Hatpocalypse

After a partying related hiatus from my knitting (there are worse things in the world. Happy belated St. Pat’s), Slouchy Gretel is done.

 

And man alive is it slooooouuuuchy. It’s huge! I forgot that Ysolda’s “regular” berets are pretty slouchy, so the shoulchy version is practically a dreadlock tam. I could, in fact, fit all of my hair in there with no struggle. But I really do like the way it turned out. Rowan Kid classic cables up…uniquely. The cables themselves are much more subtle than they would have been in something like, say, Malabrigo. Less of a contrast between the raised stitches and the background stitches. The halo around the hat is also very nice. It’s interesting (at least to me) to see how this wool/mohair blend produced such a different fabric than the Lamb’s Pride I used for Estella. The fuzziness of Estella just makes it seem more sturdy and warm, but the Kid Classic Gretel is a soft little poof with lattice work on it.

 There is, however, some tragic news. My nice light brown tweed Le Slouch, the hat I wear so often it’s practically a part of my hair…has met with misfortune. It went the entire St. Patrick’s Day weekend without a mishap…but then my mom decided that I was taking too long to unpack my overnight bag and threw the contents in to….

THE WASHING MACHINE!!

 …If it’s any consolation, Classic Elite Skye Tweed felts very nicely in to a soft fabric…but more to the point my favorite hat has now shrunk and turned to a loose felt…I really just don’t know what to do? I know I could make another one, and if I were willing to cannibalize another project, I could even make it from the same yarn…but it won’t be *that* hat…

The poor thing is currently being stretched across a dinner plate…maybe it’s salvagable.

A need for focus

I was so proud of myself for finishing the Wishbone sweater. It’s big, it’s warm, I can tuck my legs in to it if need be…it’s exactly what I wanted out of this sweater! Since I finished it a few days ago, it’s been serving as  nice alternative to freezing my butt off in the basement. No “in action” shots yet because I was such a mess this morning when I took the pictures. No one needs to see medusa hair and red eyes on a knitting blog.

My guilty bit comes from the fact that, instead of finishing the sweater and buckling down on the lace scarf or the second sock that has been languishing, I cast on for (surprise surprise) another hat. But in all fairness it’s a really really cute one. The pattern for Gretel is, as usual for an Ysolda pattern, phenominally well written. It’s amazing just how much quicker a project goes when you have a detailed set of instructions to work with. I’m already lapping the “regular sized” version and headed in to the slouchy.  Moreover, this project lead me to learn an all new tublar cast on that I’ll probably be subbing in on any future hats. It makes a great edge that looks very clean. The yarn is also new to me: Rowan Kid Classic in a stormy blue that I love. It’s also much softer than I expected.

So there we go. This hat will be a happy diversion at which point I will devote time in front of the TV to that lace scarf (not even halfway through the center panel and the edging is nowhere in sight), and the sock will get done on the usual schedule of “when I’m on the go/away from my TV project.” Kinda sad, though. I haven’t had SSS this bad in a long time…

Eureka Moments

I was really jamming myself up on the EZ Wishbone Sweater. I finished the second sleeve and promptly thought to myself ‘Well now what the hell do I do?’ The instructions are to “put all stitches on the needles”…well la di da how do I do that? Do I use magic? The sleeve stitches can’t just suddenly *be* part of the sweater stitches…

…Or can they?

Eventually I came to the conclusion that, as usual, I was waaaaaaay over-thinking things. Just put the sleeve stitches in with the rest of them.  That’s all there is to it. So what is the simplest solution? That’s usually going to be the correct one. Well…I guess just…like…knitting the sleeve stitches from the beginning of the armpit gap going up and around to the other side and then just trucking on across the body? I mean…I could kinda picture how that might result in shoulder-slantiness and basically attached arms…

 

Well what do you know? Just knitting the damned things on seems to have worked (although I’m not entirely comfortable taking out my lifelines yet). Once I quit freaking out about the new construction that I’d never worked with before, it made perfect sense to just attach them by, shockingly, knitting them. Occam’s Razor wins again! Now I just need to get past my NEW mental roadblock of “keep decreasing until there’s 32 stitches total before adding more decreases? no way that can’t be right that’s way too small…” Hopefully by the time I’m done this will be a minimum of 5 balls of yarn I’d never use otherwise out of my stash.

But before I go…I will use this blog as a confessional. I haven’t knit a sweater in ages. This wishbone is the first I’ve done since the disastrous “what does ‘DK’ mean is that like a brand name or something I’ll just use whatever the hell I want and not compensate on gauge” Lamb’s Pride and Mohair cardigan (which I still wear around the house all the time, for the record). But now…I have newly bought yarn for two more sweaters…that’s a total of 3 unmade sweaters sitting the stash…up from where I was at the end of last year….and I bought more sock yarn…But it was on sale! No seriously there was a 20% off sale at Anglefire this past weekend and they had pretty colors for sweaters and Lorna’s Laces in a blue that I LOVE and Dream in Color Sock in a pretty dark purpley-ish spectrum and I’ve never used this kind of yarn before….Wow. I’m a damned spaz when I feel guilty about spending money…but before the sale I was doing so well at clearing out…