Eyelet Swirl Hat

Hey all! Just a heads up, blogging is going to be a little haphazard for a while. Work is crazy right now and Christmas is looming over my shoulder quickly. I do have a bunch of finished objects lined up to post, but time is going to be tight for a while.

So today, you get my post on the Eyelet Swirl Hat!



Pattern: Eyelet Swirl Hat

Yarn: Classic Elite Yarns Liberty Wool Light (6623)

Needles: US 4 - 3.5 mm


This was actually a kit that I won in a raffle! All of the yarn shops during the Western CT Yarn Crawl had their own raffles in each of the stores, and my name was drawn at New England Yarn & Spindle! I swung by the shop the week after the crawl and picked up my kit.

This yarn is pretty amazing. It's very soft and the colors are absolutely lovely. I just kept returning to the bag to touch the yarn, so I had to cast on right away.



I have to say that I need to get better at my prep work for knitting hats. I tend to not make up swatches because I'm impatient. This isn't a problem for scarves, generally, and I'm pretty good at recognizing if socks or fingerless mitts are the right gauge for me within a few rows. But I'm terrible at recognizing the right gauge for hats. This hat ended up being a really lovely hat, but it was just loose enough that I didn't feel comfortable wearing it. It sort of sat around for a while I debated frogging it or making due.

Ultimately, I ended up just looping some thin elastic into the brim. The hat only really needed to be brought in by about an inch, so just the little bit of draw by some elastic made this hat really work for me. I wear it around all the time now.




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Graham Hat - Kudo

Pattern: Graham by Jennifer Adams

Needles: US 5 - 3.75 mm, US 7 - 4.5 mm

Yarn: Plymouth Yarn Kudo






It's been a while since I made a hat. Which, of course, I realized in the middle of this year's winter. I had always meant to make myself a hat, but never managed to get around to it, which I regretted when digging my car out of lots of snow and ice. I love winter, but I was miffed that I hadn't made myself a hat.

So I made one. And the temperature started warming up, of course, but that's the way it always goes.

I was actually surprised by this yarn. I grabbed it for color and didn't even think to check what it was made of until I was actually knitting with it. It's a wool/cotton blend, which makes it feel more like cotton than wool. That really affected the behaviour of the yarn in this pattern. The rib isn't really tight at all and it ended up larger than I expected. It actually works well as a lazy-ass, warmer day hat for me, but the yarn's not really for winter.

I did really like the pattern, though. Easy to remember and it looks great. I'm working on a second Graham hat in some handspun wool now because I like the pattern so much.


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Brandy's Hat and Mittens

Forgive terrible pictures again. Another Christmas rush shoot for these.


Yarn: Bernat Softee Chunky in Denim Ragg

Needles: Double pointed needles US8 5mm

Pattern: http://www.pickles.no/hello-new-york-winter-access/2009/8/29/hello-new-york-mittens.html





Hook: US H8

Pattern: http://cats-rockin-crochet.blogspot.com/2009/04/beret-with-simple-cable-stitch-free.html









I had met up with my good friend Brandy at her place of employment in a sort of nearby mall the weekend before Christmas and she outright refused to tell me what she wanted for Christmas because she didn’t want me to spend money on her. Which is ridiculous because the whole point of Christmas is to do something nice for the people in your life and just because she didn’t answer didn’t mean I wasn’t going to gift her with something.

So I opted to make her some mittens and a hat because Brandy never buys things for herself (David has taken to giving money to Shannon and making Shannon force Brandy to buy herself nice things every once in a while) and even though she’s a native Floridian and is freezing all the time, she probably hasn’t bought herself a new pair of gloves or a new hat or anything in all the years that I’ve known her.

The mittens look a little janky and oddly pointy, but I hadn’t planned out enough time to properly gauge everything and sort out what needles would work best with this yarn and just kind of went for it. And I had to improve the size because the pattern called for hand measurements and Brandy’s hands are smaller than everyone’s hands. But they fit when Brandy put them on, so I lucked out there.

If that hat looks familiar, it’s because I used the same pattern for a hat for Shannon over the summer.




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