Knitting on Demand

First things first: yes, that was a picture of my wife in my last post, and yes, she is smoking hot. Now, on to business.
I've been knitting quite a lot recently. Of course, I've had to squeeze it into the commutes when I don't take Adelaide to Grandma's house in the car, and into lunch breaks, but I've found myself on a bit of a roll anyway. There's been a bit more time at home too, because my little treasure of a daughter is sleeping a little more consistently now.
The funny thing is, I've been knitting for other people. That isn't unusual in itself - if you look back over this blog, you'll see that I mostly knit for other people. What I'm finding to be different is that now I'm knitting for other people at their request.
The first real request I got (more than just a 'will you knit me something?' came from a place I never would have suspected. When my brother-in-law came to visit from England, he came with strict instructions from his boss. Brett is a policeman in my home town, and he works in the Divisional Support Unit. You don't really need to know much more than that. Bethany and I struck up a friendship with his boss, Tom, when we went to a Wednesday match him and his daughter a while back, and he had obviously heard about my new passion for knitting. When Brett asked what he should bring back from Canada for the station, Tom asked for a DSU scarf for the wall. So I set to work, knitting my first requested piece - a police scarf. Strange, eh?

Then the requests started coming in more frequently. I was asked by my colleague to make her a hat. I went for a stitch pattern I found in Mary Webb's Knitting Stitches called Candleflame Lace. I chose a rather nice springy yellow to suit the season, and set to work on it. (It didn't really turn out to be her colour, though, and I had spent too much time and effort on it not to give it to Bethany instead - she's modeling it here.) My friend Mel asked for a pair of fingerless gloves to match a hat someone had knit her. They turned out pretty good too.
Then my sister-in-law wanted a beret. Strange choice for her, but it turned out to really suit her. So much so that Beth had me knit one for her too. Beth's wearing hers in this picture. I knit Becca's in a really nice chunky chocolate brown.
The other request I've had recently was for a pattern. A friend from back in the UK had seen the Milky Way hat on this blog, and asked for instructions on how to make one herself. I hadn't written one properly when I made it, so I had to write them up from scratch, carefully investigating the hat to check what I'd done. I guess that'll teach me to not keep a scrapbook as I knit. I'll get the pattern online when I get half a chance.
I'm still finishing the scarf (I kept getting bored with it and having to knit something else for a while), but other than that, I have nothing on the order list. Time to indulge and knit a little something for myself, I think. I'm thinking a grey moss stitch hat. Maybe I'll throw some cables in too. I figure I'd better get the sketchbook out, then.

Want me to knit you something? Got any ideas for what I could do with my grey hat? Comment on this post, or drop me a line at salvatordarling@gmail.com

Very little sleep.

Things are a bit different around here now. I don't have as much time for knitting, that's for sure. But my daughter is incredible, so my lack of knitting time pales in comparison. Someone who had a little more time to get the needles moving is my mum. My parents visited the last couple of weeks, so that they could meet their granddaughter. I took them to Romni on Queen, and my mum had me pick out a pattern and some yarn to go with it. Then she made it. You can't see it so easily in the picture, but she made a beautiful blanket in stocking stitch with garter stitch edging, and a garter stitch heart in the middle. The heart and the top and bottom borders also have a bobble pattern. What you definately can't see is the matching cardigan that goes with it. The pattern is SIRDAR cardigan and blanket, and they're knitted in SIRDAR Snuggly Baby Bamboo DK. We went for the cream for the blanket, and the teal for the cardigan. They came out stunning. The yarn is beautiful too.

As you can see, Adelaide does sleep sometimes (although far less than I would have thought), and I do still have my Subway journey to and from work, so there is a little knitting time for me. Although my productivity has certainly slowed, I've had time to finish Beth's Fetching fingerless gloves (more on those soon), and start my Dashing fingerless gloves (more on those soon too). I've also completed my Long Lost Whitby Hat. If you remember, I told you the story of this hat. I had bought it in Whitby, North Yorkshire, when I was 13. I wore it everywhere. Never have I found a hat that I wore so consistently, and managed not to lose for so long. Nor have I ever owned another hat that my mother hated so much. In this picture (excuse the poor quality, it's scanned and blown up rather larger than the original), you can see that it became very dishevelled looking.
Nontheless, when I finally lost it in the move to Canada last year, I was distraught. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had no way of replacing this precious hat. Perhaps this is why I took up knitting. I have knit enough hats now to have a fair idea of their construction, so I started drawing up plans to reconstruct my favourite piece of headgear.

I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it means something to me, and I rather like it. If you fancy making one, you can have a look at the pattern here. I don't like the Google document format it's in, but I can't think of anywhere to store the PDF version online at the moment. All suggestions are welcome, as are comments on my hat. Let me know what you think.
Right, I'm off to try and catch as much sleep as I can before my adorable little bundle of joy wakes up crying.

Hats, Hats, Hats.

I don't know why I like knitting hats so much. I think it's a combination of things. Hats are fairly quick to make, so there's instant gratification. They also make excellent gifts, because everybody needs a hat in this cold snowy weather.
So, I've been knitting lots of them recently. I followed a few patterns, and then got bored with that, so I started designing my own. At first I just changed little details like colours, size, and width of ribbing. Then I got more adventurous, and worked out my own decreases too.
I made Bethany a hat in a fantastic star stitch. I called it the Milky Way hat, because it spirals round her head. It turned out a little longer than I first imagined, but Beth likes it.
Then I cast on to make a hat for my brother in law. Brett is a big Sheffield Wednesday fan, and makes it out to games as often as he can. Sitting in the Kop can get very chilly on a northern English afternoon or evening, so I figured I'd make him something to keep his head warm.
I started off with some ribbing, then switched to intarsia to put in the blue and white stripes. I designed my decrease to look less visible, and then stitched it down the back. I finished it off with a pompom for that traditional look. I'm rather pleased with it.

I haven't yet knitted a hat in the round. I've been trying to get hold of the double pointed needles in the size I need for that, and for some reason I can't find them anywhere. But once I have them, I'll give that a go.
My next hat project is one that has some personal meaning to me. 13 years ago, I visited Whitby, on the North Yorkshire coast. There, I went into the old town, the location of a good portion of Bram Stoker's Dracula. In one of the shops, I found the most fantastic hat. It was clearly hand-knit, and I loved it. It was cream, light blue, dark blue and brown, with a dishevelled looking pompom on the top.
Somehow I managed to keep it for the longest time, and it was always my favourite hat. But then, about a year ago, I lost it in the move to Canada. It was a very sad moment for me. So I'm going to make a new one. It won't have the charm of the old one, but it's a start.
I scanned in a photograph of me wearing the old one, and then zoomed in to get a better idea of what it looked like. Then I set about writing up the pattern. I'll post the pattern and pictures here when I've made it.

But I have some other things to do first. Though the winter has a firm hold on us now, it's not going to last much longer, and I want to knit my first pair of fingerless gloves before it gets too warm. Maybe the Long Lost Whitby Hat will have to stay lost for a little while longer.

Fair Isle is Fairly Easy

This is the first hat that I ever made. I got the pattern from an amazing book called Just Hats by Lion Brand Yarn (they have a Just Scarves version too).
As I understand it, there are two ways of knitting with more than one colour to create patterns and pictures. One of them is intarsia, which I haven't gotten to grips with yet. It's one of my New Year's knitting resolutions to conquer this style.
The other is known as Fair Isle, named after the Scottish island that spawned it. The name originally referred to the designs created by the Fair Isle people (something like these), but has come to mean the technique used. Technically, the method is called stranding, and Fair Isle is a form of stranding. But let's not get into semantics here (we can leave that to this excellent article).

The idea is to knit with the different colours, simply stringing the yarn not currently in use across the back of the work. For example, if my main colour is black (as on this hat), and my contrast colour is white, then when I am knitting with the black, I have to string the white yarn across the back. The back looks like this:

There are two things to remember when doing this. The first is to make sure that you string the yarn loosely. If you don't do this, you will end up with a piece of knitting that is pulled together by the yarn on the back, and that will ruin it. The second thing is to catch the yarn in the one being used every 3 stitches. By this, I mean that if you have a large section of white, for example, every 3 stitches you should catch up the black yarn in the white, so that you don't just have a huge string on the back. If this doesn't make sense to you (it took me a while to get hold of the idea) don't worry. Get hold of one of the many fantastic knitting books that are bound to be in your local library, or in your bookstore. Other options are to Google for it (this is what I do) or find a knitting group that meets near you, and get someone to show you.

Anyway, I was rather pleased with the outcome, and am using the same technique (although not technically Fair Isle) to construct my TTC subway map scarf. The only problem with this is that the back of the piece tends to look a little shoddy, so I'm going to have to sew some fleece or something onto the back of that. I'll show you when I'm finished.
My suggestion, then, is to keep Fair Isle for things like hats and sweaters - pieces that only show the right side.

As usual, if you've got any great tips, advice or questions, drop me a line at salvatordarling@gmail.com, or by commenting on this blog.