Knits

I hadn’t realised it has been so long since I updated this blog! How awful. But that’s because things are very quiet on the knitting front. The back of that jumper took me a lot longer to do than I expected. Then I went on holiday to Spain for nearly two weeks - I took the knitting, but it was far too hot (sweaty hands) and far, FAR too dusty so I just read a lot.

I did pick up the needles again to knit myself an Odessa hat and it was coming along swimmingly until I got to the decreases. Since I always fail miserably when I go onto DPNs, I decided to try the two circular needle thing since I had great success with that on the Nautilus hat. What happens when I go onto DPNs is that the change over is very obvious - I either pull too tight which causes the material to pucker or I don’t pull tight enough and the gauge shifts in an obvious way and isn’t remedied with a washing. Well the success wasn’t repeated and I think this is entirely to do with the fact that Nautilus is knit from the top down (is that correct when talking about a hat??) whereas Odessas is from the brim up.

It’s really very frustrating because I really did some very nice knitting on the hat and it fits well. I should’ve put a life line in before moving onto the two circulars so I could rip back and try again if needed. As it is now, I find it hard to figure out which stitches truly belong in a row so I may just rip it all out and start again. *sigh*

I have started on the front of the Marissa jumper as you can see from the awful picture (it was just to prove that I was knitting on the beach in Eastbourne!), but because I adjusted the number of cast-on stitches, I’ve had to play with the number of stitches need for the decorative bit along the side. I’ve got it sorted now and although I did a few rows with some different numbers of stitches, I’m probably going to leave them (it’s 3 or 4 rows right at the bottom) as I don’t think they will be all that noticeable.

So more slow progress, but progress nonetheless. In just over a week I head home to the US for three weeks and annoyingly the airport has decided knitting needles are banned (despite six months ago saying they were no longer on the prohibited items list). All that time and no knitting allowed! GAH!

—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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