List: Parliament meltdown firsts

In times of "crisis", historic firsts on a personal level:

1. Visiting the C-PAC website, delighting in the fact that there is one and that it plays video on demand! (though not on my computer!)

2. Reading the third joke about proroguing in 2 days, two of which involved perogies.

3. Learning something about the current Canadian parliamentary meltdown from a knitting blog. And a darn good one at that. (It was the fact that though the Bloc support the coalition, they are not official members, which is why they don't get any cabinet positions.)

4. Reading a blog post in which the Governor General is referred to as a "local distributed queenship node".

5. Being informed that despite the media silence in the States, the story is getting some attention in Israel.

Laying down the needles

There are advantages to having a knitting project on the needles while writing. I find knitting, especially a relatively repetitive pattern, therapeutic. It helps me clear my mind and is a good way to unwind at the end of a long day.

On the other hand, I also find it kind of addictive. I'll get going on a project one afternoon and want to keep knitting well into the evening. This is not good for my productivity in all other aspects of my life. It is also not good for my wrists.

I'm starting to think that I need to lay down the needles for at least the next four weeks and focus on my academic work instead. Thankfully, I've recently just finished one knitting project and almost completed a second, meaning that there is currently no backlog of Christmas presents or new babies to knit for. So as long as a certain married couple are too busy playing GTA IV to procreate, I think I'll be fine.

Escalation

Or, why I can't do anything by half.

Me on the phone with my sister, thinking about knitting a little hat for an imminent newborn baby:
"If I make it little enough, it shouldn't take that much time. And I can just use whatever yarn I have in my stash."

Sister: "Make sure it's long enough to cover the baby's ears."

Me: "Or... [thinking]... I could add earflaps! Wouldn't that be cute?! A little baby hat with little earflaps?! Oh! If I do that, I could put a heart on each earflap! Wouldn't that be cute? [Pause] Oh my god, that would be more work."

So I knit a baby hat. And added
1. Earflaps
2. A heart on each earflap
3. A pom-pom. (This was a somewhat controversial decision because asking the opinion of knitting and non-knitting friends yielded a 50/50 split on whether the pom-pom was necessary. I compromised by trimming the pom pom to make it smaller. But I think the touch of teal at the top balances out the teal hearts on the earflaps.)

And so...


Ta-da! Baby hat of my own design, knit with Cascade 220 white and leftover Patons Classic Merino Peacock. (The hat is for a girl, incidentally.)


Yeah, I stand by the pom-pom.

Taking stock: the yarn stash

I have finally organized my yarn stash into a handy plastic drawer unit:

Click to embiggen the following:


To be honest, I thought there would be more yarn than this, so I guess I'm doing okay. Frankly, organizing the stash reminded me of how little I've been knitting recently, what with trying to work on the chapter and finishing up the teaching. (And knitting three R2D-toques in a month kind of necessitated a bit of a break.) If it wasn't for our semi-regular Stitch and Bitches, I don't think I would ever pick up the needles.

Or, in other words...

I can stop any time I want to. No, really.

R2D2 knit hat pattern

I have finally gotten around to writing up the pattern and plotting the chart for my R2D2 toque (aka the R2D-toque).



The PDFs require Adobe Reader (or Acrobat), which can be downloaded for free here. The PDF of the pattern can be downloaded by clicking here and the chart by clicking here.

The hat was knit with Sandnes Garn Alfa colour 1042 (grey) and Galway colour 10 (navy), though a later incarnation used Diamond (colour 848) due to lack of Galway and a comment about itchiness. The little bit of red and black was good old Paton's Shetland Chunky from the stash.

I am assuming that knitters who come to this pattern know intarsia and knitting in the round. In terms of difficulty, I would rate this as intermediate if only for the number of different bobbins/balls of yarn that need to be wrangled. Frankly, having now knit three hats in one month, I'm a bit sick of it and am happy to turn over R2D-toque duties to the other knitgeeks out there.

I've tested the chart but not the written instructions, so if anything needs clarifying or if there are any errors, please leave me a comment.

R2D2 toque

On the 9th day of Christmas (i.e., 4 days before), I finished knitting another Star Wars project:


An R2D2 toque for Jeff, the same recipient of the Boba Fett balaclava. The pattern was inspired by another R2D2 hat I found online, but because I wanted more of a toque than a beanie, because my gauge was quite different, and because I'm anal-retentive and wanted a super-accurate pattern, I made my own chart, which I will post once I have a moment to figure out how to make an electronic copy.

For the knitters: I knit most of the hat on straight needles so that I could use the intarsia colour knitting method, though there was some stranded/Fair Isle knitting in an attempt to reduce the number of ends that would need weaving in. I even decreased on the straight needles until I got to the blue circle at the very top, whereupon I switched to dpns and sewed up the seam with a mattress stitch. As it turned out, my attempts to keep the ends to a minimum were unsuccessful.

Witness the hat's insides:


But once everything was woven in and cut off, the end result was, if I may say, brilliant:



Edited Jan. 22 to add: Post with pattern and chart can be found here.

Tuque and OED

My knitting group is composed of mostly English PhDs, but even they thought it was funny that I recently looked up "tuque" in the Oxford English Dictionary (online). If I hadn't though, I would never have learned that, according to the OED, a tuque is a knit wool hat that is actually folded in on itself—that is, it is a long tube, tapered at both ends, and one end goes into the other, making it hat-shaped. This construction seems to be the defining characteristic of a tuque, setting it apart from watchcaps, fisherman's hats, and wool hats in general.

And now I want to knit one.

Nice knitting, but...

I'm on a bit of a yarn/knitting kick right now, browsing through pattern sites, looking for neat projects. Came across a pattern for a really cool-looking 5-in-1 chameleon hat that quintuples (?) as a tuque, ear warmer, balaclava, jesterish-looking hat, and neck warmer. On closer inspection (flickr photos), however, I came to a key realization.

The darn thing is LACE. The neat resemblances to chainmail notwithstanding, there's no way it will keep you warm.

Too bad. It's an awesome design.

Hat #1 (sort of)

This is not the first hat that I've knit. Before knitting this hat, I had even graduated to balaclavas (which require, let me tell you, way more yarn).

But after a summer full of gift knitting, I was determined to knit a hat for myself.

Here it is:


3 AM Cable Hat knitted with one 50g skein of Rowan Classic Yarns Soft Tweed, colour Thistle, on 7.0mm needles (circulars and dpns).

The brim is a little short, yes. I finished the hat (knit bottom to top) and had a little ball left over. Decided that the best thing to do was to pick up stitches at the bottom and knit in the 2x2 rib until the yarn was all used up. Turns out the line where I picked up stitches works as a natural fold. I like the pattern a lot, but wish there was a way to knit the hat top down so that I could be more efficient about yarn usage and not worry about how long to make the brim. I am tempted, however, to buy more yarn (I've been thinking a lot about Bunny Paint colorway 071 that I've seen at a couple of stores) and knit another hat using this pattern. We'll see.

And if I could figure out how to line this hat, I could even wear it in freezingest Edmonton winter. Suggestions?

I know it's German yarn, but still...

Another one for the "you knit what?!" pile.


And hey, the pattern is even on sale.

Boba Fett balaclava

So, he likes it. He really likes it.

(Phew.)

Boba Fett Ski Mask

After learning many important lessons from my first attempt at my somewhat-well-designed but clumsily-executed prototype, I started a second ski mask, this time with better yarn.

Here is the front part, from the wrong side and the right side:



Here's the completed front part, and the two parts about to be sewn together:



Put together and worked in the round:



And almost completed, but not completely bound off in just case it doesn't quite fit Jeff's swelled head.



It does, however, fit me:


I've debated about whether or not to share the design, for two reasons:
1. The mask was made by special request. I like the idea of it being one of a kind, something special.
2. The mask's design is a little counterintuitive. The type of colour knitting I used (intarsia) can't be worked in the round, which would be the logical way to go about knitting a ski mask. There's really no point in knowing how I knit this particular ski mask if all you're looking for is a basic ski mask pattern.

General tips, however:

• Starting points for the mask included the brief instructions here and here (scroll down). Honestly, if you can knit a hat in the round, you can knit a ski mask (or balaclava, or what have you).
• The neck section should be at least 4 inches long and have fewer stitches than the rest of the mask. Cast on about 10 fewer stitches than you would need at the widest point and definitely work in a rib (probably 2x2). Increase to the number of stitches you want for the head over 2 or 3 rows once you've finished the neck portion.
  
• The eye slit is made by simply binding off the appropriate number of stitches (mine was 6.5 inches' worth) and then casting on the same number of stitches when you get to the point again. Definitely go for the cable cast on over the single cast on.
• BO for the slit at the 7 inch mark. Knit a further 5 inches before beginning decreases.
  
• I didn't continue the 2x2 rib when I reached the "head" part of the ski mask, but instead switched to stockinette. However, the three rows above and beneath the eye slit were knit in 1x1 ribbing, for added security.

Things I've learned from knitting this ski mask

This damned, frustrating ski mask.


1. I finally understand the purpose of the selvage stitch, i.e., the single stitch knitters sometimes add to each side of their knitting. It's particularly useful if you are knitting separate pieces that will be sewn together.

2. Necks are skinnier than heads. I should have knit the neck smaller.

3. Ribbing can be your friend because it's stretchy. Related to the "necks are skinnier than heads" category.

4. Ribbing, however, does not work when knitting intarsia (a method of incorporating different colours).

5. When knitting something designed from scratch that already looks too big, it's better to have the recipient around (i.e., in the same city) for emergency fittings.

6. The "first pancake rule" (i.e., the first pancake is the imperfect "warm up" pancake) applies to design projects. Duh. I keep telling myself that if it all goes to pot, this is a prototype. Prototypes are good.

7. I am a yarn snob. I cannot shake the guilt of gifting something made from an acrylic/wool blend.

8. Never never never never weave in the ends until you are sure you will not need to unknit anything when you realize that the cable cast-on was done incorrectly because you were too lazy to read step three of the instructions, instead assuming that it read "repeat as in Step 2 until finished." Ahem.

9. The frightening ski masks from a previous post? Patterns here!

Geekiest. Knitting project. Ever.

This is the beginnings of the Star Wars related knitting project I hinted at in my Jayne Hat post. From the back:


Further along, this time from the front:

And yes, all five of those plastic bags contain balls of yarn that are currently feeding into the project. Figuring out the design (and how to use knitting graph paper, and how to work with gauge, and how to tailor a project to measurements, and how to knit intarsia) took a while, but I think it's going to be worth it.

---------------------

In dissertation news:

Pages cut today: 4 (for the greater good)
Pages written today: 4 (yay!)
Running page count: 30.5

Best writing aid: a detailed outline

Of ski masks and balaclavas

(August 28: Google Analytics tells me that a handful of web surfers are arriving to this post looking for a ski mask pattern. If I may, this post (scroll down) might be more useful.)

One of my current knitting projects is a ski mask and being without a pattern for one, I turned to Google.

And came up with this:


This is the first of four ski masks designed for an entire family. The rest of the photos (a definite must-see) can be found here. Click on that link. Seriously. Click on it.

According to the knitting blogosphere, the masks appear in a book of McCall's Vintage knits circa 1965. One reader liked it so much she made one for her son and took a photo of him wearing it and sent it in to the magazine, which ran the photo (scroll down the post to see the poor boy).

I actually found the PDFs of the patterns, but trashed them once I realized that they would not be useful for me (too many colour changes, poor-quality scan). I now wish I had kept them, because I can't find them online anymore. Not that I would actually knit these for anyone. Ever. You couldn't pay me enough.*

* "enough" negotiable

Knitter's Prayer

Dear Knitting Gods and Goddesses,

Please do not let my next knitting project end up here.

Many thanks,

Me.

A very geeky birthday

Between the "Optimash Prime" Mr. Potato Head and the CBC Radio-Canada Messenger bag, Natalie (of DarNat) had a pretty geeky birthday. And I did nothing to help the matter:


Natalie is sporting a Jayne Hat that I knit for her (when she first asked me about it, I thought she meant the mob cap that Jane Austen is usually depicted as wearing. I'm really glad she didn't want one of those).


The pattern was a combination of what I found here and here, modified for lighter weight yarn and corresponding needles (5.5 mm or size 9). I knit two: one for Nat's sister (the original impetus for the project) and one for Nat, when I realized that I had enough yarn to knit two hats and that Nat's birthday was coming up.

The next knitting project is (sadly?) Star Wars related and will likely involve designing for the first time. The learning curve? It is exponential, my friends.

Scarf #5

Scarves #3 and #4 have yet to be photographed, but I had to get a record of #5 because I mailed it to its new home in Ottawa this weekend. Photos have been embargoed until now.

Ain't it purdy?


It's a cable knit scarf using this pattern and four 50g skeins of this yarn. It was my first time knitting cables and I was determined to use a pattern that was cabled on both sides (so that both sides were presentable, though clearly one side is prettier). Turns out I picked a pattern that required eight cables for every set of eight rows. Let's just say that I am now adept at cable knitting.

The "prettier" side:


The "still pretty" side:

I love the slight variegation in the yarn, which is a lovely shade of blue with occasional sections of white. Hopefully it wears well and doesn't shed too much.

Obsessive much?

Got home from an afternoon Stitch and Bitch knitting session to find an e-mail from my sister linking to a hilarious movie trailer, recut to make Mary Poppins look like a horror movie.

I've actually seen the fake trailer before, which might explain my reaction: I noticed her pretty pink scarf and wondered, "Can I knit that?"

Scarf #2!

A couple of nights ago I finished Anna's Christmas scarf, which she is modelling.













The pattern was found online (here) and, thanks to the big needles and thicker yarn, it didn't take as long to knit as my first scarf.

I think it's bee-yoo-ti-ful.