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

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I bought a book that has what are apparently easy patterns. It sort of seems crazy to buy a book of patterns when there are hundreds and hundreds of free patterns online. But I did. I bought a book. I bought Easy knitted accessories by Jeanette Trotman. I spent about a half hour in Border’s having a look at a number of books and decided this one had the most items in it that I’d consider making.

First up was the Cosy cashmere hat. It’s pretty cute with little ear flaps and a funky shaped top that almost looks like little cat ears. Unfortunately, the recommended yarn is no longer produced which is a bit annoying since the book was only published a year ago. Ah well. I had ordered some yarn off of eBay and thought it would do the trick. Boy was I wrong.

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