Ooops...

One of these things is exactly like the other.

Do you see the two identical halves of a snap?  Yes, yes you do.

I carefully cut off the hand-sewn half on the knitting, flipped it and re-sewed it.

Now I have this.

The snap is a clever way to attach the pom-pom to the hat, but I think I prefer the elastic loop method, where the elastic is pulled through the top of the hat and then buttoned around a, well, a button.  Less sewing.

I played yarn chicken with this project because I was using left-over yarn from the second Cowboys and Angels wrap.  I both won and lost.

I still had rows to go before I could start the decreases and I gambled that I could make it because I had made the ribbing section shorter in order to save yarn.  

As it turned out, I bet I could have knit several more rows of ribbing and still made it, so I sort of lost, even though I won and didn't run out of yarn, because now I have so little yarn left over that there's nothing to do with it.  I should have knit on.

And because it's raining and cold today, I finished my socks as well.

It's a good day for hand knit wool socks.

Now, unless I can come up with another knitting distraction, it's on to the sweater.  I've only had the yarn for a year and a half.

OK

So I said that I wasn't going to post any longer, but then I finished this hat:

and realized that I had no place to brag about it put it to show it off.  It's about the millionth Lost Banner Hat by Susan B. Anderson that I've made. They are, as the Yarn Harlot would say, dead easy, so actually no bragging is legitimate.

The yarn is Malabrigo Washted in color Indonesia, and it's the softest hat I've made.

Yes, I could have posted this on good old FB, but I've read on Ravelry that people who do that sometimes get lots of gimmie replies---Can you make me a dozen or so of these hats for my cousin's ex-husband's daughter's ski team?  How do you say NO to that? 

Oh, yes. Nancy Reagan said: Just say "no."

I don't know if it works for drugs, but it should for crafts. 

Anyway, this is my hat for my Ireland trip with my daughters in the fall. They will be so jealous.

Knitting---really!

I have actually been knitting. I have two or three WIPs (works in progress):

Another Lost Banner Hat by Susan Anderson

Seychelles by Susanna IC which will eventually look like this

because I bought exactly the same yarn and beads used in the sample. And because I'm such a master knitter! 

No. I'm not. I bought the pattern and supplies four years ago and then chickened out. It just looked way too complicated. Recently I studied the finished Seychelles on Ravelry, read notes left by the knitters, and decided that I could conquer this. It might take a while but SHE PERSISTS!

And thanks to Sweet Mother of Purl, I do have one finished project!  Yay me!

It is this Anarktis:

It is off the needles and currently blocking. I played yarn chicken and won even though I was using Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Cast Off. I had only this tiny bit of yarn to finish with, but I made it.  

I recently took an internet test to see if I am OCD and according to the test, I am 100% OCD! There are people in my family who would probably say: We told you so!

HOWEVER, I beg to differ even though the test was an official Internet Test. I store my circular needles in their original packaging and when the pattern called for a size six, I pulled out my size six. See? It says size 6 in two places!

When I finished the scarf, I noticed that it was really a good bit smaller than it should have been, and some aggressive blocking has not expanded it to the measurements the pattern indicated it would be.

I checked the needle in my gauge before I put it away, which I SHOULD have done BEFORE I started knitting. It's a size four. That explains the size but I cannot explain how I put the needle in the wrong case...and where is the size six that belongs in here? So how can I be OCD? I'm clearly not.

I bet the size six needle is in the size four package. If I'm even moderately OCD, that's where it should be, right?

I Am the Boss of My Knitting!

said Elizabeth Zimmerman in her book Knitting Without Tears, and I, too, am the boss of my knitting! Yesssss.................I couldn't find anything on the internet or in my books to tell me how to fix the twisted stitches I caused when I joined the cast on row on circular needles. So I decided not to cry and start over yet again --- not that knitting can cause me tears, (well, there was that mohair sweater )--- and instead I made up my own solution.

I worked over to the first joined stitch and then used a crochet hook to take that one stitch back to the beginning of the piece. I flipped the knitting on the left-hand needle, switching the yarn strands to the side I needed them to be on (in front of or behind the needle; I can't remember) and remade the stitches with the crochet hook.

It worked!!! Can you see the repair? If you can, shh..................

I doubt that this would work on yarn finer than worsted weight and on smaller needles, but it has worked here, and if it doesn't spontaneously unravel, I call it a success. Fingers crossed, though.

And on the next hat, I'm following Sigrun's advice and knitting a row or two before trying to join the ends. It should be easier to make sure the work is not twisted with a few rows on the needle first.

Thanks, Sigrun!

Help!!!

I am trying to make this Flap Happy Hat, designed by Susan B. Anderson for Spud and Chloe yarn.

What I have made so far is a hat mess: I've put the flaps on inside out and I don't even know how I did it so that I don't do it again, and I twisted the stitches when I joined the two ends on a circular needle. I am now in the process of frogging, then ripping out the whole brim.

Sallyknit!!! You have successfully made one so......Help?

It's a Hat!

I finished all the tying up and weaving in at Knit Night last night, and now Elizabeth will have a bright Marley Hat, designed by Susan B. Anderson and found in her book Itty Bitty Hats.

It was fun to make, and really, I could use any combination of stitches I like, and just put the toppers on and still get the same look.

Off to the Post Office...

"The fiddly bits"

says the Yarn Harlot. Anthony Bourdain would probably say "the nasty bits," (although probably about something truly nasty), but I say the "#$%^&*bits. I don't like fussy, fidgety projects and yet I keep making them. Oh well. The end results are generally worth the swearing. Not that I swear. Pay no attention to hokgardner's claims to the contrary.

Henrietta (might mean woman who may have a little too much time on her hands in some language someplace) is finished and gracing my kitchen counter. The knitting part is easy and so are all the %^&*%^ bits, but they do take time: three crowns, three tail feathers, two wattles (what an ugly name!), two eyes, and one beak.

It's sort of fun and if you, too, have a little spare time and want your very own Henrietta, well, knit it yourself. Once was enough!

[Oh, and the messed-up Kitchener's stitch? Still messed up, but you'll notice the angle I took the photo from!]

Mistakes Were Made

I am making the Knit Chicken from Blue Sky Yarns and designed by Susan B. Anderson. It is really cute - at least hers is - but boy, did I ever mess up the Kitchener Stitch last night. Where it worked, it worked well, but where it didn't - what a mess.

I tried, I really did. But the chicken has to be stuffed before it is grafted closed, and so the fabric fights back. Somehow I ended up with a messed up closing and I didn't dare to take the stitching out in order to try and get it right. The tension on the stitches as I worked would have unravelled the stitches, I think. Today I will try to fix this by using matching (I hope) thread and pulling the loops and holes into some sort of decent-looking fake Kitcheners. But if all else fails, Henrietta will live on top of the refrigerator, where no one will see her back.

Elizabeth's Hat

Tomorrow I go to Austin to visit older daughter and her family. I have Valentine candy for the older grandchildren, but Elizabeth, four months old, isn't quite up to M&Ms yet. Instead, I've made her this flower-wreath hat, designed by Susan B. Anderson and in her book Itty Bitty Hats.

The hat itself is just a generic hat, easy to make, but the flowers are the fun part to make. They are EASY! And so are the leaves. The time-consuming part is attaching them to the hat itself, turning the hat around and around, and deciding when enough is enough. It's a great project for leftover yarn, but I didn't have any cotton yarn and so had to start from scratch. I'll use the rest for what the designer calls the Marley Hat, which, like all the hats in the book, is just SO cute!

For the hat I used a worsted weight cotton Plymouth yarn called jeannee. While I was knitting it up, I didn't like it much for this project - it just didn't seem as sturdy as I would have liked and the flowers get heavy. However, the hat is holding up OK even with the weight of the flowers and leaves, so I guess the yarn has worked out better than I had expected. The colored yarns are all Tahki Yarns Cotton Classic (just a few yards of each) in colors: 3528 (yellow), 3456 (cherry pink), 3713 (green), 3454 (pink), 3800 (turquoise), 3914 (lavender), and 3724 (green). But again, it's a great project for leftover yarns.

If Elizabeth will allow us to put a hat ON her, I'll take a picture of the hat on its model!

(Note: Answer to yesterday's question about balls of yarn: The owner of my LYS says that she supposes the reason that some manufacturers do not wind yarn into balls is to better show the colors - especially with hand-dyed yarns - or the textures of yarns. Also, she says that putting it into balls would add one more process to the yarn production and thereby increase cost. So put a ball-winder and swift on your birthday/Christmas/Valentine's Day/Presidents Day/ Groundhog Day/or Because I Want Them Day list!)