First off, is a funky winter hat for Todd, if he'll wear it, that is. This yarn---Oh. My. Dog. Ok. While in Vermont on vacation this year, (Which, again, I realize I have not posted about. I suck at life.) Marsha did some research and found a couple of locations to get some local yarn. One "place" was the home and workshop of Joanne Littler, called the Pine Ledge Fiber Studio. Joanne spins some truly beautiful and unique yarns there, as well as weaves some of the most incredible fabric textiles I've ever seen. Marsha, Katie, Beth, and I all piled into her home workshop and immediately began panting at the sight of the yarn. Gorgeous, to be sure, but also with price-tags well out of our range.
However, Joanne was offering some off-cuts of yarn and remainders of such for fair prices. And she even gave us a further discount if we bought out a particular yarn's last quantities. Aside from being a true artisan, Joanne is a really, really lovely person. So we picked through the remnants and each ended up with some little treasures. I got the orange-ish yarn, seen in the hat below, which is a merino/tencel blend. And some 100% merino yarn in a rose/mauve marled color to make a hat for me. This super-bulky yarn is just superb. great to work with and, of course, knits up super-quick. I can't say enough about it.
So anyway, I started knitting the hat and realized that I was going to run out of yarn. Marsha had some slate blue colored wool yarn leftover from a hat she made for her husband. It just so happens that the blue yarn had flecks of gray and this coppery-orange color in it! So Marsha let me use it to make a wide stripe in the middle. I think it looks great! Todd looks really good in orange, even if he doesn't think so. Joanne gave us the pattern for the hat below, too.
Next is a hat I made for Wesley, my sister-in-law. We don't have the opportunity to see Wesley very often because she lives in Urbana, Illinois. So we're limited to holidays, at best. We were fortunate enough to get together with her (and the rest of Todd's family) in New York this Christmas past. She knows I'm a knitter---in fact, I knit her a scarf a few years ago. So she said, "You know what I want? Can you make me just a plain knitted hat, but with cat ears on it?" And I said, "Sure, I think I can!"
Well about 9 months later, I actually got around to trying to knit something for her. Every pattern I looked for seems way more complicated than a simple hat with ears needs to be, in my opinion. So I made up my own, which I will post here, eventually.
It's basically just worsted-weight yarn on size 7 needles. I made a 1 inch or so band of ribbing, then just stockinette all the rest of the way up. Decreased until I had a few stitches left and drew them together. Then I picked up and knit in the 2 spots where the ears are. I think it came out pretty well. And I really think that she is going to like it...that is when I get my lazy ass over to the post office to send it to her....
This was using 1 skein of Elann's Highland Wool. Great economical yarn.
1 comment:
The hats look great!
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