Cheat, cheat, double knit

This is my version of these popular hats. It’s a trick double knit, on US 8, fun, easy, and can be worn in different styles, according to ones mood.

Bellow the brown one flat + 2 more:

Advertisement

Hobo 2017

‘Hobo 2017’ is a simple pattern, that is meant mostly for home, as a ‘cover-all’ hat.

It’s knitted double stranded on giant US19 needles.

Start with magic loop, inc in garter st till approx. 30 sts,

then knit to desired height.

They are much fun to knit & wear, soft & cozy!

All of Me, Hats

After adding the scarves of this series on (previous entry), I realized the hats & boxes were not up yet.

There are 2 styles for the hat. The easy one is knit upward, with carried rib to give elasticity:

The other style is more complicated:

The top is knit first, then add sts and knit the other 4 symbols downward.

Both hats can be done in double knit, this one is cotton:

Multi Magic

Multi magic is a big st made of many yarns held together. I use it as a yarn ‘Bank’ and pull this or that yarn out of it, while continuing to carry the rest right there in my ‘bank’. I also use it to avoid CO, BO and weaving-in tails and other knit clean up (it works well in crochet too).

The multi magic shawl, was fun and easy knit. It also makes it easy to use more of the yarn I have a lot of, and less of other yarns.

Below left: right side, on the right – the wrong side. The pattern is available here.

 

It was so much fun, I had to knit a hat to go with it:

 

Then I thought the hat is an Elfy hat (Elfy comes from a children book husband & I wrote, called ‘The mushroom under the Elf‘. The book has knitting patterns right in the middle of the story).

 

And then I saw a 3 needle BO that I just had to try and thought the easiest would be to do it in a slipper, and out came these Elfy moccasins! So my patterns for the next Elfy book are almost ready.

‘Color & Picture Knitting’ book

 

Dear Tracy,

I can not find your comment, so will answer you here, as other people asked about the book too.

The book is a work book. It explains how to knit pictures, from easy ones to more involved. The patterns in it are like exercises. They are meant for you to knit them and hopefully hang them on your wall or give as gifts.

You may not sell my patterns, but you may do many pictures using the charts in the book, and even sell the pictures you knitted yourself.

I am saying that the charts are exercises because my purpose was to give you enough information so that you can continue to make your own charts and do your own pictures.

So, to sum it up, the patterns in the book are for you to knit in order to learn the techniques used.

After the picture is knitted and BO, you can block it. For this you will need to stretch it upside down on foam board or anything else handy, spray lightly with water and let dry for 24 hours. Because of spraying it with water, you need to use stainless steel pins. You can buy them in a sewing store.

Some people prefer ironing their knits, I do not.

After the picture is well dry, you can attach it to foam board that is cut to fit the size of the picture. For this you can use straight pins (they do not have to be stainless steel).

Some people glue the picture instead of using pins, I do not.

See next blog post for detailed account of the charts in the book.

The book is available on Amazon.com

Good Luck, hope you’ll enjoy it, and feel free to ask questions.

 

Impish and Rainbows

These are my silly hats, that makes my heart happy, makes me feel 20 years younger, and as if I have wings I can spread and fly with…

OOPS -TRIED TO CHANGE PHOTOS AND NOW …

SORRY…

 

Impish – on top, might have a different name by the time it becomes a pattern, and is influenced partially by spiral shells.

Below – “Raindrops keep falling on my head”, the name comes from how many hat ideas I have recently (see ‘patterns’ on  my website). This hat is so much fun to wear and play with the loose strings (other hats have an even longer ‘ponytail’).

 

Going Elizabeth

Husband and I been watching pride and prejudice, and remembered our friend has a different version of this movie. Off went the husband to borrow it so we can watch and compare movie notes – what they kept, how the characters were portrayed, and so on. But, on arrival to our friend’s house, in came her neighbor who has 4 versions of this movie. Back came the husband with all these pride and prejudices that we thoroughly enjoyed watching and arguing about :).

So, little wonder that my knitting turned out a bit Elizabethan (as in Bennet):

What started out as the Sahavas hat pattern in double knitting, ended up as a bonnet! And the caplet – the photos do not do it justice (probably because of the pink pajamas underneath!), the caplet makes me feel like Queen Elizabeth – it is SO NICE to wear.

Being a double knit, here is the other side (of the story?):

And a little side view:

And on to serious matters:

In a way this is a continuation of ‘Meandering Randomnesses’ (see previous post). In the bonnet I used 2 variegating yarns, with the decisions that the pink always goes to one side, and if there is no pink – the lighter color will go there.

The result in my eyes is different to what I get knitting with self changing yarn, that tends to be more stripy.

I used this technique a little bit in the shawl too, but not enough as I came to it towards the end. A way to use it for example is when double knitting with one yarn that variegates from white to black, and one solid color (any color). Then having the white on one side of the knitting and the black on the other. The color change in the yarn dictates on which side of the knitting it will be. So that one side will be white + solid, the other = black + solid. This will be good for background, but not for image double knitting.

And that’s my meandering for today :).

 

Meandering randomness

This is an experiment in taking decisions and seeing how they effect the pattern. In the pink washcloth the decisions were: do all white as double crochet, light pink as half double, and pink as single crochet (I hope my crochet terms are right, you can click on the image to see a larger photos). So that decision and the self changing yarn determine the amoeba shape of the piece. It is still work in progress, but something already came out of it:

 

Here I took decisions that determine the colors but nor the shape. The shape started as an experiment in making a double knit hat with the Sahavas pattern (in my books ‘Color & Picture Knitting’ and ‘Knitting with Baba’, and soon as an independent pattern too). The decisions were to always knit the pink on one side, so the other side is ‘pink free’. And to give second priority to light colors on that side and blues on the other. It was much fun to knit.

If you wonder what happened to the hat – husband and I are watching too many Jane Austen. Instead of Sahavas hat it became an Elizabeth bonnet. But more about that in another post.