Hattrick….

Hats hats and hats… that's what we have been doing

An Ishbel Beret from leftovers form the Shawl for Oswin. Very nice lacy beret, worked really well in this yarn. I actually did do a bit of adjusting things, since I made the brim in the 2nd size while the rest of the beret is in the largest size. I did do a row of increases just after the brim to be able to do so. It have a roomier slouchier hat. Now it is too big for M, but for S it fits really well:

2nd hat, a ver fast hat, completely improvised, made from Noro aya.

This one is really for M and only for M:

Last hat, yarn that D brought for me on Gotland when he was there last summer. This hat is for me and it is special since S knitted it for me:

A very wooly hat, quite warm for the winter. Good work!

Most pictures come from Tivoli, where we went today since S has become a teenager…. and we wanted to do something special. S had a friend with her we just walked around and enjoyed the park in Halloween Glory , didn't go in any of the rides….

Can I brag(g) ?

Some weeks ago I got a PM on Ravelry from a employee at Classic Elite Yarns….and to my astonishment they asked whether it would be OK for them to feature my Lente design as one of the indie designs using Classic Elite yarns on their indie designer web letter…..  So I just said yes… I mean I felt honoured, I was chosen to be on that web letter…from a real yarn company… doing both really nice yarns and actually also very nice pattern books. So here is the collage, and note all very nice designs, I am just so happy to be amongst them!

 

and the brag(g), well I am a crystallographer by trade….

Shawl for Oswin

My favourite Dalek is the one from a Spike Milligan sketch, which manages both to point out the problem with Daleks (at least the old ones), they are quite silly as biggest source of evil as well as exposing xenophobia. Anyways I do think that Daleks are fine, but I also think that Oswin in the latest Dalek episode of Dr Who got a terrible deal. So that's why this is a shawl for Oswin. Starry Daleks round your shoulders...

Bigger on the Inside is really such a nice shawl, this is just a small variant. You can find the schemes for the Daleks, left and right, but you will need Bigger on the Inside for all other instructions.

 download now

Really finished now...

 

I finished "Slipped". Originally I had hoped to make the band with the green yarn, but as I had not enough left, it became the pink instead. With small green shank buttons, it works nice as well. I blocked the cardigan and already it is a lot softer, so that is nice as ell. I think it will get quite a bit of wear this autumn…. 

I could have made the sleeves slightly longer, but at least they are not in the way now, says M. 

The last bits….

 

The other week I started to play with slipped stitch patterns and now my experiment in using them is almost finished. A small very rustic cardigan for M. I think the slipped stitch pattern gives it a modern feel and it so easy to do. It looks much more complicated the it actually is, which is always a nice thing. It is also fun since it is kind of magic. Now it is just the button bands and the neckband and it is done. I first wanted to make these band green, but I ran out of green yarn, so they will be pink. I ordered some dark green vintage buttons on etsy, so I hope those will come soon too….

The yarn in this case is Geilsk Tweed, which is a very rustic 1 ply tweed with a bit . It has really nice colours  and a bit of a thick-thin quality. It is quite "nubby" even for a tweed. It also has the occasional bit of grass or other plant-bits. I pick them out when I knit and always think that it is kind of nice. Yes you have to pick them out, but it feels somehow less overproduced and more artisan. It does mean also that this cardigan is a outer-shell item. M will need long armed T-shirts to go under it, but as it is now clearly autumn and winter won't be long, that will not be much of a problem…. 

 

Daleks

As I hoped, some pictures of S, happy with her new shawl. It is a nice size, not too big and not too small and the colour is just right. It is "cobalt" in Madelinetosh Tosh sock. It was real fun to make this, and not too hard either...

 And as also noted, M wants also to have one of these, but to make twice the same shawl in same colours (as a Tardis has to be blue, no choice), that really didn't appeal to me too much. 

M thought first that a sonic skew driver would make for a nice pattern, but I don't really think so. It would be too narrow and not really defined. So why not something….evil….

So a Dalek is the obvious choice. I make a sketch and knitted a first trial (see on the left) but the spout (or what is it called?) was too short and the slope wasn't nice either… I think it was because I used a normal twisted cable stitch with two "knit" stitches on the right side. 

So a second attempt was made, with a more complicated twisted stick, a knit/purl combination,. And that worked much much better, so that is what I am going to use.

 

I have made the schemes in two versions, a left pointing Dalek and a right pointed Dalek and I am going to use 6 of each. This pattern is wider that than the original Tardis pattern, so I have less repeats and I do need to pick up 1 stitch more. I will decrease that stitch in the last row before the border and then do the k3,p1 border as in the original pattern.

So now I just have to wait for the Dalek colored yarn to arrive and ….

 

But as I can't have my hand idle, I started something else. In the beginning of the summer I bought some nice rustic 4-ply tweed  in Copenhagen (Geilsk Tweed) in green and pick. I wanted to make a cardigan for M from it using plain stockinette body with a yoke containing a slip-stitch pattern. So I did some experimenting with slipped stitches andI will  go from there…. I thought first that I wanted a round yoke, but I am not sure how to do the decrease rows such that the patterns are still nice, so I think I opt for raglan instead. 

Blocking

 

Excuse the mess of the sheet and so on, but I am blocking Bigger on the Inside right now….. S is pretty happy about it, she has been selling the positives of Dr Who hard and many of her friends are hard core fans now as well (Dr Who is not shown on Swedish TV, so the is a feat) and she got even  her "English" english teacher in on the plan. The other week they had an hour of watching Dr Who in English, no subtitles for english class. So yeah, this shawl will just be IT….

Hopefully tomorrow some wearing pictures, and also maybe an idea for a modification, since M wants one too… But I will not knit one the same, so a modification it will be, and a test bit comes maybe tomorrow…. (I think I have it finished by then).