The Knitting Pirate

While the commitment trying to start and finish a project during the Olympics is more than I want to take on right now, *starting* seemed easy enough. (Starting is always the easy part, isn't it.) And so, while I watched the Opening Ceremonies, I cast on for a new colourwork hat, with the same Cascade 220 that I used for Michael's bicolour hat.

My original plan had been to use a two-colour cast on, knit some corrugated ribbing, then pick up stitches from the cast on edge and knit a facing in a slightly thinner yarn, the leftover sportweight lambswool from my old Highwayman Armwarmers. That didn't quite work out the way I'd hoped, but before I ripped it all out to start over, I took this video of the way I work the corrugated ribbing:

I hold both strands of yarn in my left hand, the darker one over my index finger and the lighter over my middle finger. The working yarns are wrapped twice around my pinky to maintain tension, which is why they look as if they're twisted together. Normally when I'm knitting with just one strand, it's only wrapped once, but with two (or more) strands they pull against each other and get a little loose.

Anyway, I didn't like the way the cast-on edge looked after I'd picked up the stitches, so I scrapped it and started over with a new technique. Instead of starting with the hat and working the facing afterwards, I started with the facing. I cast on the same number of stitches as I'd planned for the hat, using the thinner yarn but on the same size needles as I'll use for the hat, and I knit until my leftovers were almost gone, saving some for sewing the facing down later. (There's actually another full ball of the stuff in my stash, but I didn't want to dip into that. I can use it for other hats!)

With 3.25" (just over 8cm) of facing knit, I switched to the Cascade 220 and knit one round in each shade of gray, then purled one round for a turning ridge, and then got started on the body of the hat with the corrugated ribbing.

While it looks as though that purl round is sticking out unattractively right now, it will create a spot in the knitting that just wants to fold inwards (because inside, it's a recessed round of knit stitches amongst a sea of purls) and will create a nice firm edge at what will be the bottom of this hat, once the facing is folded up and sewn down.

If all goes according to plan (I estimated the gauge based on Michael's hat, and I know how big my own head is, and I'm pretty sure this will fit... I hope...) I'll have a double-warm hat with a triple-warm band around my ears. And if it comes out too big, then someone else will have a double-warm hat with a triple-warm brim. But I think it will work. Fingers crossed.

Almost two pattern repeats in, and I wasn't really happy with that cabled sock design I started last summer and tossed aside in despair. I spent quite some time ignoring it, hoping it would somehow fix itself. (This never works.)

It's all too close together and the pattern isn't really showing up very well. If it had more room between the cables, more of a purl background for them to stand out against, and more vertical space between the crossings, then it would be closer to the image I have in mind.

Ah well, live and learn - I'll be re-working this so it comes out the way I want. (What's the point in going on knitting a sock that I don't like?) After a bunch of reading and research, I've got a new set of cables charted out, and I decided to knit a swatch in some heavier yarn to see if it looks right. It seems like it's going to work this time!

I think the pattern would make a nifty scarf or hat, too.

For 2018, Ravelry has started a "challenge" where you can set how many projects you want to finish in the year. Adding a deadline date on queued patterns or projects you've already started will make them show up on your challenge page! Mine is here if you want to see what else is on my list besides these cabled socks. (I'm not able to add it to the challenge, but part of my goal with these is to write the pattern up for sale!)

Do you have any knitting, crochet, spinning, or other artsy-crafts goals for 2018?

I've had the idea for these cabled socks in my notebook for a while, and with the imminent completion of the Textured Socks, I wanted to start something new. I sketched out the overs and unders, decided which round would be the first one, and had a moment of pride for remembering that cables take up some of the fabric and make the socks fit more tightly. The general rule is to look at the row or round with the most cable crossovers, and add one stitch per crossover to the total amount. Since my usual socks are knit at 64 stitches, and these will have one round with eight crosses, I decided to start with 72.

Step One: Cast on 72 stitches, using the stretchy slipknot cast-on. Discover that the yarn is frayed to breaking. Slide 72 stitches off the needle; discard yarn.

Step Two: Grumble a little.

Step Three: Cast on 57 stitches before discovering another frayed spot. Slide 57 stitches off the needle; discard yarn. Inspect frayed end and decide that it doesn't look nibbled, at least.

Step Four: Grumble a little more, using slightly stronger language. Ponder the options of either throwing the ball of yarn across the room, or bringing it home so that it can be rewound into a centre-pull ball, looking for more frayed spots along the way.

Step Five: Decide to try it once again. Cast on 72 stitches. Slide the next ten yards of yarn through fingers. Determine that there are no further frayed spots, and that the ball of yarn must have gotten pinched in a tote or something.

Step Six: Knit twenty rounds of k2, p2 ribbing. (Take some time, twelve rounds in, to wonder if a 1x1 twisted rib might not look better with the planned 3x1 ribbing for the sock. Decide that 2x2 is stretchier, anyway. Keep going.)

Step Seven: Ask boyfriend to mix a drink that matches the sock.

Step Eight: Choose a name for the new design. (It's "Cabled Violets" for the moment, but it won't stay that way forever. Suggestions are welcome!)

I was in the artsy-crafts store the other day and saw this ball of Sugar 'n Cream in a new colourway that I just could not resist (Pebble Beach Ombre). And for $1.20, why should I? So I brought it home with me. At first I was going to make my usual washcloth pattern, but then I had the idea (perhaps inspired by mopping the floor) that I should come up with a textured stitch that would be useful as a washcloth, dishcloth, or re-usable mop pad. It came out so pretty that I wanted to share... so here it is. (It's also on Ravelry if you prefer a pdf for your library.)

I started with a chain of 36 stitches and a US H / 5mm hook for a washcloth of about 10" / 25 cm. Any even number of stitches to start will work just fine.

Scrubbing Nubbles Washcloth

Yarn: 1 ball Sugar 'n Cream or other worsted weight cotton, 95 yards / 57 grams
Hook: US H / 5mm

Row 1: Chain 36. Skip the first chain and sc across (35 stitches). Chain 1, turn.
Row 2: (sc, tr) across, ending with sc. Chain 1, turn.
Row 3: sc across. Chain 1, turn.
Row 4: (tr, sc) across, ending with tr. Chain 1, turn.
Row 5: sc across. Chain 1, turn.

Repeat Rows 2 through 5 until the cloth is the size you like.

Optional hanging loop: When you reach the end of your final row, chain 15 off the corner, then sc back down the chain. Fold to create the loop and sl st to attach the end to the corner of the cloth. If you prefer a border on your washcloths, you can sc around the whole cloth, putting three sc into each corner (except for the one with the loop).

Fasten off yarn, weave in ends, and enjoy your new washcloth!

The texture is so neat that I took a giant picture of it. At 3658 x 2774, it could be used for phone/computer wallpaper. Feel free to download it here.

Moorefield is a four-colour stranded hat that I designed to celebrate ten years (can you believe it!) of this very knitblog, started on a whim one night when my sister and I got into an argument over whether pirates or ninjas were superior. I said pirates, she said ninjas, and the next thing you know... ten years, nearly 800 posts, and countless stitches later, here we are. Here's to the next ten years!

The pattern is charted out for 128-stitch and 144-stitch hats. Choose the right size for your gauge and head! For a close-fitting hat on a 21.5" head, I used size 4 needles and DK weight yarn to get a gauge of 6.5 stitches to the inch in the colourwork pattern. Only two colours are used per round, making it easier to knit.

Get it on Ravelry here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/moorefield-hat or click here to purchase:

(For April 3 and 4 only, the coupon code 10YEARS will give you 10% off!)

YOU WILL NEED: 16" circular needle (optional, but recommended) and a set of five double-point needles in the size needed to get gauge for your particular yarn, a stitch marker for the beginning of the round, plus a darning needle to weave in ends. Three extra stitch markers to indicate the quarters of the hat will make it easier to keep your place in the pattern.

YARN: Four nicely contrasting colours of DK-weight yarn (or the yarn weight you prefer, based on your gauge). Five different colour schemes are provided for inspiration. The pattern sample was knit with Jo Sharp Classic DK Wool, which unfortunately seems to have been discontinued in the US, but just about any DK weight yarn should work just fine.

Get it on Ravelry here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/moorefield-hat or click here to purchase:

Important Copyright Information: The Moorefield Hat knitting pattern is © 2017 Knitting Pirate. You may not sell or otherwise distribute copies of this pattern, but you may absolutely sell the hats you make with appropriate credit given for the design. If you have any questions about what you can or can’t do with this pattern, please feel free to contact contact the Knitting Pirate.

I'm fortunate to have friends with good cameras who are willing to point them at me and my knitting.

Just a week and a half to go!

It's almost here...

The hat pattern that I've designed as a celebration of ten years of knitblogging! Here it is enjoying a nice warm bath with a little bit of Eucalan before making its debut. I let it fully sink into the water, of course, but not before getting a picture of it floating on the suds!

After a half-hour of soaking, the hat dried over a slightly small blocking head. One of these days, I'll get one that's the same size as my own head! I've found some that are prohibitively expensive, and some that get terrible reviews, so the search will continue...

I'm thrilled with the way the crown of the hat came together. This is the part that I always have trouble envisioning when I look at the chart. When I pulled the last threads through to cinch the top tight, and saw how neat the whole thing looked, I couldn't have been more happy with it.

The pattern is under final edits, the test-knitters have provided some feedback, and I'm super-excited to put the finishing touches on this and release it to the world! Look for it on the 4th of April!

Moorefield Mittens (take two) - now with a cuff of a more appropriate length. I'm getting pretty good at the alternating cable cast-on, which is still a little fiddly but no longer frustrating to do. I like how the cuff looks with red as the consistent colour - it's a different 'feel' than on the hat, but still nice looking. The wonky stitch tension will even out with blocking; for some reason I have more difficulty with stranding on DPNs than on circular needles.

The thumb stitches are being held aside, and I'm up to the part where I'm going to create the opening that will make these flip-top mittens. This is accomplished by knitting a row of waste yarn across the palm, then continuing on in pattern. This technique allows the colourwork to progress uninterrupted up the back of the hand.

When I made the Fleeps I knit the glove with fingers part first, and then picked up stitches across the back of the hand to make the mitten top. This time, the mitten top is knit first, and then the waste yarn across the palm will be pulled out to give me two rows of live stitches from which I can knit the glove fingers.

I made the stitches across the inside of the thumb in pattern, though it's probable that they won't even show in the finished object. The thumb hole seems a little large, but that might be necessary for a range of motion. When I go to knit the thumb, I could decrease by picking up just one stitch into both "corner" stitches - where the stitches on waste yarn meet the stitches I cast on to bridge the gap. That would bring the total from 26 down to 24, which might fit my skinny fingers a little better. Conveniently, it might also help to prevent holes in the thumb!

The hat has been finished for a while now. The ends woven in, the yarn put away (sort of - more on that in a moment) and the styrofoam head located. The hat, finished but unblocked, has been sitting on the styrofoam head in my living room, where I've been admiring it on a nightly basis. "But," I said to myself, "I can't finish writing up the pattern without pictures, and I can't take pictures without blocking the hat."

So it had a good warm bath, luxuriating in the Eucalan suds for half an hour or so...

...and now it's back on the styrofoam head, its stitches far more even (especially around the decreases) and looking good. The head is actually too small for the hat, so it doesn't look as good as it might. I'd love to have a proper-sized blocking head. One day!

It has a name now, too: I've decided to call it Moorefield.

As for the yarn, which has been sort of put away (it's in a cubby of the coffee table), I might be making some matching mittens. I got started but then had to rip back; the cuff on these isn't nearly long enough. But they're pretty, so I'm sharing anyway.

There might not be enough brown yarn left to make two full mittens, so I've changed the colours around in the chart to have the main stripiness be red instead of brown for the second attempt. I'm also going to do these as flip-tops, because flip-top mittens are the best thing ever. If I really focus on them, I might be able to get them done and written up in time to release along with the hat. That's ambitious, but not impossible.

So, this mistake where I swapped a brown stitch with a blue stitch had to be fixed. I couldn't just leave it there, not if I ever wanted to be pleased with the finished project.

I placed a removable marker around the stitch below the offender and knit to just before that column of stitches. (I'll note that I should have put the marker into the stitch, rather than around it. I learned from this small mistake and got it right in the second column.)

...and then I dropped the next stitch off my needle and helped it to ladder down. The marker is now where it should have been: holding the stitch just below the one I need to fix and keeping the column of stitches from dropping even farther.

It was surprisingly easy to re-catch the stitches and pick them back up to the needle. Here the first column has been fixed, and I've moved the marker to the stitch below the one that needs fixing in the second column.

When it comes to picking up the stitches in a ladder, I've found that a small DPN is easier for me to use than crochet hooks. This is a US 1/2.25mm needle that I borrowed from the nearest sock-in-progress. It's a good deal smaller than the US 4/3.5mm needles on which I'm knitting, which is beneficial if the stitches are tight.

I slipped the DPN through the lowest stitch, then picked up the strand coming from the neighbouring stitch of the appropriate colour. It's easy to find with a little bit of tugging on the yarn. Then I can either duck the tip of the DPN with the picked-up stitch through the lower stitch, or use my fingernails to lift the lower stitch over the new one. Either way, it's important to be careful that neither stitch is twisted and that all the yarn's strands have been captured.

Here's the fix! You can't even tell that it was ever wrong.

I was just as concerned about the inside looking good as I was about the outside! Whether it was dumb luck or skills I didn't even know I had, the inside of the hat looks exactly as it should. Once it's been washed and blocked, it will be next to impossible to find the fixed stitches.

Q: How long did it take to fix?
A: Not very long. Less time than I spent agonizing over it, anyway. The timestamps on the pictures say it was 24 minutes, but I also spent eight of those minutes on the phone and I also paused to take pictures of the process. So maybe, maybe, it was fifteen minutes at most.

Q: Was it difficult?
A: Way easier than I thought it would be! The colours have so much contrast that it wasn't challenging to see which strand I needed to pick up. I did split one stitch on the way up the second ladder, but I went back and fixed that too.

Q: Will you spend so much time waffling over whether to fix the mistake the next time this happens? Because you know there will eventually be a next time.
A: Of course I will.

Q: Even though you really know, deep down, that you can't leave a mistake like that and you're going to fix it?
A: Yup.