Sunday, January 31, 2010

William and Wool and Hippie Gear

I've had a productive weekend. I managed to make not just one, but two hats for William, and mitts. The first hat I made him was too small, so I gave it to Lizzie for baby Jake, when he gets here. Should be anyday now!

These wool hats were made from JL yarn. Not one I've used efore. I had a few surprises, for example, the yarn that appeared to be green and blue, surprised me with lots of purple. So, I cut a several purplish color sequences out, so the hat would be boy appropriate. I was a little disappointed with the colors in the yarn, but the texture and the feel of the wool was nice. It's very squishy and fairly soft, before first wash. It's really very soft after wash. It will be a good warm hat for baby hippies.

Chris named the first one a "Hippy Hat" based on the colors. When we gifted the first hat to Dan and Lizzie, Lizzie sent us a "Thank you" for the "Hippie Hat." We never called it a hippie hat to them, so it seems the sentiment is prevalent. No dispute, this is the hippie hat, so one guess what I called the mitts. :-)

The hat was made based on a pattern, but the mitts were pretty much improvised. A lot of things I'll do different next time. At the end of all the photos, I'll put my notes of how they were made.


Notes on the mitts:


Well, I thought I’d give this a try, I used “Mitts 101” from Knitty.com as a guideline. I’ll consider this a good first attempt. I know the things I’ll do differently next time, and next time won’t be too far away as these won’t fit for very long. LOL.

Made for William, almost 10 months old:
Cast on 20.
Knit 10 rows of twisted rib (k1 in back, p1)
Begin St st. & Knit 9 more rows then knit in waste yarn for the thumb.
Continue St st until it measures 2 1/2 inches from the beginning of St st.
Decrease 2 rows (start of each needle k1, ssk, k to last 3, k2tog k), then knit one row even, Twice.
Decrease 1 row (same decrease pattern as above) and one more row even.
Graft.

Next time:
Ribbing should be doubled (at least) I want this to go further up his wrists to cover any gap left by a jacket. It’s okay for now, but not great and no room to grow.

I measured his hand and started the decreases at the exact point (2.5 inches) which is the distance from wrist to tip of pinky. If this yarn doesn’t grow, next time I’ll know to leave a little wiggle room, but he did seem to get a good grip (even without the thumb being done).

He loves the gloves. I could hardly get them back from him. He wanted to keep feeling everything with the glove on.

Definately not a perfect job, but I still consider it a win!

Note on the yarn: Will not buy again. I lost almost an entire skein of yarn to purple that had to be cut out. Didn’t expect purple on a skein that appeared to be all green and blue on the outside.

Also, there was no consistancy between the color repeats within one skein, nor between the two skeins used. Same dye lot. I tried cutting out the purples, then as I started finding knots (one in one skein, 2 in the other) I figured why not try and cut color sequence so I could match the gloves, but the same colors used in glove one did not show up again for glove two.

3 comments:

  1. I feel you on the JL yarn - I got some sock yarn that was full of blues and pinks in the picture and then most of the skein was horrible except for just a little bit.

    Their cotton sock yarn, the alya is much, much better. And their merino sock yarns are pretty good too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll have to lookout for some of the alya!! Thanks for the tip. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've never heard of this kind of yarn Deb, but thanks for the heads up on it! I know about those funny surprises with something you think is going to look one way and it comes out with something icky in there! LOL! I've been a big time splicer myself! Love the hat and mitts!! Sooo cute!
    I think my Ravelympics project is going to be some kind of mittens for myself. I've made tons of fingerless ones but the one mitten I ever tried was a disaster! LOL!

    ReplyDelete