I'm working on a really cute hat from this month's Knit Gifts from Interweave Press. Its a cute magazine thats got some great projects. I'm working on the Larkspur hat.... Hopefully I have the drive to do the scarf too. I'm using some of the yarn I got in the Yarn Swap I did earlier this year. Its a Cotton / Microfiber DK yarn called Longmeadow by Valley Yarns. Being a good EMS employee I know cotton is a big no-no when you're doing most anything, particularly when you're trying to keep warm (like a hat might try to do), but its a great color and I've got lots of it -- so we'll see how it works.

I like the cabled zigzags and hopefully the I-cord loops at the top of the hat look cute when their done. But my goodness what a pain they are to make. I'm about 4 inches into my first of three 7.5 inch I-cords. Its going slowly and my hand is getting a bit sore because you really have to keep the tension strong on the yarn when you start each row. Ugh... what a PITA (the scarf calls for sixteen 3 inch I-cords.... now you see my hesitation in saying whether or not I attempt the scarf....).

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Posted by Jessica on November 29, 2006 11:24:29 PM EST #

My first attempt at Blake's UGA hat was just sad. The logo honestly took up a quarter of the hat. The good thing was, I learned a lot from the hat. I got the pattern right for the guage of the yarn - but I made the pattern itself too big. When I switched colors I didn't "lock" the stitched together correctly so either there would be a big gap between the colors or half of a stitch would disappear behind the other.

The hardest part of attempt number two was finding the right yarn. Attempt number one was knit with a worsted weight yarn on a size 7 needle. In order to get a fine enough guage for the logo, I wanted to knit on a size 3 needle. While I was in Salt Lake for my reunion I found the perfect yarn at Black Sheep Wool Company. It's called "Falk" by Dale of Norway. It's a machine washable wool yarn that knits on a size 3 needle -- perfect!

Attempt number two had a a near perfect logo -- I did much better with locking the stitches together when I switched colors... the part that I REALLY miscalculated was the size. I cast on 160 stitches, which resulted in a hat that would have fit Andre the Giant.

Attempt number two had a good logo, but the hat itself was HUGE.

I realized it was going to be too big right as I finished the logo... but I'd put so much work into it!! I kept hoping I'd figure out a way to fix it... I knit the hat in the round, so I couldn't fix it by just overlapping the seam when I sewed it together (but honestly... even if I could have done that, there was no saving that hat). After I started decreasing it... I realized there was no way. So I frogged the whole thing. That hurt. But it had to be done. And so began attempt number three (for you non-knitters, to "frog" something means to tear out all the stitches and to turn it back into a ball of yarn... I heard that its called "frogging" because you "rip-it, rip-it, rip-it").

My final UGA hat alongside the first attempt. Much better, don't you think?

I'm working on writing a big blurb on how I designed and knit the final hat. I'm really happy with how it came out. At the moment its on a FedEx truck/plane on its way to Georgia. Hopefully it serves the Bulldogs well at their game on Saturday. I look forward to seeing a picture of the hat in action!

(PS Sam, I promise to blog more often)

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Posted by Jessica on November 21, 2006 11:30:49 PM EST #

We had a great time on Friday night. Taramin, (aka Captain Nimarat) hosted a Pirate Party. There was plenty of conversation, dancing, and mingling. There were rules for the party (as any good pirate captain requires). The most important rule was that if you didn't come dressed in pirate garb, you had to walk the plank:

Prisoner Juergen walks the plank, spurred on by pirate Tim.

Well.... Juergen's costume actually WAS the prisoner get-up, which I absolutely loved. So he didn't really have to walk the plank, and he never jumped in the water. He even stayed bound up for the majority of the night. Juergen's plank-walking not withstanding... there were several who dared show up without an eye-patch, so they did have to walk the plank. Tim was nice though... when he filled up the water-tub, he did it with warm water -- so it was a relatively pleasant plank-walking experience (or so I'm told).

(By the way, all the photos that I took at the party are up on flickr. I filled in as many names as I could -- I'm sorry for missing some, I suck at remembering names. Please leave a comment on the picture with suggested titles / descriptions, and I'll be sure to update them. Also, if you have any other pictures from the party, please email them to me and I'll add them to the flickr slide set)

Me and Captain Nimarat	Me and Sean

Tim put together a great mixed CD for the party. One of the songs in the mix was Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65. If you heard it, you'd remember it. In fact... you can watch it on You Tube (as with every other video in the world. Sean suggested that the "I'm blue, ba da bee da ba by" refrain was actually "I'm blue, if I were green I would die". DAMN that's an interesting theory.... go ahead, click the video... its definitely plausible. BUT, being the skeptical geek that I am, I googled it and found AmIRight.com (a site for misheard lyrics) and they list "if I were green I would die" as incorrect, as well as many other variations.... booooo :(

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Posted by Jessica on November 4, 2006 9:52:19 PM EST #

Way back in March I started a Fair Isle Double Knit Scarf that I was making for a friend of mine. As I said before, I was kind of stumped when trying to create a "boy" scarf -- I wanted it to be warm, and pretty, but not frilly and certainly not "foo foo"... and because I'd be the one spending hours making the thing...I wanted it to be fun to make, too. The ever-changing fair isle pattern was a great way to keep it interesting and to get my brain involved in the knitting process.

My goal as I was making the scarf was to not repeat patterns, and to not sketch out any of the patterns by hand. Instead I wanted to picture the pattern in my head and knit it directly. I was able to do that on all of the patterns except the houndstooth-type pattern that you see on the right side of the scarf -- between the two square blocks and the big diamond. For whatever reason I couldn't picture how to do that one in my head (I also included a chart for the houndstooth pattern that I used on the right). Ya know.... I don't even know if "houndstooth" is the right description for that pattern.... oh well, thats waht I'm calling it :).

I finished the main work fo the scarf a few weeks after I started it, but I never bound it off because I wanted to make sure it was long enough. Then, just so I could procrastinate longer.... Dave moved to Puerto Rico, and he certainly didn't need a scarf down there -- so there was no rush to finish. But, then he came back... So, I sucked it up and actually finished one of my UFO's (that'd be "UnFinished Object" in knit-geek-speak). I'm really happy with how it turned out. There's a couple small mistakes here and there, that I'm sure only I will notice. But overall, I think its a great scarf. Hopefully it keeps him nice and warm.

• pattern & materials: listed on my original entry
• finished size: 5 inches x 63 inches



Tags : completedproject pattern scarf doubleknitting
Responses[4]
Posted by Jessica on November 2, 2006 11:12:53 AM EST #