1Hat, 2Hat, Peel an Orange and Simmer!

The red skullcap for Steve is done! He seems pretty excited by it, as noted in the thumbs-up picture. =)

I think if I had made it just about an inch longer, it would have covered his ears nicely, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to fix that kind of an error, since you knit from the bottom up, closing it at the top. If anyone has any suggestions on whether it's possible to add a few more rows onto the bottom at this point, let me know! The pattern can be found here at Woolly Wormhead.

One of my favorite holiday memories was simmering orange peels on the stove with cloves. I'm not sure how my mom came up with the idea to do this, or if she learned it from my grandmother, but it's one of the best ways to get an incredible Christmas-y smell in your house! If you associate the smell of Christmas with oranges, I guess!

Anyways, I bought us a box of Clementines (the smaller sweeter type of oranges) the other day at Costco. As soon as we were done devouring at least one of them, we started a small pot on the stove with the peel in it and a bit of water, just enough to cover the rinds. Since we didn't have any cloves around, Steve suggested nutmeg and vanilla extract. Simmering on the stove it smelled delicious and quickly filled up our small apartment with it's warm scent!


It's something you can get pretty creative with. Steve decided he wanted to try tossing in some dried cranberries and cinnamon in the next batch, and YUM, did that ever smell delicious too! Not to mention, it looks pretty in the pot!


I've also finally started on the Terry Matz Chevron Hat.
An arty picture (for fun) next to the gorgeous quilt my mom made. And my plants. =)


I have to admit when I started there was a bit of confusion on the sl1, k1, and then what do you do with the stitch you slipped? I was swinging it over the knit stitch, but then I was knitting the slip stitch together with the next stitch instead of just letting it fall like you're supposed to. So, I wasn't taking it off the left needle. Once I realized the error of my ways, I finished out the row like that (because I didn't want it to be asymmetrical!), but was sure to start the next one correctly. I am starting to see the chevrons appear, but hope they become a bit more defined the further along I get! I'm loving the blue and white variegated yarn though!

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm off to start on Christmas cards!

Binging on Hats!

So since someone has a birthday coming up, and also because I had so much fun making my last/first hat, I decided my next project would be a hat for Steve. I gave him a few choices of different patterns, of which he picked out this fine little number:

There's a yarn shop a hop, skip and a jump from the train station he picks me up at nightly, and so we stopped there on our way home early last week so he could pick out the color of yarn he wanted. Since it had to be of a certain "chunky" weight, the colors were a bit limited to choose from, but we actually found one that looks very similar to the pattern: Addrienne Vittadini Trina in color 109. It's a mixture of 55% Merino Wool, 35% Microfiber, and 10% Cashmere. Super soft and stretchy!
I'm a bit further along than the picture alludes to, since it was taken a few days ago, but not much. Yesterday I had to rip out about 2 1/2" because I accidentally K2 instead of P2. Taking the circular needles out and putting them back in was pretty difficult, but I got through it. I discovered one other tiny error long after I had started restitching....at which point I just decided the hell with it! It's good enough...anything else I find will just add a little bit of character!

Once I'm done with Steve's hat, I've picked one to make for yours truly. It is the Terry Matz Chevron Hat.

I found this divine blue and white variegated yarn to make it with:
Stay tuned for pics of the completed noggin' covers!

Pumpkin Hat a.k.a. 'Halloweenie Beanie'

It has been SO LONG since my last post! The main reason for this has been because I just don't do that many crafty things in the summer. It just seems like my time is better spent outdoors enjoying the warm weather with friends than indoors, by myself, working on projects.

That being said, Fall is here and I have been bitten by the knitting bug again! There's just something about cold weather that makes me want to work with soft yarn. Awhile back, I found this lovely little pattern for a pumpkin hat on Crazy Aunt Purl's site http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/archives/2007/10/reversible_
knit.php. I thought it was so cute, but didn't know when or where I would wear a hat that looks like a pumpkin! Of course, I didn't need to wait long until the third annual Crazy Hat Bar Crawl came around and two weeks before the event I decided that I would make this lil ol' punkin' hat just for that occasion!

At Witt's, the first bar on the crawl.

My pumpkin getting some sun.

As you can see, my hat does not look like the one in CAP's pattern. I swear I followed all the directions correctly, but I think somewhere along the way I must've missed something. Or my stitches were off way in the beginning - because how else would I have gotten a totally different pattern? I LOVE MY HAT, however, I am going to have to get better at following the patterns.

In the middle of transferring stitches from circular needles to the double-pointed ones (DPNs)....

...and the successful completion of the transfer! I just stitched away. CAP wrote that for her first few times with DPNs she "slipped the stitches off my circs and onto my double-points without knitting them, evenly distributing stitches over the three dpns." I'm kinda proud of myself for just diving in and knitting while transferring. Of course, since I was finishing this hat the day of the bar crawl, I couldn't really afford to take any extra time. This was probably a good thing. I work well under pressure!

I had a lot more fun using the circular needles and the DPNs than I thought I would. I think my next project will be another hat! I would love to learn how to make really funky hats like these:

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/na_knitting/article/0,2025,DIY_14141_5261873,00.html