal. If the flip bothers the wearer, they can fold the cowl in half lengthwise. Presto! No flip.

Presto? I believe it’s been decades since I wrote, said or even heard anyone write or say that word. A bit of quick research reveals its origins are traced to the late 1500’s when conjuror patter incorporated the phrase from the Italian where it sort of meant “quickly.” OK. Enough digression.

I knit my Undertone, this time, mostly in oddments of String Theory DK. That’s the orange-red shade in the center section. The gold and the green are MadTosh DK left-overs. It’s a very satisfying knit. I’ve knit Undertone once before. (You’ll need to scroll down beyond a beauty of a wrap to see how my first Undertone worked out.) Here’s another view of my new one.

This next cowl is a rather new Ravelry freebie that I just couldn’t resist knitting. It’s loop knallerbse designed by Petra Peinze. I knit mine in Why Knot Fibers Stardust. My skein of Stardust is a beautiful gray fingering weight, with 5% stellina, 20% nylon, and 75% merino. The yarn is next-to-the-skin soft with no scratchiness from the silver sparkly stellina.

Your’re surprised by the shape, I assume. That’s what drew me to the pattern. How on earth would that shape work out? But it does.


Loop knallerbse is an excellent accessory for a blustery winter day. I’ve already gotten a good deal of wear out of it. Hopefully, by June or so, I’ll be able to pack it away for next winter!

Yowza and one thing leading to another

I’ve only rarely knit with Miss Babs. It always seemed like a lot of buck for the bang. But this set of 100% merino DK weight Yowza really captured me. And so did Boxes and Towers by Kirsten Kapur.

I am basically speechless, OK wordless, about how much I like this wrap.

I can’t get enough of looking at it and petting it.

I made very few modifications to the pattern. It calls for the knitter to cut the yarn and reattach the next color on each piece of the towers and boxes. Speaking of “yowza,” why would I do that and be left with all those ends to weave in? I didn’t cut the yarn except where new colors were needed in a new section. I carried the unused yarn up the side of the piece. It worked fine, including when I needed to pick up stitches along the side where the yarns twisted. When picking up stitches, I made sure to catch the float between the stitches, not merely the yarn being twisted along the edge. I was also careful to twist the yarn the same way each time, bringing the yarn I was using under the yarn I wasn’t using. I don’t know how necessary that was in this piece but I’m obsessive about such things. And I kept it loose and didn’t tighten up the yarn being carried.

The only other modification I made to the pattern was to increase the width of the edging a bit. I purled one round, knit one round, purled one round, and then worked the Icelandic bind-off–instead of picking up the stitches and immediately binding off. I did a yarn over at each side of the corner stitch on each of the three edge rounds.

Here’s another look at Boxes and Towers.

Yowza was wonderful to work with. No knots. No globby sections. The dye creates some heathering in the colorways, but there were no white blotches of undyed yarn. I’d use it again in a heartbeat. I liked working with it so much that I was determined to knit up every yard of it I could. Boxes and Towers required me to purchase six skeins of 200 yards each. The wrap used up about 800 yards. I needed to put that last 400 yards or so to good use. I had 28 grams left of Oakmoss (the green), Haydrick (the gold), Earthenware (the light burnt orange), and Slot Canyon (the light rosy shade). I had 20 grams left of Polished Stone (the gray), and 32 left of Sealpoint (the beige)–so, a total of 164 grams, about 400 yards.

I am really liking how my leftovers turned out.

Both the hat and the cowl are tincanknits knits from their “Mad Colours” book. The patterns are also downloadable on Ravelry. I just wanted to mention the book because I love to spell colors the wrong way, just like the Canadians and Brits. Just kidding. Live and let spell. The cowl is Undertone and the hat is the triangle version of their Prism hat.

I bet you spotted my little cheat–that spicey orange in the ribbing and alternating rows of the cowl. Yep, that’s not Yowza. It’s another oddment from my stash. It’s String Theory merino DK in the Rose Madder colorway. It really anchored the pieces, I think. It also left me enough Yowza to make an extravagant pompom.

Here’s another angle on the pompom, since knitters know that we knit in an era when you can work up some pretty elaborate hats and the first thing people say is…all together now…”I love the pompom.” Here’s another look at the pompom. It is a pretty good one.

Here’s a closer look at Undertone. It’s a quick, fun knit, with lots of potential for interesting color play.