Knitter in the Kitchen

Last week, I was well into knitting the foot of my first Thuja Sock.

That’s when I decided to rip it and start over. I felt that the knitted fabric was not tight enough and that the sock was too big for me. I knew both of these things well before I reached this point, but I wasn’t extremely dissatisfied until I got closer to the end. There’s nothing like denial to set you back a few days.

I cast on again using a smaller needle size.

Yup, the big accomplishment for me was that I used the Magic Loop method! I have been apprehensive about learning Magic Loop, but I am so glad I tried it because I like it much, much better than DPNs for sock knitting. I zoomed through this sock. Granted, I’m using size 4 needles, but still – this second attempt took much less time than the first one on DPNs. Many thanks to Steph for her photo tutorial on Magic Loop! The Fiber Trends booklet shown above is also very helpful.

I immediately cast on for the second sock, but it will sit on a back burner for a little while. I will be devoting this week to knitting a baby hat…also using Magic Loop!

Back in November, I knit myself a pair of Irish Hiking Arm Warmers. Surprisingly, I have been using them more frequently than I expected. A couple of you wondered whether arm warmers in general were all that useful. I’m sure most of us agree that fingerless gloves alone probably aren’t going to cut it if you’re walking around outside where it snows. But if you live in relatively mild weather, or if your hands are cold just around the house, arm warmers can be very handy. So for Valentine’s Day, I knit Irish Hiking Arm Warmers for my mother and my sister.

I made the purple pair with Elann Peruvian Highland Wool. For Christmas I gave my sister an Irish Hiking Scarf and Hat in the same yarn, so now she has three items in the Irish Hiking series. I made the red pair for my mom using Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran.

I still have plans to try different arm warmer patterns, although in the future I will only knit them in the round to avoid seaming. These arm warmers are tiny, and I still dreaded seaming them!

Pattern: Karaoke Scarf
Yarn: Karabella Aurora 8, color 1561, 2.5 balls
Finished Size: 2.5″ x 70″

When I first started knitting with Karabella Aurora 8, I wasn’t too excited about it. It didn’t seem as soft as Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran, one of my all-time faves. But as I kept knitting, Aurora 8 grew on me a lot. I don’t think you can see it from my mediocre pictures (sorry, I should have gone outside), but this yarn has excellent stitch definition. While it doesn’t feel as soft as Cashmerino, it is still very soft. I would definitely use this yarn again. And…I tried spit splicing for the first time! Awesome, I tell you, because I hate weaving in ends. I did find, though, that the yarn looked better if I let the join dry before continuing with my knitting.

So what’s next?

I’m getting into sock mode! This is the Thuja Sock from the latest Knitty. I am using Artyarns Supermerino from my stash. The sock is moving quite quickly on size 5 DPNs. I’m not crazy about this color combo for socks, but I’m happy to be using yarn from my stash. I figured it would be good to knit a pair of quick socks to get myself geared up for Sockapaloooza!

Lately, I have been focused on finishing.

Pattern: Bea Ellis Traditional Hat
Yarn: Dalegarn Heilo, 1 skein color #0020 (cream) and 1 skein color #3152 (brown); Marks & Pattens Camomille, 1 skein color #208 (for the lining). The yarn was purchased in a kit.

I took an extremely stupid and circuitous route to knitting the top portion of my hat. It was so stupid that I’m sure many of you will catch my mistake before I explain it.

The story starts at the end of the snowflake pattern, which I knit in December. This was where I left off.

I put it down for awhile and only knit an inch and a half further here and there. When I picked it up again last week, I found that I missed a few rows in the pattern. (This can happen if you have the chart on a magnetic board, use the magnets to track the rows, and the magnets move without your noticing.) So I frogged back. No big deal.

Dark brown lifeline shows where I frogged back

I proceeded to knit all the way up to the crown decreases. This is how the hat looked:

Yeah, you can wince. Those ridges aren’t supposed to be there. My floats were too tight, causing all that bunching. While I was knitting I had a sneaky suspicion that this was happening, but I was in denial about it. I didn’t think blocking would help because the tight floats would prevent the hat from stretching out. So I frogged the entire cream portion of the hat and started again.

The second time around, the hat was looking pretty good from the outside. I made a very conscious effort to spread out the stitches on my right needle before stranding the yarn in the back. I got all the way up to the beginning of the crown decreases again. Then I decided to check out MJ’s finished Traditional Hat and the Norwegian Knit-Along Gallery to see at how others’ hats looked on the inside. Guess what I discovered?

There are many rounds that are knit in just one color (cream). Thus, I could have cut the brown yarn and just rejoined it when needed for the brown fleck pattern. This would have eliminated much stranding and I could have avoided the float problem. The bottom line is that I did a lot of extra work for absolutely no reason. Ugh, sometimes I wonder whether I have a brain! ***big sigh***

Now, I would have left the hat alone and just finished it if it weren’t for the fact that now my floats were too loose.

What did I do?

Yup. Frogged it again. As you can see my yarn is now fuzzy.

I knit the entire cream portion again for the third time. The positive side of all this was that I got much better at knitting with my left hand. I can now feed the yarn more smoothly and Continental knitting doesn’t feel so foreign anymore. My right-handed knitting is still much neater and faster, but I feel like I have a good start with my Continental knitting.

I finally proceeded through the crown shaping and pulled the yarn through the remaining stitches on the needle. Here is the hat with the “proper” floats:

My hat is far from perfect, as some of the floats are too still loose, a few rows are too tight (particularly the all-cream rows in the snowflake portion of the hat) and some of the stitches remain uneven after blocking. But I’m thrilled that I tried two-handed fair isle knitting! I will definitely practice Continental knitting more before tackling another fair isle project.