Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Back and finished and frogging

Yes I'm back, knit camp was fantabulous (again) as expected.
This year the focus was on knitting Portuguese style, using knitting pins to loop the yarn up to ones shoulder and ones thumb to flick the yarn over the needle to make stitches. I was lucky enough to see Andrea in action teaching this last year .. so felt confident on selecting a project to complete using the technique.

Enter Tetsubou, one of the nicest hat patterns I've seen around. I love the way that this isn't a beanie and isn't really any style but is stylish, and almost cloche like. I think of it as a grown up stylish warm hat, there is a hint of that Japanese minimalism intellectual fashion thing going on with it.

I made very minor modifications,using Judy's magic cast on as a provisional cast on, and working on 3.75mm needles (slightly smaller than recommended) as I had handspun. I knit most of this on day one, and finished the hat complete with I-cord tie on day two at lunch ... just as camp finished. Several knitters offered to take my yarn home and knit the i-cord for me on their i-cord machines .. and while I love the fun of i-cord knitting machines I had to tell them that they couldn't steal my i-cord knitting from me. I love knitting i-cord, it has a magic rhythm and grows so fast that it is easy to knit to much. At camp I was wore this before the i-cord tie was added and was told I looked Amish ...... not a bad thing in my book, but Tetsubou is definitely more stylish with the gathers at the back, and less bonnet like when worn.

Hat now blocked and dry and in drawer at work .... whilst other knitting has been frogged .... ..... ..... the second mitten is now back to the thumb. Somehow I had 20 more stitches than I should have ... and had had that many more than I should have since the thumb ... which explains why the second mitten was at least as wide as the first when it should have been smaller. It also explains why the decreasing at the mitten top wasn't as effective as it should have been. I'm not ready to talk about that ... except to say that it is a good thing I like to knit, and that winter is not really here, and that I already have at least two other pairs of mittens in the drawer from previous knit adventures.

Take care .... tomorrow is Friday ... yay!
seems like it has been a long week ... take care, hope your Friday goes well.

1 comment:

Knitting Linguist said...

Oh, I love that hat! I've queued it (one more in a long line of hats that I'm dying to knit, even though we don't really live in hat country - I bet the girls would like to have one, though). It did feel like a long week - I'm grateful that it's Saturday here, with some weekend knitting and spinning time ahead of me.