Knits

—Warning: extremely long post!—

I’ve been knitting. A lot. I just haven’t written about it. After knitting the giant kitty for my friends, I started knitting some hats for my sister. She’s been battling breast cancer for 3.5 years now and has pretty much been in chemo that whole time. She lost her hair the first round of chemo, but it grew back and it was nearly to her shoulders when the cancer flared back up and she had to be put back onto the chemo that makes one lose their hair. I didn’t know how to knit that first time and couldn’t make her any hats, but this time around, well, I sort of know how to knit.

When I found out she was going to have to lose her hair again, I immediately thought to knit her a kittyville hat. Funnily enough, within a week she emailed me and asked if I could knit her a hat with cat ears and maybe another beanie type hat. Even though her asking spoiled the surprise, it was awesome to have her ask because she’s about 100x more stubborn than me when it comes to asking for things. So knit I did.

I had her go to a yarn shop and find some yarn that she liked - colours, textures - and tell me what they were so I could try to get them here (she’s in California and I’m in England). I was able to get some of them, but others I had to find substitutions for. Oh and it doesn’t help that there’s not actually a decent yarn shop near me so I have to order online. I got the yarns in and started knitting.

I really wanted to knit Shining Star by Kate Gilbert, but this proved to be way too complicated for me to even start. I think I’m ready to try it now though after the other hats I knit. I had a lot of problems along the way with most of the patterns. So in the end I made the following (pictures and details under the cut)…

• Kittyville (web version with modifications)
• Nautilus
• Cosy cashmere
• Odessa
• My own poor design

First up, Kittyville. I showed my sister the pattern and knew she wouldn’t want the ear caps and tassels so those went. I knit the beanie portion up pretty quick although I made it slightly too long because I had to guess at adjusting the pattern since I didn’t use a very heavy yarn. It came out okay. I had to double the yarn up to do the ears and they looked better than when I tried it as written, but they were a bit squat. I also found it slightly difficult to determine placement since I didn’t have the ear caps as guidance as the pattern suggests. I think in the end it worked out okay and she only has to turn up the edge a bit to make it sit how she wants. I think overall this one did come out the best in terms of fit with that minor glitch of too long.

The details:
Yarn: Rowan wool cotton in shade 903 (grey)
Needles: Boye circular US5 (4mm) and aluminium straight needles in US4
Tension / gauge: unknown
Next Nautilus by Marnie MacLean. I like this design because it’s interesting and simple. Or so I thought. I think I had to rip this out at least three times to get it right - and that’s being generous. Oh and one time I had to just abandon it when it was nearly complete because I’d actually messed up my lifeline and it seemed easier to just start anew. I used a really lovely yarn, one that my sister actually picked out. It is really soft and I really like working with it so much so that I bought myself some for a currently unknown project.

Unfortunately the sizing did not work out at all. For what is supposed to be a tight fitting hat, it came out very loose and very large despite following the instructions for my sisters’ head size. I was really disappointed because in terms of all the hats (and actually everything I’ve knit to date) this one was the best. The knitting was even, there weren’t any glaring errors, it was so soft and pretty. I even tried a new technique - using two circular needles to do small circumference knitting - which turned out to be a fantastic technique and one that I use whenever I can in place of DPNs.

The details:
Yarn: Debbie Bliss alpaca silk in shade 25015 (purple)
Needles: Boye circular US6 (4mm)
Tension / gauge: 16 sts by 22 rows

I made another Cosy cashmere hat with yet another type of wool. This one actually came out really well and I tried lots of strange things with it. I knit as much of it as I could on circular needles (this one was actually knit before I learned the two circular needle method so I may have been able to use that to knit more of the hat) as I was trying to avoid seams. Sometimes my sister will sleep in a hat just to keep her head warm (and the cats from licking it haha) so I wanted to have as few seams as possible. The only real problem with this hat was that because of the circular knitting in the largest part, I think that had quite an effect on the ear caps as they were a bit loose. I also bound off the edge a bit too tightly making the hat a bit tighter fit than it should be. Oh and the colour in the picture is completely off.

The details:
Yarn: Debbie Bliss cashermino chunky in shade 17011 (light turquoise)
Needles: Boye circular ?? and straight aluminium ??
Tension / gauge: unknown

Odessa by Grumperina. Similar to Nautilus in that it is a simple lace pattern which seemed simple to knit, but of course proved to be a challenge for me. I left out the beads which made it go by a bit quicker I think and perhaps made it slightly easier? However, I didn’t know about lifelines and didn’t know how tricky it was to have to rip back even the simplest lace pattern so this one also required several false starts. In the end it came out pretty well with the exception of the portion I knitted on DPNs (didn’t know the 2 circular needle method yet). The change over from circular needles to DPNs is obvious because of a small ladder and a change in tension. I sort of did the opposite to what I did with the second eggplant hat - I knit more loosely to avoid the puckered crown. I think I’ll knit this again but using that 2 circular needle method and lifelines. Again, the photo has the yarn colour completely off - here’s a better picture of the colour.

The details:
Yarn: Rowan classic cashsoft DK in shade 509 (dusty lime green)
Needles: Boye circular US6 (4mm) and 4 aluminium DPNs US6
Tension / gauge: 26 sts by 32 rows

And finally, a hat of my own design. Really I was trying to mimic something I saw another novice knitter do which was to make two squares in the flat and seam them together with the top seam being an oversew seam. Well, I can manage to mess up even the simplest things. I knit the two pieces flat, but two different widths. I did this because the first piece I felt was just too narrow so I added another 10 stitches to the thing. I did a 1″ seed stitch edge and then just knit the rest. I discovered that I really hate knitting flat if I have to do entire rows of purl. Anyway, I made a square and held that up to my head to see how it would look and it didn’t seem long enough. So I knit more and more rows until I was satisified. I did the second piece in the same fashion but with the additional 10 stitches. It was a bit funny, but it was okay. Seamed it all up and put it on to discover I’d created a rectangular sock hat. Not good! I wasn’t about to undo the hat and rip back stitches. I was already 2-3 weeks late in getting the hats out than I wanted to be. So I figured out where the end of the hat should’ve been (back where I thought it was too small), folded over all that excess, and sewed it down. It worked and actually helped to make the faux cat ears I was after stand up even better than if It had been done ‘right’. It’s just a shame that I wasted so much time/yarn to do this!! I think I had almost a whole 3rd piece in excess material. Oh well, live and learn, right?

The details:
Yarn: Rooster almerino aran in gooseberry
Needles: aluminium straight needles in US7 (4.5mm)
Tension / gauge: unknown

Now I’m working on things for myself… I think.

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