Thanksgiving Weekend = TRIUMPH

After an incredibly zany day-before-Thanksgiving (it was my birthday) and Thanksgiving day morning (I marched in the parade!!) and approximately four hours of sleep on Tuesday and Wednesday nights combined... I picked the hat back up during appetizers. It started to go really fast, it was exciting. I took a break on Friday morning to not only catch up big time on sleep but to work on some things for my two craft shows next weekend.

A veritable rainbow of collage picture frames...

Saturday...

Some yarn, some Lost... Sweet.

Hi Jack!!

I kept going and now it's Sunday and I'm back at school...

Watchin' Top Chef Season 2...

Gettin' tiny!!

Last row!!!!!

And so I tied off the hat with the pompom!! I didn't get to stop and take any pictures, because it's kind of a delicate process. Basically I cut off a longish end, and pulled that and the ends of the pompom through the stitches at the top. Wove everything in, tied off ends, trimmed... And voila!!

I actually had a lot of fun making this hat, I really thought I was going to hate it. At the same time, I'm really happy it's finished, because I REALLY need to work on Christmas presents... =) I'm going to take a break tonight from the yarn-ing, but tomorrow.... It's off to scarfville.

A Haitus

So I got some really bad news with regards to the hat within the past couple of days, which is why I've stopped compulsively updating. Apparently the show that Chad needed the hat for was unceremoniously cancelled. The rush on the hat no longer being a factor and the ultimate purpose for the hat dissipated, I got depressed. I took a few days to work on my Christmas gifts, several of which have more immediate deadlines (Chad just wants to wear the hat on Christmas morning, whereas I won't see some of the recipients after December 11). Let's review!

Zubin's Scarf

Secure in the odds that none of these people will ever see this blog (or at least won't before they get their present) I have no problem talking about these gifts. This is a scarf for my friend Zubin. It's mostly green with four shrinking stripes on either end. I used Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky for it--it's one of my favorite yarns. It's really simple, but thick enough to make it go quickly and it's a nice wool blend that is warm but not itchy. I just straight crocheted it, nothing fancy other than the stripes.

Ross' Scarf: 10am

Ross' Scarf: 5pm

I pwned this one. Lion Brand came out with this new yarn that I used on this one, it's called Hometown I believe, and can currently only be bought at the Lion Brand Studio on 15th street. I'm a believer. It's super bulky, which can be a good or bad thing. They have one other yarn, Wool Ease Thick & Quick, which is about the same weight, but that yarn is really heavy and can be kind of scratchy. This yarn is 100% acrylic and therefore much lighter and softer. I totally love it. This one I crocheted simply back and forth vertically (hence the vertical stripes) and then I went around once with some of the leftover navy blue just to make sure the edges were all neat.

Elle's Scarf

This project is kind of epic. It was actually supposed to be a hat/scarf set but after starting the hat yesterday I realized I didn't have nearly enough yarn. This is one of my favorite yarns (it's a Bernat yarn, 86% bamboo, which sounds weird but it's seriously the softest yarn in the world) and it's kind of pricey. I bought it initially on sale, and was loath to buy more at full price. So I figured I'd take it out and make a scarf instead. I pulled it all out, and used that skein to start the scarf. It was once I got to the second skein that I realized my second problem--they were different dye-lots.

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Something you have to be careful of when buying yarn is the dye-lot. Yarn in the same dye-lot was all done in the same vat, or however it was colored, and therefore it's all guaranteed to be the exact same shade. Not always but sometimes you can tell the difference between dye-lots because one will be lighter or darker. This can be a problem, especially in large projects where you're using a single color, like a sweater or blanket, so when you're buying for a project like that it's strongly encouraged that you make sure all your skeins are the same dye-lot.

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I've never actually had a problem with dye-lots before, but you could really tell. You can even see it in the picture because I used a flash--one skein was much lighter than the other three. I was pretty screwed, so I just did what I read you should--I cut up that one skein and mixed it in with the others, so it doesn't all occur in one spot and looks like a normal variegation within the yarn. In person it doesn't look so bad anymore. And as it turns out I still need to buy another skein to finish it. I need to finish the last row of doubles and a row of singles. Urg. Whatever.

It was actually useful to find out about this dye-lot thing now. I'd bought four skeins of another color of the same yarn, and again one is different. Since I'm going home for the holiday tomorrow, I can get back to the store and exchange them for four all the same lot. That scarf is for an actress friend of mine who's sort of famous (she played Leo McGarry's secretary on the West Wing--NiCole Robinson) and since you never know what might happen I really, REALLY want that one to be flawless. So Elle's will get finished in a snap over the holiday.

Joe's Scarf

This is for my friend Joe. He's really into the whole organic thing, so I picked a 100% organic cotton yarn for him, a sage green with unevenly spaced dark brown stripes. The picture looks a little wonky to me since I have the real one next to me, but you get the general idea. I really liked this yarn, but the color selection kind of sucks--this was the darkest green they have in this one, and I just wish it had been a little darker. But all in all I like it. It's not completely done; I'm going around it with the leftover brown right now (you can kind of see where I started at the top left of the picture) with a round of single crochets just to neaten the edges.

So that's what I've done in the past few days. Nothing horribly exciting, just punching out stuff. I have SO MANY Christmas gifts left to go... Seeing as most of my really good friends don't get handmade gifts anymore since I've honestly run out of ideas for the majority of them, I still make an impressive amount of presents every year. Seriously, I have no idea how they pile up like this. Ugh. At least it keeps me busy. And gives me plenty of time to watch my TV (I finished Season 1 of Lost and started Season 2! Also caught up to Legend Of The Seeker, which is one of my guilty pleasure shows since I'm a huge fan of the books. Not that I have any idea what's going on in the show anymore since it's so far removed from the novels. Still fun.).

Once I finish my driblet of homework left for the weekend and the border on Joe's scarf I'm going to try and punch out another stripe or two on the hat, which is about half done.

The latest photo of the hat, as modeled by my roomie, Jenny

When I realized it was only about half done, I kind of panicked. I've decided to decrease the rows (make it narrower) faster, because otherwise it's going to be beyond "that's-awesome" long and into "now-that's-just-plain-stupid "long. But again, something I'll know for the next time I make one. Because I'm honestly enjoying this project, it's extremely satisfying.

So tah for now. Heading home for the holiday after work tomorrow, but make sure to look for me in the parade on Thanksgiving!! I'll be riding on/walking with a drum float/balloon. The intricacies of my job are still unclear to me, but it'll be awesome regardless. =D

An Epic Stocking Cap: Day 5

Today, I'm not really going to have time to work on the hat much. I don't think, anyway. But this morning my first order of business was to make a giant pompom for the end of the hat. I'd never made a pompom before, though I'd heard it takes a lot of yarn so I wanted to get it done before the end of the hat to make sure I had enough to do correctly.

What you do for a pom pom first is to cut two rings out of cardboard, about an inch bigger than you'd like the pompom itself to be. The hardest part of that is getting the middle out. If I'd had an exacto knife it'd have been better, I think, but I made do. You put the two discs together and then begin to wind your yarn. Since I was doing five colors, I cut five lengths of yarn, one of each color, and began to weave it around the ring.

You thread the yarn through a tapestry needle (basically a big needle that's mostly blunt) and thread it around and around the exterior of the cardboard rings.

When you've crammed all the yarn into the middle that you can, you go around the edge with scissors and cut all the yarn apart. Then, now that you can get in between the rings of cardboard, you take a length of yarn and wind it around the middle as tightly as you can, knot it, and cut away the cardboard. Then  you get...

Also, my fish, Monday, says hi. =)

Sweet. =)

An Epic Stocking Cap: Days 3&4

Day 3: I did, like, a stripe and a half. I didn't take any pictures. It was kind of an unimpressive day.


Day 4: Today was epic. I had an early class, some homework to do, and I was supposed to go out for dinner with a friend of mine from home. The in-between time was clearly designated for the hat. Let's follow the journey!

1:24 - A few more rows in and I can officially get the hat on my head without disturbing the needles. Hooray!

A closeup of the top.

Watching Dancing With The Stars! I was SHOCKED that Joanna Krupa got kicked off. Seriously. But Kelly Osbourne is still on, and I've come to love her so I'm glad she's staying. I guess I identify with her, though I couldn't tell you why.

A closeup of the "brim" vs. the rest of the hat. This is one of those knitting things I'm often asked to explain--the difference between knit & purl. Let's explain real fast, or at least try to.

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Knitting is basically a series of loops. When you knit, you're putting some loops on a stick (a needle) and using the second needle to pull another row of loops through the first. You basically pass them back and forth between the two straight needles. When you're utilizing regular needles, say for a scarf, passing these rows back and forth, you wind up depositing the rows of stitches on opposite sides of the piece, so you wind up with visible rows of these stitches and the pieces of yarn that go between the stitches.

Make sense so far? This regular back-and-forth stitch is referred to as "garter stitch". Now, the infamous purl... When you knit, you put the old loop over the back of the new. When you purl, you reverse and put the loop over the front. You can use a combination of the two to make many different kinds of patterns. One of the most common of these is the rib stitch, which is used for the brim of the hat in this case (the right side). You alternate the knits and purls to create columns of stitches. It's very stretchy and so often used for things like cuffs and necklines and the openings of hats. Now

There are several kinds of needles one can use when knitting. For a "tube project" such as a hat, the most common kind of needle to use is a dpn or double-pointed needle. Usually, they come in sets of five, and as you can see throughout  the photos, you keep four in at a time, and knit from needle to needle using the fifth in the set. When you do this, there is no alternating (the project is round, a tube, as it were) and when you just knit all the loops get pushed to the back or inside of the project. The stitch that results is what is known as stockinette, and it is the most commonly used stitch in the world. If you look at the shirt you're wearing, you can probably see the tiny, tiny stitches and you'll recognize the larger version of the stitches in the hat. 

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I took a break after awhile, did some homework, and talked to my friend who was supposed to take me to dinner. Long story short, he got stuck in New Jersey and had to cancel at the very last minute. As always, I took my stress out on my knitting.

5:08 pm - Here's where we're at!

I'm so freakin' excited about this. As far as TV goes, I'd nearly caught up to my shows!

I watched some Numb3rs...

...took a break from the drama to watch some old Top Chef episodes (Ahh Marcel! What a ninny)...

...and after Glee I watched some old episodes of Lost. I'm trying to catch up so I can start watching season 6 with everyone else.

11pm - I made so much progress, it was really unbelievable. This whole thing is going a lot faster than I thought it would. I guess it's mostly because it's decreasing and getting smaller as I go, but it's not decreasing quickly. I tend to use a lot of chunkier yarns because they go faster and when I lose interest in a project it loses the fun and isn't worth doing anymore. But this is a surprising amount of fun. YAY. I might actually finish it this weekend, which is AWESOME. I was worried this would take up a lot of my time because it's the holiday season for a crafter, and the crunch is coming. But if I can get this done this weekend... Rawk.

An Epic Stocking Cap: Day 2

Really late tonight, and since it's Castle Monday (I love Nathan Fillion) there's been a bit too much wine all around. But I still made some progress on the hat with the aide of the aforementioned fictional novelist and Top Chef Season 2 reruns.

I'd very much like to write about something more, but I'm very ready for sleep and I will have plenty of time to elaborate and ponder the meaning of life (and this blog) tomorrow.

For now, a photo update.

An Epic Stocking Cap: Humble Beginnings

I've known my friend Chad for as long as I can remember. Literally. He's two years younger than me, and three grades behind. We bonded over theatre and our mutual misery backstage in middle school. While I got out of the theatre circuit, Chad's still involved. So when he asked me to make him a stocking cap almost five feet long for his Christmas show and his role as the evil elf, how could I say no?

We went and he picked out some lovely jewel-toned yarn, and I searched in vain for a pattern that would serve the purpose. I finally settled on the Nauti-Knitter's Randy Hat (http://nautiknitter.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/randys-stocking-cap-pattern/).

I began what is sure to be an epic journey today in between readings for various classes. The stretchy opening proved to be the most time-consuming part--I have a personal vendetta against rib stitching for exactly this reason. It does look really cool though. I made tremendous progress yesterday, completing about 35 rows. Just for reference, there's approximately 320 rows in this hat. That's over 10%! Lol, it isn't really that much, but again now that I've got the stretchy part (I feel weird calling it the "brim", but that is my first inclination) done it should progress much faster. Chad asked me to keep him apprised of my progress every step of the way, so I took photos as I went and will continue to do so. Here's the photos from today.

The second stripe: it starts

Third stripe!

Time for bed, but you can see the fourth stripe's infancy.

That's where I'm at so far. I'm hoping to get some more done tomorrow, though I do have to catch up with some additional schoolwork. We shall see.

More musings to follow, I'm sure, as the hat progresses.