Cable Hat Redux

Don’t you have words you want to use, but aren’t 100% sure (or even 50% sure) that you can use it correctly. I checked on redux. It does mean what I thought, brought back or revisted. So here we are, revisiting the cable hat. Once again, no available daylight or model of an appropriate head size. (I made a kid size, so I could finish it more quickly.) I challenge anyone to say this is ‘too girly’ — well you can say it, but I won’t believe you mean it.

I reknit the pattern in Cascade 220, in a light olive green. I also followed Gale’s suggestion of changing the cuff, as some thought the rolled edge may contribute to the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ nature of that hat. I made a garter stitch cuff, casting on about 10% fewer stitches and using a smaller needle. I think it might require closer to 20% fewer, and I’m writing it up that way. I think this supports the comments on received on this being a gender neutral hat.

Sorry that I can’t post this as a free pattern, since I already promised it to the shop where I teach. I will post a Payloadz downloadable version if people are interested.

I’m kinda going cable crazy. Soon, I hope to post on my next cable hat design dilemma. (And alliteration crazy, too. Purportedly not on purpose. Probably.) There are also more ‘manly’ design concerns in process. Not initiated by me, I assure you.

Yarn Cocoon

I forgot to put the finished yarn cocoon photos in my last post. Here they are. A nice, non-rolling, relaxed yarn cocoon.

Why English Speaking Children Study Spelling

Yew Know, You Sew and So!

I was pondering some of the weirdness of the English language yesterday while walking home from work. (Pretty exciting, I know, and yes, I am available for parties…) An email question on the No-Sew Stockinette Blanket started it. Why not New Sew, or No So? Then I remembered these notes written on two consecutive mornings by my 6- year old nephew who was visiting.

He claimed not to be the one who used wooden spoons to bang on the bedroom door to wake up his uncle. (He slid the note under the door immediately after banging on it, then galloped ever so quietly down stairs.) The knitting content here? The note writer at work:

One of the first things he wanted to do on arrival at 10pm after a 3 hour flight with no nap? Wind yarn. We did wait till morning. If you have never seen a full body contact form of ball winding, you are missing something. Who knew (or hoo new) that ball winding was so alluring to the first grade set? On his last visit, JB invited the kid across the street to come over. “Hey Winston, want to wind yarn?” “Sweet, yah” JB then bragged that he had wound a skein of Bearfoot all by himself. (I told him Bearfoot was kind of hard to wind because it has a tendency to tangle.) I could just about picture a little crotch grab – yeah man, I do Bearfoot….I dug out a big pile of skeins and they went at it for nearly an hour. With a little time off to break my digital scale by seeing who could lean on it the hardest.

Question of the day? “Aunt Lou, don’t you have any more Koigu?”

In memory of that fine yarn winding fest, I am posting my favorite non-ball winder technique.

Jacqueline Fee’s Japanese Yarn Cocoon

I taught myself how this from Jacqueline Fee’s excellent directions in her equally excellent book The Sweater Workshop. I have taught others to do this, including my husband. I also won a $5.00 bet. A friend who is a talented carpenter and artist, and has some of the finest spatial skills I have ever been lucky enough to benefit from, bet me $5 that I could not put the entire skein of yarn on my hand. He watched in amazement and pulled out his wallet. Beer may have been involved. No beer was involved in the making of the video clip that follows the directions. Mr. Guy was getting all Cecil B. DeMille on me as he filmed. We reshot many times. The shadow is still there and I am still not ready for my close up.

I am assuming that you do not have a swift. You can certainly use it if you do. Otherwise, my Ma Clampett approach is to do this standing up, with the skein around a bucket on the floor. This keeps the yarn from tangling up if it’s the sort of wool that sticks to itself. If it’s not sticky, like cotton or lovely smooth merino, you don’t even need the bucket. Do lock up the household pets however.

1. With the palm of your left hand facing you, and the yarn coming from behind your hand, wind one end of the yarn around the tip of the middle finger of your left hand several times.

2. Bring the yarn around the outside of your left hand, from right to left, to the back, then over the thumb from the back to the palm.

3. Cross the palm, bring around to the back, then up and between the index and middle fingers from the palm to the back.

4. Cross the back of the hand, bring the yarn to the front, across the heel, and around the outside of the thumb, in the same direction as in #2.

5. Bring the yarn across the palm, heading toward the back.

6. Cross the back of the hand and bring the yarn around the index finger and between the index and middle fingers. Repeat this until your skein is all wound up.

7. Remove your left hand, tuck the end in.

8. Gently pull the end that was wrapped around your middle finger to start with. This should pull smoothly out, giving you a center pull cocoon.

9. If applicable, collect your $5.00.

On Gender Identity and Knitting

OK. This is not a post regarding GLBT circles or men’s knit night. I am talking about what makes people decide something is better suited to males or females. Or, as it was put rather succinctly recently—“Kinda girly, isn’t it?” I am always surprised at how adamant people are on this issue with baby clothes. Little boys and girls were once dressed in identical long dresses. Now, merely the presence of several garter stitch ridges on the yoke of an otherwise stockinette sweater makes it ‘girly.’ People in my Quick and Easy Baby Sweater class debate these things endlessly. “I wouldn’t put purple on a boy.” “Those blue dogs don’t look right for buttons on a girl’s sweater.” I usually end up reminding them that no matter what color the item is, it will be covered in baby cheese and milk stains at some point early in its career, so don’t take it too seriously.

Then, there is the question of what side the buttonhole should go on. I never give this much thought, since I was unaware of the boy/girl issue on this for many years. One of the few boys vs. girls issues I missed, I assure you. I have three older brothers and wore lots of their hand-me-downs. I thought some shirts buttoned one way, some another. Who knew why? (My mother did, however, sew the fly shut when I inherited pajamas…) Someone told me I could remember which side by saying “Women are always right.” But then I can’t remember whether it is the button or the buttonholes on the right.

But CABLES? How can cables have a gender identity? Take a look at this hat, one happy result of my recent explorations in cables.

I am not a great photographer, and red is especially hard. Not the choice for a pattern photo. While I wait for daylight and temperatures above -10F, I put it in the flatbed scanner.

The color and fuzzy quality of the yarn (Cloud 9, a merino/angora blend) aside, what makes this “feminine?” Without exception, everyone who has looked at this hat has declared it so. I tend to agree with them, but I wanted it to be a gender-neutral design. (Oh dear God, I can’t believe I am using terms like that regarding a HAT.) What if I did it in black? Would that make a difference? Share your cable/gender identity concerns with me. Really. I want to know.

from MLE

It’s the Wrong Yarn, In the Wrong Place*

*MLE’s apologies to Cole Porter.

I love standards, and have been going overboard on them since getting a subscription to satellite radio. The Spousal Unit and I decided a few years ago that rather than shopping for each other for Christmas, we’d find something we liked. Mostly it’s been art from local artists. This year, it was satellite radio. We don’t even have cable tv, but satellite radio is great. No commercials! We went with XM because it has BBC World, PRI (not the Mexican political party), NHL Home Ice, and Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio Hour. Bob’s show is fun, but on at bad times for me. The SU figured out how to tape it for me, but we are so mid-tech that the only way that it worked out is recording onto cassette tape so I can listen to it later. Anyone out there with another way to do this, I’d love to hear it. I’m also listening to Sonic Theater and Old Time Radio. (Did you know that the Green Hornet is the great-grandson of the Lone Ranger? I don’t remember him having a wife or child, so maybe he and Tonto were the first same-sex adoptee couple.) Great for knitting and listening. That’s my segue back to knitting content.

In Theresa’s last post, the same yarn behaved very differently in different shades of the same color. I’ve been pondering the way different yarn behaves as I designed some hat patterns. I’ve been doing some cable hat patterns because there don’t seem to be any really simple ones in the shop, and quite a few of my beginner and advanced beginner students were interested in trying cables. All the simple patterns were in books that they were not prepared to purchase just for one hat. Here is my most recent, an 8×8 cable in Cascade 220.

Here is the same pattern in Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed.

They don’t look similar at all, do they? I made the slightly larger size of the 8×8 cable hat in the JoSharp. Twice. No matter how I adjusted, I wasn’t happy with it. I increased the number of stitches after the cuff by quite a bit more. I reduced the number of stitches in the cuff. I used smaller needles, I used larger needles. Nothing pleased me enough to put it up in the store and call it a shop model. It is gorgeous yarn, soft, lovely to touch, but just doesn’t seem to have the bounce or elasticity that the 220 does. (It did survive multiple rippings, however.) The Jo Sharp is 85% Wool, 10% Silk & 5% Cashmere. I’m guessing that there is enough silk and cashmere to reduce the stretchiness of the wool. Do any of you knowledgeable fiber folks have ideas on this?

I think it would be great in a less compact cable, but I’ve swatched several options and am giving up using it for a cabled hat. The swatching was not wasted though, because I came up with an adaptation of a Barbara Walker stitch pattern that I’m going to work up in another yarn. I also have an idea for the JoSharp. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Heartfelt Purse

from Theresa

I was working on a project for a class, Cute Little Felted Bag, the perfect quick felted project for Valentine’s Day. It seemed like a good idea back in November when we were making up the class schedule, but now it’s January.

I really have a hard time designing on demand. It adds so much pressure to what is normally a lot of fun—yarns, shapes, colors combining into a new knitting project. I’ve spent hours and hours trying to come up with fun ideas, but at this point, any idea would have done. Maybe it’s just that I don’t design well in pink. It’s not a color that normally inspires me. Maybe I should have started with red for Valentine’s Day. But I was thinking red and white, and white has felting issues…

Well, I’ve gotten to the “good-enough” stage as my sister calls it. I knit up four of these little purses—one with Cascade 220 worsted weight yarn used alone, the other with Cascade 220 used with sparkly Aura, and the last two with Lamb’s Pride worsted—in red!

The final purse may not be brilliant, but it was fun to figure out the shaping and to design a project that wasn’t too putzy or tedious. My life is busy, so I like to design projects that are simple and easy to follow. In other words, projects that I could knit during a meeting or in the car.

It was interesting, though, that the two red purses (see photo) were knit with same needles, same number of stitches, same type of yarn (Lamb’s Pride worsted, which I love) and felted in the same load. Yet they came out two very different sizes. It must be that the two colors (ruby red and blue blood red) felt differently. It’s a mystery to me.