Here we are, another Friday, but this Friday is full of actual knitting. It was a much better week. Before I get started, about the Honeybee, I haven't pulled anything out yet. It's quietly resting until I gather myself up and make a final decision about what I'm going to do. It's sort of in time out, but not relegated to the back of the closet time out. It's still in the storage ottoman in the living room which is where projects tend to live while I'm working on them.
As for what I've been doing, I knitted this hat. This was my first time using a dinner plate to block a beret into the right shape. Here it is on the plate.
Another shot on the plate. You wet the hat (I just stuck it in the sink in some cold water and kind of left it until I remembered it was there) and stretch it out over a dinner plate making sure to center the hat on the plate. Then you take some waste yarn on a darning needle and run that yarn through the ribbing (I did that about 1/2 inch in). Then you pull that yarn super tight and tie it off in a hard knot. This lets the ribbing dry at a smaller size than the crown of the hat, thus allowing the beret not to slide right off your head as it's being worn. It will dry faster if you set the plate on top of a drinking glass to let the air circulate all the way around. I tried to use the torn-up plastic plate you see the glass sitting on to block the hat, but the hat was much stronger. Use a regular dinner plate and then use the plastic one to keep the water off the countertop.
And here we have a couple of pictures of the finished and blocked project. From the side.
From the back.
Project Specifications
Pattern: Brambles Beret From Knitty.com Deep Fall 2010
Price: Free!
Yarn: Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller, Washable Ewe (100% superwash wool)
Color: Lilac
Price: About $6 at JoAnn. It's pretty cheap yarn, especially for wool.
Needles: US 4 (3.5 mm) and US 6 (4 mm). I used 16 inch circulars for most of it and switched to a longer needle and magic loop for the last few rounds of decreases. Tried to do it with 2 circular needles, but I'm not a fan of that method.
Time Taken: Started on Monday and finished on Tuesday. Could have done it in a day, but other things distracted me on Monday.
Rating: Two thumbs up. This was easy, quick, and really pretty.
Also on Monday, I decided to dye some yarn. You remember the swatches, right? Just pretend if you don't. I still have a lot of that Fisherman's Wool left in a lovely natural color. It's lovely but boring, and I'd never actually wear anything in that color (I'm a winter, I actually look good in true white, but not this off-white). This is the yarn that was already out of the skein and had been wound into cakes. To get to the hank point, used my swift with the pegs set to the largest diameter (75 inches), and then I cranked the swift to bring the yarn onto it. It's the reverse of how to take a hank to a cake using a swift and ball winder. To figure out yardage, I measured the diameter that the yarn was traveling and counted the number of times the yarn went around the swift. To calculate yardage, I multiplied that number times 75 to get total inches and then divide by 36 to get yards. Of note, I did this with a calculator. The larger hank to the right is just over 220 yards, and the smaller two on the left total about 175 yards.
I took all the yarn and soaked it for a good while in cool water with a nice slug of vinegar, just to keep the dye set. A while later, I took them out of the sink and put them in a colander to strain. Then I got out both Crock Pots (I got a new one recently and still have the older one) and placed the 2 smaller hanks into one and the larger hank into the other. On the smaller hanks, I poured a dye solution that consisted of about 2 cups of water and 5 packages of Black Cherry Kool-Aid. I squished everything around until the dye covered all the yarn, put the lid on, turned it on low, and walked away. When the water was clear. I removed the yarn from the crock pot back into the colander and let it drain and cool back to room temperature in the sink. Once it was room temperature, I rinsed it, hung it to dry, and then recoiled the hanks. These are those hanks.
On the larger hank, I did the same process, except I used 5 packages of Blue Raspberry Lemonade Kool-Aid and then added a squirt of blue and a squirt of green gel food coloring. This is how that one turned out.
All in all, it was a good knitting week. For the week upcoming, I think I want to make another hat, and I want to learn how to do a tubular cast on.
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