I started the purple quatro hat the other day.

The first few hats I did were exciting, new, and lookit, I made something that wasn't rectangular! Now, I'm just bored. I wanted to start a cabled hat but I didn't have a pattern and I couldn't figure out how to space them properly. Damn you, knitting math!

You might notice in that picture that the working yarn isn't actually attached to the ball. I have myself a yarn snipper. Who needs scissors when you have a yarn snipping kitty of your very own? Anyone who doesn't want to have a single color hat with 47 felted joins, that's who. I enter these photos into evidence.

Yarn Snipping in Progress

Post Snipping Stretch

The Good Kitty who Doesn't Eat Yarn

Because of the purple hat boredom I tried to start a ear-flap hat (Thanks Julie!) but I can't seem to get the ear flaps to work without having holes all down one side. The pattern is: (row 1) K1, P to end of row, K1 (row 2) K1, KFB, k to last 2, KFB, K1. It shouldn't really be that hard. The left side is all nice and stockinette-y little v's all slant ways. The right is a mess of holes. I would love to put a crisp, clear, close up picture here to show what I am talking about, but my Photosmart E317 (which is just camera-ease for DOESN'T FOCUS) isn't cooperating, so this is what you get:

What am I doing wrong?!

It always ends up this way - I knit and frog and knit and frog and knit and frog and then realize whatever small mistake I'm making and then it's easy. I think maybe it's because I'm a left handed English knitter and I have to flip all the directional instructions presented in most patterns. Maybe I'm just a slow learner and it takes a few dozen tries before I realize I've been wrapping counter clockwise instead of clockwise.

Once I've figure out what I'm doing wrong with each of the hats I want to try fingerless gloves, socks, and eventually a baby sweater and then who knows, maybe I'll get all crazy and make myself a sweater, you don't know.

xo,
Emily

DOOM!

So the Misti DK 4ply is on my shit list. While it is still super soft, snugly, and generally begs to be rolled around in naked - it is a bitch to knit on bamboo circs. Maybe it's the circs I'm angry at really, I'm not sure, but I am definately annoyed at one of the two.

I swatched for the J hat of doom (JHOD) and cast on last night and maybe I just cast on too tightly but the first row was a bitch, the stitches were nearly impossible to see what with being so small and black, and I managed to split nearly every stitch. By the second row things were easier but only because the stitches were so loose it looked like I was knitting lace. Half way through the third row, I frogged the whole thing.

So frustrating.

I think maybe I'll save the Misti for some other project, maybe socks on smaller metal needles, and use the other yarn I've been coveting from my LYS - a thicker alpaca blend, also black for the JHOD.

I'm not holding my breath for a response, since I'm pretty sure I'm all alone here, but does anyone happen to know how to explain a cabled cast on to me?

xo,
Emily