Fairisle Hat - Finished!

It still needs to be blocked, but I love the way my hat came out!

Hydrangea Fair Isle Hat - visible progress

Progress is slow, because I only work on this hat when I can work without being interrupted, and really concentrate. I think I'm around the halfway point now, I've tried it on, and it fits, so I can keep knitting!

Hydrangea Fair Isle Hat

On the day between classes at Madrona, the weather was beautiful, and I took a drive to the Allyn Knit Shop.  I've always loved the fair isle designs, and have made a couple small stranded projects in the past, but never a true fair isle, and the stranded work was only a small part of the project.  Well, I fell in love with a hat in their shop and the pattern and yarn for it followed me home:-)  I'm practicing knitting with both hands, and it's going slowly (because I only work on it for a few rows at a time), but I think it's coming out ok.

Here is my progress, and the yarns and tools I'm using (and yes, I"m using my bread basket to hold this project:-)):

Thorpe hat - finished

I'm not sure if David likes his new hat or not, but it's finished! I think he really wanted it to be made out of thinner yarns like the one that his brother purchased, and I would have preferred to have the knitting a bit tighter, but this was the best I could do with stash yarn and the only earflap pattern that I had on hand when the power was out - so all in all, I think it's ok, but I might have to look for a fairaisle pattern that I can make from sock yarn and make another.

Christmas knitting - Thorpe hat

Since we had no power and no guests for Christmas, I asked my oldest son if he would like me to knit a hat for him (after all, I've made hats for everyone else more recently than the last one that I had knit for him), and what kind. He held up his brother's fairisle earflap hat (purchased), and told me "like this". Luckily I had printed out a free pattern from Through the Loops, called Thorpe (look in the sidebar), which had both plain and pattern designs, so we looked through my yarn stash and found a yarn I thought might work.

The gauge for the yarn I'm using is a bit smaller than the pattern requires, so I thought about starting with one size larger needles, but couldn't find double pointed in the correct size, so started with the size on the pattern. I love the design, but it's coming out too small, and of course we can't go out to purchase the correct size, so last night I considered adding columns to the pattern, but have now decided to just go ahead and start over with needles that are two sizes larger and see how it works out. If it's too large, I'll just have to wait until I can shop for the right size when the weather improves. At least I love the pattern, which is working out very nicely, especially since I done almost no fairisle work.

Hot Waffles Mitts and Hat

Yes, I'm feverishly working like a busy beaver, trying to get ready for Christmas and also finish a new quilt pattern.

For this red set of hat and mitts, I used Cascade 220 yarn and the Hot Waffles Mitts and Hat pattern from Knitspot. It was great to be able to find a quick to knit project, download the pattern and get started right away!

These were small enough a project that I could take it along, and managed to finish rather quickly, even though I worked on them between other projects. Tuesday, while working at the gallery, I managed to make one complete mitt, and about 1/ 3 of the second, which I thought was great, especially since I have never knit a mitt or glove. This morning I finished darning in the loose ends, so now the set is finished and ready to wrap!