Third hat's the charm

Well, in my second-to-last post, I showed some funny pictures of a hat that didn't quite fit.  The saga has ended, but not without some to-dos in between.  The first hat ended up like a glorified cat bed.  There was the second hat, a Stirling cloche (Ravelry link) made out of Berroco Ultra Alpaca that ended up looking like a bit of felted muppet.  The third hat ended up - just right! Third time's the charm, they say. 

Remember this hat?  The cat is for size. 

Well, here you see the hat on the left - after felting - with a normal-sized beret to the right. Oops!  

Glorified cat bed, indeed...   Obviously, that wasn't going to work, and I wanted an actual, honest-to-goodness felted hat, only this time, I thought I'd try a nice, classic cloche.  So I knit up a bunch of Berroco Ultra Alpaca, foolishly held double.

Thus, the felted muppet. Again, oops. 

So, I tried again, determined to get it right this time. Third time's the charm, right?  This time, I broke out the Cascade 220, the size 10.5 needles, and about 100 stitches, and cast on for what I hoped would be a charming hat.  Cascade 220 is supposed to felt like a charm, right?  So why not give it a go, I thought. 

   

This time, it worked out far better than I could have hoped!! 

I love this hat! I love it so much I've cast on for another for a holiday gift, and am hoping to do yet another. When I really put my mind to it, I can crank out a big loopy stockinette hat in a few hours, and hopefully have them done for the holidays.

Unfortunately, the other hat - the interview - didn't land me a job.  I had a good experience at the interview, though, and learned a lot about what I could do better next time.  Now we just need to keep our fingers crossed for a good outcome for both Coffeeboy and myself, somewhere, but that good outcome is looking farther and farther away, much to our disappointment.  We started the fall with many good possibilities, and they are all disappearing.  I keep trying to keep my chin up about it all, but sometimes it's hard to look on the bright side.  Maybe a happy holidays will make the time and waiting pass a little bit better.  

Finding a hat that fits

We've all heard the phrase "if the shoe fits" and "wearing many different hats." Well, this week my life has a little bit of both. 

Luckily, it's not shoes, but socks, and these socks fit admirably and they even match!

These are the conference socks made with Regia (details at Ravelry link) that I knit in Chicago and in California, finished a couple of weeks ago and finally photographed. I love that I was able to keep the stripes aligned! This took some doing, unfortunately, in that about halfway through the second ball, there was a knot, and after the knot, the pattern started going backwards. Yes, backwards. So I had to wind down to the end of the ball and re-wind it from the outside in in order to get the colors to stick together. This happened somewhere on the middle of the foot of the second sock. As you can see, it all ended up just fine!

Slightly more scary of course are the hats I need to wear. This hat, for example, is scary just because of its sheer size - its unintended sheer size. Here is Gretel, and it's not half-done yet and it already envelops my face!

Clearly at this point I started thinking about making a felted cabled beret, not just a cabled beret! I also started wondering if this was one hat I just couldn't wear, one that was just too, too big.

There's another really big hat I'm desperately fit my head into (or around, as the case may be), and that's an on-campus interview!!! It's a rural SLAC (that's "small liberal arts college") in Pennsylvania, given that I'm not yet finished with my PhD, I'm really honored to have been asked to campus. Regardless of what happens with the job, this will be an excellent, if nerve-wracking, experience to have. So, while I've been working on a hat that's just plain too big, I've been preparing for my interview.

The toughest part to prepare is my sample class. Can you believe it, I've gotten through graduate school without having to plan my own class from the ground up? I've only been a teaching assistant, meaning that I've led entire classes on material other people (the professors) have picked out. So I have to give a sample class on a topic from the survey course they'd want me to teach. I need to create something that's engaging, that demonstrates my very-much still-evolving teaching style, that fosters discussion and also reveals how do at speaking for a longer amount of time (so, a very very short lecture), and that requires absolutely no advance preparation on the part of the students.

A big hat to put on, indeed.

The Gretel hat, certainly, came out too big. Way too big.  This is not a tam, nor a beret -- as Coffeeboy said, it looks like I'm wearing an orthodox Jewish woman's headcovering.  I thought perhaps I needed to grow a lot more hair and shape it into dreds or braids to fit the hat around, but either way, this is no tam. 

I can only hope that the hat of aspiring scholar, teacher and professor fits a little better... but first, we need to felt this fiber and see if it's destined to be a nice felted tam, a cozy cat bed, or something else entirely!

Don your caps!

Thanks, all of you, for your extremely kind comments about my Clapotis! You are all so generous with your praise that I'm sure the Clapster hardly deserves it, but this blogger sure appreciates it!

I finished two hats this weekend, one for myself and one for Coffeeboy. It's cold out, but is it really winter? With daffodils coming up in 25 degree weather? At least they keep our ears warm when we need it!

Pattern: Lusekofte from Hats On! by Charlene Schurch
Yarn: lining: one strand fingering weight wool, one strand Rowan Kidsilk Haze, in greenish colors. Body of hat: The main color is a Cascade 220 yarn from an LYS that's out of business. Brown contrast: Mission Falls 1824 in Cocoa. Dark orange contrast: Knitpicks Swish in Copper.
Time: less than a week
Needles: for the lining, Addi Turbo size 4; for the body, Addi Turbo size 5. Finished off with some bamboo DPNs.
Thoughts: I'm glad I decided to do this pattern in 3 colors. It was fun to see the speckles switching back and forth at the top. Also, it was an obsessive knit: each new row revealed the pattern in greater detail, so I couldn't put it down!

Before blocking / After blocking, inside out

I learned a lot doing this pattern. For example:
1) It's really a good idea to keep the floats loose.
2) I shouldn't have put those first few rows of MC on the body, or I should have ribbed them as the pattern specified. That would have taken out some of the flare on the bottom of the hat.
3) The lining. The pattern didn't call for it, but Coffeeboy likes his ears warm in his hats, so I figured I'd do it. The lining was mighty difficult to attach. I shouldn't have included the mohair on its first few rows, and I should have cast on in such a manner that knitting in the lining wouldn't have been such a messy operation. I also shouldn't have knit so tightly on that row; it makes the lining really obvious. Ribbing the lining also might have helped.
4) Significant negative ease helps a hat fit better. The first hat I knit for Coffeeboy was way too loose; the second was a bit tight, and this one is just right. As Goldilocks might say, the third time's the charm.

The third time's a charm in the world of tams, too. As I mentioned before, I knit one tam to match my Clapotis, but it was too small. I knit it again on Friday; it was better but still too small. Finally I remeasured my gauge and discovered that I'd gone from 3.5 inches to 4 inches. Right! That would explain it!

Pattern: Tam from Ann Budd's Knitter's Book of Handy Patterns
Yarn: brim and sides of tam: 1 strand mohair, 1 strand Koigu in light blue, 1 strand Claudia Hand Painted in Blue Sky (from my Clapotis). Top of tam: 1 strand lighter blue mohair, the same strand of Koigu, 1 strand Lorna's Laces in Jeans, and eventually, at the center, some tan-colored Kidsilk Haze just to add some brown back in
Needles: size 7 Addi Turbo in 16 inch for the brim, followed by size 7 Knitpicks Options in the 24" length for the increase section, and finally size 7 DPNs at the end.
Time: a matter of hours once I had the gauge right!

Thoughts: I modified this pattern a bit, making the brim quite a bit narrower than the size called for, and then increasing to the right size during the increases. I also made the tam about 4.75 inches deep rather than 4, so that it would cover my ears. A good solid steam blocking on a cardboard cutout of a circle the right size really helped this hat assume its present pleasing shape. Before blocking, the decrease seams were causing funny crown-like points on the hat, and now it's much smoother and more round.

I haven't started the any sweaters yet. (I think I might be a sweater commitment-phobe at this point. Note the UFO presence of Eris in the sidebar, mocking me. Not to mention Cozy.) I'm thinking I need a detailed, fun sock and am debating the many, many (many!!) possibilities! I'm sure I'll share the results of my debate with you in a day or two!

Juniper won't let me leave this post without saying hello to you...

...and herself...

Clap-O-t, Clapotis!

My first FO of 2007!

My Clapotis is done! I wore it to Toastmasters last night and got tons of compliments from people who remembered my speech about knitting and thought, "that scarf is so beautiful she must have knit it herself." The first compliment of the night even came from a new member who's also a knitter; she asked specifically whether the scarf was Clapotis! I was so surprised!

The specs:
Pattern: Clapotis from Knitty
Yarn: Claudia Hand Painted in sport weight, color "Blue Sky," dyelot 002. I used 2.5 skeins
Needles: Knitpicks Options size 4 on a 24" cord
Time: December 27-January 16, a very quick knit (for me, for something so large)
Thoughts: What a fun, fast knit! It was so easy to do and the yarn returns stunning results (thank you, coffeeboy!). I was quite surprised at how easy it was after seeing so much internet blather about this scarf a few years back. I blocked my Clapster pretty vigorously, and now I wish I hadn't done so; it's about a foot longer than I'd like and has lost some of its nice twisty curl. Oops! Now I will know for next time (yes, I have the yarn for it... there probably will be a "next time," possibly sooner than makes rational sense). Despite being the same dyelot, the third ball of yarn was significantly lighter than the other two, resulting in something that's fairly obvious if you're looking for it (though Coffeeboy didn't notice). It would have been fine had I introduced the new skein by alternating it in... but I didn't. Oh well.

Now that the Clapster is done, what have I been working on? No fancy cabled sweaters yet - though the votes are in and it appears that one day, I might try Nantucket! For now, though, I'm making hats! Winter weather has arrived in New Jersey, and with it the need to keep one's head warm.

I'll be making a tam to match the Clapster, with the remaining 1/2 skein of yarn plus a strand of smoky blue mohair plus a strand of light blue Koigu. The result will be quite pretty. I know this because I already knit the hat once, and it was too small by a long shot, so I ripped it out without photographing it. But the yarns wound together look quite nice, don't you think?

I've also started a colorwork hat for the Coffeeboy, the Lusekofte hat from Hats On!. It's a lot of fun but requires concentration. The lining is knit out of some Kidsilk Haze and some sort of fine, soft wool, both of which I had in my stash. So soft!

I'll leave you with an image of this strange winter we're having: Daffodils in January!

Have a wonderful weekend, and if it's wintery, may you have a cozy place to curl up and knit!