Blocking a Hat, Again.

And you thought I forgot about knitting. . .NOT!

I finished my Don't Sit Up, Slouch Hat and got it blocked. I used the same method that I did on the Matching Ginkgo Hat -- stuffing it with grocery bags and setting it on an old wine bottle. For the little tail, I got dark wood beads to use as a decoration. I think it will be really cute. As it is a gift for a friend, as soon as I can get pictures of her wearing it, I will post them.

FUN FUN hat to knit. The pattern was challenging enough that I didn't get bored, but it was easy enough, I could do it while watching TV or listening to a pod cast. I think I may knit one of these for me, too!

I do have some of my own designs in the pipeline. I have ordered some fingering weight yarn in order to knit some test samples. Can't wait to get started.

Should be fun!

Happy knitting!

With Ginkgo, Blocking Isn't as Easy as You "Thinkgo"

I remember when I blocked my Fall Colored Ginkgo Leaves last year, I ended up having to run out to my local craft store to pick up another package of rust proof pins to finish the intricate blocking required on this shawlette. So, at least this time, I have a sufficient number of pins on hand. I used two blocking wires along the top of the shawlette and one blocking wire down the center spine.

Using a printed copy of a photo out of the pattern, I pinned out the point of the shawlette.  Then slowly worked up each side of the shawl until I had each leaf blocked. When I was done, I only had 3 pins left!

The shawlette blocked out to a measurement of 45 inches wide by 22 inches high.

The hat, surprisingly, was more difficult to block. Since this is a slouch beret, I couldn't just throw it on my head form as I have for the last few hats. The ribbing on the hat was pretty loose after it was soaked and I needed to stretch out the body of the hat so the lace could be seen without stretching the ribbing.

I stuffed the body of the had with plastic grocery bags an then used the eyelets formed by the increases just over the ribbing through which to run a piece of yarn.

I pulled the yarn snug and tied a bow knot. This helps stretch the body of the hat and eliminates the stretch in the ribbing .

I then place it with a wine bottle going up into the stuffing to support the hat without smashing the ribbing. The ribbing may take a little longer to dry this way, but I am not in any hurry.

I used a fun little online picture editing website, PicMonkey. A lot of the features are free and it is kind of fun to use, however, as you can see, the pictures are not very clear. If you would like to see better pictures of this project as well as notes on how I worked the pattern please go here for the hat and here for the shawl.

Happy Knitting!

Productive Knitting Week: Part 3 - South Bound Chullo

This was a really fun project! The pattern is a Chullo called the Southern Lights Hat which I have knit using Noro Hitsuji which is a bulky, 100 percent wool from Noro. The colors are really great -- the pictures just don't do them justice. I have three different views above so that you can see all the colors. The free Knitty pattern directs the knitter to knit the ear flaps one right after the other with the first one reserved to be attached to the hat as you start casting on the bridge across the forehead after the second ear flap is knit. This results in two totally different colored i-cords and ear flaps.

I went out and bought a Styrofoam head form just so that I could block this hat. I thought about using a balloon, but I saw that other people had used the Styrofoam forms to display their knitted hats, why would that not work for blocking them. I am sure that they use it to block their hats as well, but I just never thought about it. They are cheap and readily available -- I bought mine at my local Hobby Lobby.

There is still some work to be done on the hat. There is a pompom on the top of the hat and one on the end of each of the i cords. I have two more skeins of this yarn in this same color that will become matching mittens. I'll be styling this winter!

Happy Knitting!

P.S. for directions on how to knit i-cord -- click here. Again, Purl Bee to the rescue!

Productive Knitting Week: Part 2 - How Now Brown Cowl

It's amazing what difference is made in blocking a knitted item. Above are the before and after (OK, during) the blocking of my cowl that I knit to fill my commute time. 

How Now Brown Cowl was an extremely fast knit. I completed it in about 6 hours of knitting stretched over two days. I guess that is one reason I like using bulky weight yarns. When I got this item off the needles, I tried it on and was a bit dismayed to see that the tip of the cowl rolled under. I assume that this is because my gauge on garter stitch is tighter than my stocking stitch. 

Again, I used blocking wires to block the cowl after soaking it for about 30 minutes. I have two on the front side with one of them at an angle to pull the lower point out and away. The yarn is not in the least bit over stretched, so my hope is that this will stop it from rolling under.

Happy Knitting!

Productive Knitting Week: Part 1 - The Carnaby

I finally finished the skirt that I have been working on for about the last month. Last night I completed the stabilizing crochet stitches at the waist; this morning I wove in and skimmed in the ends of the yarn joins; and then I started the blocking process.

I have posted my blocking process in a prior post, so I won't go into it again, however, I want to show you that years ago I bought a really big bowl to put chips in for parties. It is bigger than a punch bowl and it turned out to be one of the best knitting tools I ever purchased! Here is the skirt enduring it's 30 minute soak.

Another purchase that I made a few months ago were blocking wires. Turned out that they work for a lot of things. In the set that I purchased are two flexible wires. I used both of them to weave into the waist of the skirt. This gave me the ability to set the curve into the top of the skirt and pull the panels out to a length of 20.5 inches which should make the skirt long enough to wear to work. You can just see the wire at the top of the picture on the right.

I left the skirt pinned to my blocking mat (aka my spare bed's mattress) with a small circular fan blowing across the top of it. Now, it was time for a field trip to my local Hobby Lobby for buttons.

I would have preferred a darker wood, but because I had extended the length of the skirt by 8 stitches, I needed to put in a 7th button. There were buttons that were more of a red cherry wood color, but there were only 6 of those buttons left. Hmm. I think these lighter maple wood looking ones look pretty good anyway. I will be sewing these on tomorrow and with any luck will be wearing it to work on Monday.

Stay tuned for parts two and three!

Happy Knitting.

Girly Girl Finished, Now on to Next Surprise

My Girly Girl Tunic is upstairs on my spare bed blocked and drying. I used my lace blocking wires (Blockit) to block it out. It worked really well and I was able to use a minimum of pins and had it blocked in less than 5 minutes. Nice! I wasn't sure how I was going to block something that is knitted in the round, but the blocking wires worked well. That was an investment well spent.

Now that Girly Girl is essentially finished, I cast on another Baby Surprise Jacket only this time, I want to make one that will fit a baby between 12 and 18 months, so I am going to use Elizabeth Zimmerman's [K] method to get the size. I knit a swatch on US size 9 needles with Hobby Lobby's Bamboo Spun which is a boucle-like yarn made with 77% Bamboo and 23% Polyamide. My gauge came out with 4.5 stitches to the inch. I used the size chart from the Craft Yarn Council to determine the measurements I needed.

I cast on the number of stitches I calculated and am working on the first few rows right now. I will post again  when I have enough to photograph.

Happy Knitting!