Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Two Knits in One Post

We did a lot of sitting around the house this past weekend, with Delia being under the weather and all (don't worry, it was just a Back To School Ick and not the Dreaded Swine Flu! She's fully recovered now at any rate). She finished The Robe of Skulls and I finished two knitting projects, both for her.

She wanted a pair of Knucks just like her Dad's. So I made her some. These are the third pair I've knit from this pattern, and it gets easier every time. Like her Dad's, these are knit from Pattons Classic Wool on size 4 needles. I have to say, I LOVE my DPNs!


In addition to the toasty wool gloves she also wanted a hat with skulls on it. We poked around on Ravelry together and found a couple of skull charts, she picked this one out because it was the most sinister looking, and I drew up a chart and got to work. Because she wanted Hot Pink Skulls, I went to Michaels for some yarn. Unfortunately the only pinkish color they had in the Classic Wool was kind of a wimpy coral, and I knew she wouldn't like that. Nearby, I spotted the perfect color in Loops and Threads Impeccable. Acrylic. Yuck. But I bought it (and a skein of grey) anyway because I knew she wouldn't care what the fiber content was.

The Skull Cap came to be in a very short period of time, 2 days, and would have gone quicker if I hadn't made mistakes that required some tedious unraveling. My second foray into the Fair Isle technique worked out OK but not perfect. There are some pretty long floats in this pattern, and my tension wasn't perfect. I am blaming the yarn. I don't generally knit with 100% acrylic, because it is squeaky in a nails-down-the-chalkboard kind of way. Much worse on plastic needles, it wasn't so bad on my handy dandy #8 bamboo circulars. Still, my Fair Isle Style is far from perfected. When the hat is stretched out on my head the pattern gets a little squinchy. But on her head it is fine. Unfortunately, when asked to pose with the hat for a photo, she refused, screaming "Do not put me on the internet!" and covering her face with a pillow. So there you go.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wish I would have known you a few years ago. I could've given you enough yarn for a lifetime. When my grandma died, they threw away 18 Hefty bags of yarn AFTER my mom and aunts had taken what they wanted! Grandma was a bit of a saver...She also had enough buttons to make an army of "other mothers" from Coraline.

Melita said...

wow!! you are quite the knitter!

Serafina said...

I love yarn and buttons and all kinds of crafty things. But in a way I am glad I didn't know you a few years ago, because I would have taken it all and probably had to throw it away when we made the Big Move, and that would have made me cry.