Pictures of the wrist warmers / riesines (successful) and hat (semi-successful), from patterns in the Most Precious Pattern Book from Iceland.
More wrist warmers!
Stranded Hat
Have realized that the annual fiber sale is just a few months away. Time to move into production mode!
“Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.” – Mary Kay Ash (of Mary Kay Cosmetics)
Take one man’s thermal turtleneck (80% silk, 20% cotton), purchased at the thrift store for $2. Never worn and still bearing the original paper tag. Unravel to your heart’s content.
Wind out 3 yard warp. Dress the loom in the silk ramen. Wind the silk ramen weft onto your shuttle. Weave in your favorite twill pattern.
Dressing the loom
Weave the Ramen
Result? Beautiful cream silk/cotton scarf. $2. A lot of work. A sense of eco-friendly, green satisfaction. And enough left-over silk/cotton for two more scarves.
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” – Marshall McLuhan
Just a quick head’s up. LambShoppe in Denver is having an End of Summer (Start Shopping for the Holiday Crafting) sale this weekend.
This Friday, Saturday and Sunday – August 12, 13 & 14
20% off all regularly priced yarn.
Additional 10% off already on-sale yarn.
I’m working on the gifts for the friends who hauled the Most Precious Icelandic Pattern Book home for me. Because I 1) barely know how to knit and 2) have to do things the hard way, I made a hat by adapting two existing patterns.
I wanted to use Cash Vero DK, but couldn’t find a basic stockinette or stranded hat pattern in that weight. I started with the Skull Hat from Gina Doherty, then replaced the skull pattern with patterns from the lovely Icelandic book.
At the beginning I cast on 112 stitches on size 6s instead of 98 stitches on 7s. Okay, first I cast on 126 and knit three inches until I realized the hat was going to be way too big. Ripped that out, cast on 112 on size 6 circulars, and started over. Knit the ear band about 2.5 inches deep, which seems to be enough, then began the external portion of the hat.
After roughly 60 rows, I switched to double pointed 6s and used the Cthulhu’s Unspeakable Hat as a guide for the decreases. As I had 112 stitches instead of her 100, I adapted (what I can tell from my scribbled notes):
K1 k2T K22 K2T K1
Knit a row without decreases
K1 K2T K16 K2T K1
Knit a row without decreases
and so on.
I’m sure there is a far easier way to go about this, if I was willing to buckle down and learn things like gauge and picking the correct yarn for a given pattern.
This also tells you what kind of hostess I am. When my brother dropped by, I didn’t even say, “Hello” but instead, “I need to borrow your head.” I proceeded to cram the 2/3 done hat onto his head, double points and all, to see if it would fit an adult human male. He really is a patient person.
No pictures yet, since I’m going to show this off to the fiber group next week and then ship it off to the friends. I want to maintain a little bit of the mystery for them, just in case they’re reading this entry…
“A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.” – Elbert Hubbard
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