Looking Forward to Fall

Last week I finalized my fall teaching schedule at A New Yarn. I'm offering two classes: Magic Loop Socks and Cables & Twists (details below). Also, the shop will be featuring my MUMTU Socks and Tweedy Cabled Cap patterns as give-aways at Seattle's 4th Annual Stitch & Pitch on Thursday! (You know that the nationwide Stitch & Pitch phenomenon actually got its start here in Seattle in 2005, don't you? Even though it was driven by retail stores, it's yet another reason why Seattle rocks!)

I stopped by A New Yarn yesterday to get this:


Five skeins (one's buried) of yummy Queensland Kathmandu DK in deep purple with flecks of white, blue, pink, and red. I will be knitting up a shop sample of the Tweedy Cabled Cap with one of these skeins. The others are for a scarf I'm designing to match.

Claudia, Program Manager of A New Yarn, will be posting the new class schedule next week. For now, here are the basics:

Magic Loop Socks
October 11, 18, and 25
10am - Noon
Learn to knit two socks at once from the toe up with this clever method. Course includes a lesson in Judy's Magic Cast-On. Join us as we make the Mash-Up Magic Toe-Up (MUMTU) Socks, which will give you a customized fit with whatever yarn weight or needle size you choose.

Cables & Twists
November 8 and 15
10am - Noon
If you love the look of cables and twists but haven't tried them before, now is your chance. Join us as we knit the Tweedy Cabled Cap to learn the basic techniques of making and moving cables and twisted stitches. We will learn methods of crossing stitches both with and without a cable needle.

Christmas Again: Pumpkin Koolhaas Redux

My sister sent pictures of the Koolhaas I made her for Christmas! She's been making wonderful gifts for everyone else for years — even when there's not really an occasion other than that she loves us. Back in December, when we talked about the Koolhaas hat and she mentioned how much she wanted one, I decided to make it for her for Christmas.


Pattern: Koolhaas by Jared Flood
Started: December 14, 2007
Completed: December 17, 2007
Materials: Peace Fleece Worsted in Glastnost Gold
Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm; US 8 / 5.0 mm

B adores all the colors of fall, so I knew the yarn would be in the autumn color range. I looked forward to an opportunity to work with colors outside my normal color scheme. I had just finished the J's Pumpkin Koolhaas, so I figured I'd keep B's out of the orange colorway. I knew from my conversation with her, though, that she was interested in something tweedy like I'd done for J. Peace Fleece had been on my mind since the planning stages of J's Urban Aran. I knew it would be great for this hat.

So off I went to my LYS, all but flinging myself towards the Peace Fleece. Fortunately, I had cell phone in-hand. As I perused the stacks and contemplated the options — and found myself holding tweeds in lovely reds and greens (colors I do usually work with) — I realized I needed to get B on the phone and talk through the fiber selection with her. Just hearing her voice got me right back on track with my thinking: "This is a gift for my sister. Her favorite color in the world is orange. Of course her hat should be orange."

Peace Fleece is quite dense in this pattern. (Read: Will get you through the deepest freeze.) I like the way the cabling nestles in to the fabric rather than popping way out on top. It’s a very different look that I find really beautiful – and the hat looks better on people (like me) who have fuller faces and, therefore, can’t pull off skullies in lighter weights.


It’s a little hard to tell from the online screed res, but this is a beautiful, subtle tweed, with red, yellow, and teal/green in the little nubbins.

I got better gauge with this than the Tahki Donegal I used on J’s. It didn't turn out as long as his. No need to roll the brim.

Note that I had quite a bit of yarn left over. I purchased one skein and still have about 50g left!

In the end, I'm so glad I went with the orange! My fears that two orange projects in a row would get boring were unfounded. The Peace Fleece and the Tahki Donegal used on J's hat are so different that I found myself fascinated with the nuances of difference between the two and was actually glad to have done one right after the other.

Best of all, B says she loves it and, occasionally, even has opportunity to wear this woolly wonder in New Orleans.

I enjoyed working with the orange so much that I went and got myself a skein of orange sock yarn and look forward to knitting it up!

Tweedy Cabled Cap

Pattern: Mine
Started: March 4, 2008
Completed: March 6, 2008
Materials: Queensland Collection Kathmandu DK
Needles: US 7 / 4.5 mm. I used 5 DPNs throughout. Kept things very clear on the 4-section cap.

This pattern is an original design, with influence from Cathy Campbell's
Between-Seasons Cap (from 101 Designer One-Skein Wonders). I really liked Campbell's use of left and right twists along the decrease lines, so I lifted that technique.



The pattern for my cable braid is a 15-stitch, 8-row repeat. You do off-set, continuous CF6s and CFBs at rows 3 and 7, respectively.




Day One: I cast on 16 stitches for the band, putting an extra RSpurl on every row to anchor the cap. Knit the band for 19-1/2 inches to fit my head, cast off, and sewed the band together. You can knit the band to whatever length you need to wrap your noggin.

I decided to use US 7 needles instead of the 6s specified on the wrapper, and I'm really happy with that choice. Definitely better for the cabled band, which I had started on 6s but frogged because it was too dense and hard. I stuck with the 7s on the cap portion, too, in hopes that it would move me along more quickly and prevent me from running out of yarn. This was critical because I only had the 1 skein, which I found on a discontinued table but couldn't pass up. (Discontinued colorway 424.) I really didn't want to purchase more off ebay — where shipping charges would bring the entire project back up to pre-discount prices anyway. (Who wants to have their great bargain turn into a not-so-great bargain?!)

Day Two: Picked up 100 stitches around the RSpurl edge and started the cap. You're picking up roughly 3 of every 4 purl-edge stitches. Be careful not to skip more than one stitch at a time. If you have a bigger head, you'll probably want to increase the number of stitches you pick up. It really doesn't matter how many stitches you pick up as long as it's divisible by four (that's what I did, anyways — you can make as many top sections as you want) and you plan your decrease rows accordingly to get the shape you want.

I put equal numbers of stitches on each of 4 DPNs, and I plotted the LT/RT decrease line to land in the MIDDLE of each needle. This made it so I wouldn't have a decrease/twist line running up the front-center of the cap... not a look I like. With 100 stitches picked up, on each needle you knit 9 stitches before doing the LT/RT decorative sequence, then you knit the 9 remaining stitches.

Day Three: Didn't get a chance to knit again until after dinner.

I started my decreases when the cap hit about 5.5" (k2tog/ssk on either side of the LT/RT decorative sequence), and I decreased every other row until I needed to intensify the shape of the bend.

When you get down to about 13 stitches on each needle, you'll start doing more K2/ssk decreases per row than just around the decrease line — and you eliminate the LT/RT within about two rows of this. Plot the decreases to work down all knit stitches and LT/RT stitches. When each needle has just three stitches on it (you'll have just completed a row of K2tog P1 SSK), then cut the working yarn and use a tapestry needle to draw together the remaining stitches.

Finished it before I went to bed. Didn't run out of yarn. It fits great. It looks great. I love it!

Of course, I'm not set up to photograph myself wearing it (read: I didn't feel like getting cleaned up), so I recruited a darling model.



This is what she thinks modeling is all about... I give you C's "Blue Steel":



Please forgive this proud parent for gushing, but I'm more partial to this sweetie look.

Moving along on the Tweedy Cabled Cap

Picked up 100 stitches around the RSpurl edge and started the cap. It’s kind of hard to photograph at this stage, but here’s what it’s looking like now.



I like it! Pretty much everything you see at this point is original to me.

I'm gunning to finish this before I go to bed tonight. Would love to wear it before Seattle's weather gets too nice!

What to Do With Kathmandu? A Twisted Tale

Wasn't planning to cast on anything new until I finished at least one of the other three things on my needles... But I found this Kathmandu DK Tweed on sale at Acorn Street when Joseph and I went on Saturday, and I've been puzzling over what I would do with it. The problem: There was only 1 skein -- it's been discontinued. So I've been thinking, thinking, thinking about it ever since. Decided today that it would either have to become a neckwarmer or a hat, and the hat won out!

I've basically created my own design. I’m using the Between-Seasons cap as inspiration for the decrease twists, though, because I don’t like most cap decreases I see, and I thought Cathy Campbell’s LT/RT decrease technique was pretty.

Crossing my fingers that I have enough yarn! I’m working on size 7 needles instead of the size 6 specified on the wrapper. Definitely worked better for the cabled band. I’m sticking with it on the cap portion, too, in hopes that it’ll move me along more quickly and help me avoid running out of yarn. I only have the 1 skein, which I bought off a discontinued table but couldn’t pass up.

J's Pumpkin Koolhaas

We all know the maxim that you should never knit your boyfriend a sweater... well I never did. In fact, I may hold a record. This year, nearly 20 years after meeting my boyfriend/husband, I finally knuckled down and knit something for him:

Pattern: Koolhaas by Jared Flood [AKA Brooklyntweed]
Started: December 7, 2007
Completed: December 11, 2007
Materials: Tahki Donegal Tweed
Needles: US 6 / 4.0 mm; US 8 / 5.0 mm



Love the stitch definition with this yarn. This was my first try at the Koolhaas. The hat ended up fitting well around but being a bit long, so Joseph folds up the rib. He loves it and, I’m happy to say, wears it all the time... even around the house!



But wait — What's that he's doing? (you ask) He's knitting! Yessiree, there's a lot of good that can come from checking out Brooklyntweed, the remarkable blog by Jared Flood. In my household, that "good" was J's decision to give knitting a whirl. (Thank you, Jared, for your stunning aesthetic!) I started teaching him in November, and by Christmas he had finished his first project (that scarf in the picture) and a second project for C (see the next entry). In the picture, he's working on a tie of his own design. He now has his own Ravelry account, and you can check out his project page to see more of it.

Back to the Koolhaas:

It's a fantastic pattern. I live near the Seattle Public Library where Jared got his inspiration, so I’m partial. As of January, I’ve made three of these – given them all away – received one (knit by Joseph), and modified the pattern for children’s sizes so Joseph could knit one for our daughter. Did I mention we love this pattern?

I finished it well before Christmas and gave it to him to wear right away. Who can really wait when the guy lives with you, watched you knit it for 3 days, and knows it's done? Not me! The problem was, I had told C it would be a Christmas present. Rather than blow the whole Christmas thing for her, we kept it a secret that J was wearing the hat. He'd wait to put it on until she wasn't around. We did have a few scares, but we pulled it off. When he unwrapped it Christmas morning, she was thrilled because he would finally get to wear it!

Unfortunately, I gifted the other two Koolhaas's I made for my mom and sister before taking any pictures. My sister promises to send me some, so I'll post them sometime in the future!