December

I promised to do a hat for a friend, um... a while ago, and haven't gotten to it yet. I finally got some yarn for it though!

But, so many other projects need my attention. I have to finish a hat for the shop, and a hat for testing one of my own patterns. It's meant to be a for sale pattern on Rav, but I'm not so sure I want to bother continuing with that. I knew it'd be hard to establish myself, but I just think there are too many free patterns on Rav for people to bother buying from someone that they've never seen on knitty or in magazines.

But I still have designs in my head! There's a cloche hat design that wants attention (like a whiny five year old) and it's interesting enough that it's edging out the projects I should be doing.

Oh yeah, and I should be typing up the cryptic notes I scribbled for a pattern for the stocking I made for Devlin.

links I like

http://www.thedietdiary.com/blog/lucia/189

I don't think I'll ever understand it, but since I don't have time to study it now and I have stuff to do this morning, I have to save it for later.

Things I'm working on: A to-be-felted purse. I'm sort of swirling the two main colours with the Noro. It seemed like the thing to do. I found a skein of Noro without a speck of icky pink and it begged to be mixed with a light grey and dusky, eggplant-y purple. I've been obsessed with hats lately and so it's still about half finished. Hats. Lots of hats. I applied my Mimsy pattern to a cowl, but it rolls and that annoys me, so, perhaps a new cast on? Maybe just knit the thing like a scarf and kitchener it together?

I do have a cloche hat idea rattling around in my head. But I'm trying to ignore it.

procrastination

And it's nearly a month later and the patterns still aren't up for sale. Why? Because I always second guess myself. And because I can never stop tweaking a pattern.

The Vorpal Vortex got a brim tweak, which needed a math fix and then eventually a decrease fix - but only in stitch count and sections, not procedure. So that shouldn't be too difficult.

The Slithy Tove hat needed to be re-worked for worsted weight yarn. Which meant math overhaul on the whole thing. I thought I had the math worked out, only to be almost done with the brim section and realise that no, I didn't have enough stitches. Rip out, cast on, try again. It's going well now and when I get to the decrease section I need to write out what I'm doing, exactly, not just type up place notes and blithely continue knitting. (like I did for the last version)

Mimsy hat is ready to go though! So I did try to fling it up on Rav only to encounter problems with changing the store name and then a glitch during upload.

I would like to clone myself so that I have knitting minions, 'cos I can't knit two hats at the same time. feh.

The Caroline hat is done - except for weaving in a few ends and attaching the buttons. I'll do that today and she will likely be at the shop tonight. I never washed it though, have to tell her it needs that.

Even more hats!

And these hat patterns may just find their way to Ravelry. Yes, I finished some of the other hats, but I never got pictures and still feel somehow that they're not worthy.

But working on Chuck's beret inspired me to make my own slouchy beret designs and made me revisit a stitch that I invented over a decade ago. At least I think I invented it, I've perused many stitch dictionaries since then and never found anything exactly like it. Some stitches look similar, but they have different methods than mine.

Originally I used the stitch in a project for my mother in law. An Easter basket using Re Heart acrylic. The stitch is really tight, with twisted stitches and stitches that are passed over other stitches and in that Red Heart yarn it came out so stiff it didn't need wires or inserts or anything. I wrote down lots of notes - this was before the internet and way before Ravelry and way before I had a local yarn shop with people who might want to recreate my patterns - but I guess since this was my creation I tried to keep some notes.

The stitch leans to the left a lot and so I've tried different techniques to mitigate that, but nothing seems to work. However, that was before I knew anything about blocking, so I imagine that blocking would help the left leaning bias problem.

Anyway. A few year ago while messing around with sock designs I tried making the stitch a bit lacier, but it made the sock twist around and that bugged me. After making the beret it occurred to me that my weird stitch would look good as a slouchy beret and so I tested it out with some leftover worsted wool. I liked it a lot and so used some really yummy merino wool and I am delighted with the hat design. I also used this stitch in a cowl neck-warmer type thing, although I think it'd look good in a longer, infinity scarf type thing. I want to do that design in several weights and offer that up as a pattern.

I also repurposed the Vortex Swag stitch as a slouchy beret. I used it in a brimmed hat, but I think it's better as a slouchy hat.

Everything has been washed and is drying and then I need to find a model and take pictures. feh.

Oh, that's gonna bug me

It's done! But even in this crappy picture you can see that the back piece and the right sleeve have the same colour tones and the left sleeve is different. You can totally see where I joined on to finish the collar.

It makes me want to rip out the sleeve and the back piece and swap them. Except I'd very much like to wear it to the Knitter's Day Out event. Which means I just have to suck up and deal with how the colours wanted to be. *sigh*

I think I'm almost done

The shrug design has finally resolved itself and I'm just about to cast off on the last section. Then comes washing and blocking and drying and sewing it together.

Then comes the megasuperawesomefuntime of trying to decipher my pattern notes. And trying to resize it. I have figured out a way to measure the sides of the octagon without actually drawing it out, which helps a bit. Although not as much as I could hope for. I will still need to graph out those oh-so-complicated sleeves, so that I will be able to properly calculate what number of stitches should be in the the short rows. I hate graphing things.

The sleeves. Oh my, the sleeves. I am not entirely sure that many other people will be able to comprehend my instructions for the sleeves. It's not that I don't think people are incapable of doing them, if I can do them, anyone can. It's that I don't think I'm capable of giving proper, clear, concise, non-confusing instructions.

And do I try to submit it to a magazine or online thing or just fling it up on Rav? I really don't know.

Anyway. One last row to cast off.

links I like

Yay! I found it!

I like this way of picking up sock gusset stitches. It is extremely fiddly, but it does create a nice edge. Whenever I pick up edge stitches I always get holes or long stitches and it bugs me.

I tried to explain this method to a fellow sock knitter at the yarn shop and couldn't quite remember how to do it. I also couldn't remember much about the video, except that it was a guy knitting the sock, he was Australian and I think he made the video to help his sister knit socks. I knew I found it on a thread on Ravelry, but it was months ago, possibly over winter, and I had very little hope of remembering which thread it was. So, I searched Ravelry discussions, but didn't find it and ended up searching youtube for 'how to pick up heel gusset stitches' and there it was!

Now I just have to get back into the habit of knitting socks!