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.
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