I’ve been knitting! And forgetting to post!
When I took that knitting class in January, I bought a ball of charcoal grey and a ball of cream-coloured worsted weight yarn that I ended up not doing anything with on account of not wanting to finish the deeply hideous scarf I was playing around with for the class. Instead, I found a herringbone mitten pattern that coincidentally used both grey and cream as well.
- They were pretty straightforward and I made only a few mistakes that I didn’t bother to correct because a) I am lazy, and b) the pattern is so busy you can barely see them.
- I left off the pompoms because I can’t imagine anything more obnoxious dangling from my mittens.
- If I made these again, I’d probably add another few rows to the top part of the mitten after the thumb increases end since apparently I have longer fingers than the average person; I don’t enjoy not having the join of the thumb and the mitten not sitting right at the join of my thumb and hand, so I think that would help. I would also make the cuff longer since it’s pretty short and thus useless for actually keeping out the cold in the winter.
I also made a toque for Audrey, thus making me an official Canadian knitter. Audrey has beautiful, long, thick hair and thus she can never find a toque big enough that can contain her hair when she’s put it up.
This is the Striped and Slouchy Hat, which knits up quickly and is a pretty easy pattern to follow for your first hat. A couple of things to note for myself for the future:
- Although the pattern doesn’t instruct about when you’re supposed to start using the dpns, I used them only for the decrease rows when my circular needles became too big to handle the few remaining stitches.
- Part of the slouch of this hat seems to come from wearing it really far back on your head as a fashion accessory rather than as a winter necessity. If you actually wear it pulled over your head to, you know, protect you from the cold, it is definitely not that slouchy anymore. I will probably add another band of colour (or two) if I make this again, just so that it stays slouchy even if you’ve got it pulled well over most of your head.
- I added a pompom because Audrey wanted one. I used the tried and true wrap it around your fingers method; this is a three-finger pompom wrapped several dozen times. Seriously: the key is to wrap it super thick so you get a nice full pompom, and then you trim the scraggly bits so that it looks nice and fluffy.
I still haven’t made a ton of headway on the sweater I’m working on, even though I started it in May. Pro-tip: don’t make your first ever sweater in a fingering weight wool, no matter how simple the pattern. IT TAKES FOREVER.