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knitting for nothing

Posted on | November 20, 2008 | 1 Comment

First – thanks for all your sympathy!  The stereo is playing just fine and now I’m dealing with getting accident reports and estimates.  Fun.

Now.  Back to the topic at hand.  Have you ever spent a few days knitting and have absolutely nothing to show for it?  That’s where I’m at.

I realized on our last backpacking trip that my Maltese Fisherman’s Hat is too small and wasn’t really all that warm.  Plus, it makes me look like a gnome.  Nothing against gnomes, I love them, but I don’t want to look like one.  I obviously need a new, very warm hat for backpacking.  I decided to make one, using naturally-colored handspun, and knitted top-down since I wasn’t sure how much of each color I would need or even exactly how much I had.

It makes a very nice hat for a hedgehodge.  But I am not a hedgehodge.  It had another problem as well.

SB asked me if I was knitting a boob and given the appearance, I think it a valid question.

I started over Tuesday night, going bottom-up this time, using US2s and 148 sttiches.  I realized yesterday morning that it was way too big.  I did a little research, found a hat pattern knit with fingering weight yarn that instructs you to cast on 140 stitches.  Okay, I can do that.  Started again last night, knit two inches on US2s with white Cormo/Silk handspun (more on this later because wow – I LOVE THIS FIBER!), knit one round with black/brown shetland, switched to US 4s, purled a round, and knit 2″ more.  I then picked up the cast on edge to join to the current stitches for a hemmed brim.

From the moment I switched to US 4s, a nagging voice told me the hat was too big.  My first clue should’ve been that I was using 24″ circulars and I didn’t have to knit using magic loop.  But – I’d measured the first and second hats, so I told that voice to shut it.  I kept knitting and picking up stitches until I’d picked them all up, everything worked out perfectly, not too many stitches nor too few and it looked beautiful.

It measured 27″ around.

My head is 21″ around.

I will be starting yet AGAIN tonight, with my new gauge measurement of 5 stitches to the inch, which, according to Elizabeth Zimmerman, means I should cast on 91 stitches.  It’s a good thing I like knitting this cormo/silk so much, because I don’t mind at all!  This fiber is incredible.  A friend picked up a bag of it from Foxfire Fiber at Rhinebeck last year and I’d spun a bit and quit.  It wasn’t as easy to spin as other fibers and to be honest, I was rather meh about it.  Last week I was clearing off bobbins and wound off the little bit I’d spun into a center pull ball and plied it up.  Okay, it was really soft yarn and actually pretty nice.  Then I decided to knit with it.  And the heavens opened up and angelic voices sang and ohmygod this is the softest, most fantastic yarn I’ve ever, EVER worked with!  I LOVE it.  I want footed pajames in it.  I want to knit underwear with it.  This fiber is just – wow.

It’s hard to see from this, but there is stitch definition AND a halo coming from this yarn!

I think I have found the holy grail.

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