Slowing Down for NaNoWriMo

Knitting is decidedly a time consuming hobby.  The most frustrating part of it seems to be winding balls of yarn when you don't have a ball winder or swift.  This latest cake of yarn happens to be my most sloppy, but all considered, it's still pretty darn good for being done by hand!

I'll be honest, I have no idea how to properly ball yarn.  I don't know how this cake thing developed, but once I started doing it I realized how easy and practical it was.  I've always liked working with cakes of yarn better.  The one thing I haven't been able to manage is center pull.  Then again, center pull balls and cakes tend to collapse in on themselves once you get towards the end and then you just need to redo them anyway, especially if you don't use up every bit of it.  Now I just need to find a way to keep the yarn from wanting to bounce around everywhere.  Right now it's not so bad because the yarn stays tucked in the center of my crossed legs, but it would be more practical if I had one of those jars or whatever that you can put the yarn in to keep it from bouncing around everywhere.

As for the hat, it's coming along fairly well.  I'm still not done, which is putting me at a third of the rate I've had for the other two hats.  Something about NaNoWriMo makes it tough to get much work done.  Thankfully, I don't have a deadline to get this done for, so I can go at whatever pace I want to.  Besides, something about knowing it's going to come together so quickly really helps me feel good about it.  I don't feel like I'm taking forever to make it.

As for the yarn, I'm really loving the color.  After seeing the pink one I started to worry that it would have weird pooling, but it really doesn't.  The colors are falling a lot more like the purple one, which I really like.  I have to admit, I'd thought about keeping the purple one for myself, but now that I see the gray, I'm pretty happy with it.  It's very wearable and it will go with all of my jackets.  That means this can be my go-to hat for winter this year.  I'm glad to finally have something that's a little more neutral.  Usually I go for colors, which don't always work with everything.  Even earth tones can be hard if everything else I'm accessorizing with has color.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer before this one's done.  It's not working up horribly badly, and being so far ahead in my novel, I feel like I've got a little wiggle room to do other things for a while.  The pattern is so intuitive by now that I'm learning to work on it without looking.  I've always felt like if I knit without looking at my work I would screw something up, but it feels so natural in my hands, at least until the knit together and yarn over rounds.  It helps to have something I can't take my eyes off of.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was perfect for that.  It was also insanely funny, so I'm glad I recorded it.

Now that Daylight Savings is over, it gets dark so early.  That early darkness has me wanting to curl up with some tea and do something crafty, when I'm not writing, of course.  I can imagine as Christmas looms nearer I'll be looking for Christmas movies to watch while I knit, perhaps with some hot chocolate.  I'm hoping the weather change will have a lot more projects flying off my needles.  For now I'll just be happy to get finished with this hat!

And Now One For Mom

Yeah, I'm still on the kick.  I'm knitting up yet another Slouched Tuva Hat.  This one is for my mom, which I'm really loving the way it's turning out.  The colors play in a much different way than they did on the pink one.  I really like it much better.  If it weren't for the fact that I think my mom would like this one better than the gray, I'd keep this one!  Who knows, I may still decide to yet.

Since I've got the picture there, I have to point out that cake of yarn.  Isn't it lovely?  One might even say it's very proper looking.  It almost looks like it, say, came off a yarn baller.  Well, it didn't.  I actually caked that yarn by hand.  Can you believe it?  By hand!  I can't make a ball of yarn to save my life, but since I've learned how to make it look like a cake of yarn, I've never stopped doing it this way.  It looks awesome and it's so incredibly practical.  The only down side is it doesn't work so well as a center pull, but I haven't been using center pull balls anyway.  The ball of yarn falls apart too much when you get to that outside edge, meaning I have to redo the end of the ball anyway.  This may result in more yarn bouncing around, but at least I know the yarn will be in a nice, solid little ball when I'm done and I can stow away the leftover stuff for later.

One would think I'd be sick of these hats by now, but I'm really not.  I love the way the yarn is coming together differently for each hat.  You can see in this picture the way the yarn almost stripes on the pink hat, but it doesn't really do that at all on the purple one.  If I had to take bets, I'm guessing the gray one is going to be similar to the pink one.  We'll see how they turn out.

Seeing the two of these hats together makes me feel really accomplished.  This feels like the most knitting I've done in a long time, even if it is just because each project is smaller and therefore done quicker.  It may be less stitches than a pair of socks, but it feels like I've gotten so much more done.  It's more of a feeling of instant gratification.  Undoubtedly I'll be on to the third hat, or at least balling up the yarn, by tonight, if not tomorrow morning at the latest.  There's something instant gratification about it that really has me inspired to keep on knitting.  Now I just need to find the yarn to make a whole stack of these hats up so all the kids can have one!

More Slouched Tuva Hats

I hope you enjoyed reading about the Slouched Tuva Hat.  There are more.  The pattern was so lovely I decided I had to knit another for myself.  That's when I realized that there's this lovely set of yarns my mom got me at the farmer's market last winter.  We each picked out a color, though I have no idea who picked what anymore.  I'm pretty sure I picked the gray.

These yarns have been on hand for quite some time.  I've been hanging on to them, waiting for the right project to come along.  I'd thought about some kind of beret, because I love a good slouchy beret.  I wanted to do something that would really look stylish.  The problem was finding a pattern that would suit my sister, my mother, and myself.  We've definitely got different styles.  Every time I see my mom she's styled out of a catalog, probably Eddie Bauer or something like that.  J. Crew also comes to mind.  She seems to like her hats practical.  My sister is very much into the vintage styles.  She would love for me to make her a lovely cloche.  For me?  My style wanders between grunge, neo hippie yoga mom, and "hipster", though I guess one could say I was hipster before hipster.  I like my super slouchy berets, tams, watch caps, and beanies.  Finding something that would suit all three of us was definitely a tall order.

When I finished the Slouched Tuva Hat for Bear, I sent a picture to my sister.  She responded with how incredibly cute it was.  She loved it!  Immediately I snatched up a skein of yarn and cast on.  It seemed like the perfect hat.  It was practical enough that it would suit my mother.  My sister already loved it.  I needed to make my sister a Slouched Tuva Hat too!  I wanted to knit one for myself before I even made one for Bear.  It works up fairly quickly.  It was the perfect hat for the situation!

The reaction my sister had was priceless.  "You know I love looking like a Dickensian orphan."  To some that would sound sarcastic, but from her it's actually a compliment.  It's part of her playful personality, and her love for literature blending together.  She's definitely someone I find knitworthy because she absolutely loves the stuff I make.  The fingerless gloves I made for her last year were such a success that she took them with her when she went to Denmark.  I consider it a high compliment that she brought them on a trip abroad.  Traveling often means selecting what you bring carefully to avoid being burdened with luggage.  The fact that those gloves made the cut reminded me just how much she appreciates the quality of high end knits.  I even wrote about how knitworthy she was last year.

Between the gooshy, perfect yarn that knits like a dream and the pattern I love to knit, I'm having a great time with this matching hat project.  I'm working with 100% baby alpaca, and while this pattern doesn't have a lot of drape, which is something baby alpaca is great for, I think it's lovely for the project.  It has a soft, warm feel, and the slouch wants to drape and fall naturally.  I don't have to work to make it slouch down in the back.  It's truly lovely.

For a pattern that's got to fit the styles and lives of four people, this isn't a bad one.  I'm going to have a good time working these up.  The result is going to be phenomenal.  I'm so excited to see how my mom and sister are going to react to getting them for Christmas this year.  Once I get these hats done, my Christmas knitting will be done.  I might do up some matching hats for the kids this year, but I'm not sure.  Those can really wait because I can knit for them for no reason at all.  I don't need an occasion to knit for them.  These hats, however, are definitely an occasion to give a lovely gift, which is especially pleasing because it's a gift that was given to me.  There's no better way to return a gift to the giver than to have it transformed into something lovely!

The Slouched Tuva Hat

Obviously (by all the more frequent blog posts) I've been on a knitting kick.  More specifically, I've been on a hat knitting kick.  This project is no exception.  It's called the Slouched Tuva Hat.  I wasn't really sure what to consider it.  It's not really a beret.  It's kind of like a beanie.  Whatever it was, it looked like a nice knit and the model on the page was a child wearing this gorgeous red color.  I remembered that I had a red like that, and it just so happened to be in the right weight of yarn too.  I was going to knit up a hat for Bear.

The pattern worked up so easily.  It's just a four row repeat with some plain knitting and some yarn overs and decreases.  It gives it this pretty mesh look to it.  It's so simple I could easily work on it in the dark, while watching television, or as I have been, while doing school work with Bear.  I think it was a little shorter than the pattern recommended, and it seemed tighter than I would have wanted in my yarn, but I think a lot of that could have easily been changed by changing the yarn weight or the needles.  Of course, that doesn't matter because I was making it for a preschooler.

The best sign of a good hat is when the recipient refuses to take it off.  I'd call that an instant win on anything I knit up.  I love the way it looks, and it was a mark of pride that had to be shown off.  Bear wanted at least a million pictures in the new hat.  Now I'm getting requests for more hats, but not for Bear.  That one hat is enough because it's perfect.  Everyone else needs hats just like that.  At the very least, look at that face!  It really says it all!

I'm very much a beret and slouchy hat wearer, so it was really nice to be able to share my favorite style of hat with my mini-me.  I loved the pattern so much that the request to make them for everyone doesn't seem like a half bad one.  I've already decided it's going to be the pattern I use for the matching hats my mom, sister, and I are all getting from yarn my mom got me at the farmer's market.  We each picked out our own color.  It'll be interested to see the changes as Bear's hat was done out of Plymouth Yarns Dream Baby DK.  The yarn I'm going to be using is a lovely baby alpaca.  It's certainly going to have a lot more drape to the slouch, and it should make for some really nice warmth.

I've got to admit, this yarn wasn't something I ever thought I would use for a hat.  It's an acrylic microfiber/nylon blend, but it doesn't feel like acrylic usually does to me.  It's got this nice softness.  Plus, it's washable, which is great for a child.  I could have used superwash, but this is cheaper and I had it on hand.  If it gets lost, it's not a huge deal.  Given it's for a preschooler, getting lost is a reality I have to face.

I've noticed I'm on a hat kick lately.  It all started with the Leaving Cowl, even though I know that's not a hat.  There was something nice about an easy, quick knit and the feeling of a larger yarn and needles in my hands.  I ached less when I was working it up.  That was followed by my Lullula Beret.  Now I'm going to be making three more Slouched Tuva Hats.  I'll be honest, I was looking in my yarn stash to see what else I could dig out to turn into hats.  I seem to have some pretty good options.  I'm sure you're going to be hearing about those soon.  I forgot how much I like knitting hats and how incredibly wearable they are.  Unlike socks, I don't have to worry about my weirdly thick calves, my high instep, and my narrow feet.  Instead I can just knit it, and if it doesn't seem slouchy enough for me, add more repeats before casting off.  A simple hat is perfect travel knitting.  It's a small enough project to throw in my bag, and it works up quickly so it feels like I've really made progress, even if I only had a few minutes to work.  Best of all, it's a project I don't have to pull off my shoes to show off!