Disappointment Thy Name Is...

Knit Picks Andean Chullo kit.

After doing a lot of Latvian mittens last year for the holidays, I kind of fell in love with doing stranded color work in knitting. When Knit Picks advertised their Andean Chullo hat kit last fall, I ordered one as soon as I could, knowing it would be fun to try.

Here's the photo of the completed hat which comes with the pattern:


Now if I had been savy and listening to a recent book of knitting advice I was reading, I should have known something was amiss at this point in the project.

Can you see what my clue should have been?

Yes, at no point does this hat actually appear on a real/actual HUMAN head. The only shots of it are on this clear dummy head. Right there I should have been asking myself "what's wrong with this hat that they don't have a live model in it?"

(My recent knitting advice said to always eye suspiciously the way any photos which accompany patterns are presented. Is the person standing or sitting funny? Are they showing the item from only one angle? What does the way they photographed it on the model say about potential pit falls/problems with the pattern?)

Ignoring that advice and plunging straight ahead like the mighty knitting fool I am, here's what I ended up with:


Yes, it was lovely to knit. I had fun doing the color work. I liked the patterns, especially the llamas.

But dudes.....

....seriously?

It is way, WAY too tall to fit a normal human head without looking completely silly!! (Can you see there are a good 4" to 6" of hat above the top of the head that just sticks up or flops over?!)

If you are related to Herman Munster or happen to know any members of the Conehead family, this hat would be perfect.

But don't expect your 17 year old DS to wear it, no matter how kind hearted he is to his dear, batty, old, yarn-crazed mom.

It just doesn't fit.

Oh, and I could have done without the serious, raging sinus cold/respiratory flu right before Christmas.

Happy Knitting!
(I'm going to get some more tea.....)

Color Work

Went to be with my knitting friends for our weekly gathering today. I took this for show-and-tell:



It's knit from Rauma wool I purchased at the new yarn shop in Ames a few weeks ago. Those of you who know I knit some Latvian mittens for people last year will recognize the braid technique I picked up from that experience.

Everyone oohed and ahhed over the hat this morning. They wanted to know if they could get a copy of the pattern. That's when I had to admit to making it up as I went along.

I thought the three colors I found in the sale bin ($4 each) would look nice together and I just cast on 128 stitches and took off with whatever struck my fancy at the time. (I do tend to keep Fibonacci numbers in mind somewhat when thinking of rounds/patterns, but not always!)

I had enough wool left over to finish off the last 6 items I needed to create for the male presents I'm doing for the holidays. (Hopefully some of the men I'm gifting are ok with deep turquoise and eggplant purple. I think some of them will be.)

On another note:

For those who are interested in the issues of bullying and suicide, I would direct you to one of people I follow as a personal knitting icon, Franklin Habit, who wrote a very poignant and elegant blog entry regarding the topic on his blog The Panoptican titled "It Gets Better." Go, read it....and don't skip the hundreds of comments, especially if you have been bullied or felt hopeless/desperate because you felt no on supported you, no one cared, no one was there for you.

More Mittens

I'm headed into the busiest part of my month with the magazine, but I thought I should post a pic of what has been keeping me sane over the weekend and up to now.
I started my next pair of Latvian mittens....




I had to take the chart to Office Max and blow it up on the copier for easier reading. (I discovered the eye strain of looking at the small one was taking away from the amount of time I could actually knit!) While I was there I found this great magnetic dry erase board to use with a magnet strip to keep my place on the chart.





It works great! Now I must get back to work since I also picked up some freelance work for another area newspaper and have several projects due in a week or less!

Happy Knitting!

Houston, We Have Liftoff!

Well, let the mitten knitting begin!

Here is my first attempt at Latvian mittens.




I am really liking the color combination!

The cast on wasn't difficult. It's just the long-tail cast on using two yarns. One color goes around the thumb and the other around the index finger.

The fringe sort of threw me for a loop for a little while. I tried and ripped 3 times before the lightbulb went off on what the directions were saying. Once I figured it out, it went ok. I'm sure mine is too tight and I didn't get it all pulled evenly before securing the stitches in the next round, but what do you expect from a first attempt?!

The braid section was easy, fun and produced a cool result IMHO.

I am actually knitting the colorwork section using two hands, holding the blue in my left hand and knitting it Continental and carrying the cream in my right and knitting it English style. I can see I need to work on making sure my strands aren't too tight so that it doesn't pucker. But I think I'm doing pretting darn good for my first attempt ever.....!

I really like the challege and I'm glad I've set myself the goal of doing these for Christmas.

If there are any female relatives reading this who would like to put in a color request, please leave a comment!!!!!!

Happy Knitting!