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FO Friday: Knit Your Own Adventure Hats!

I have a new pattern release and three FOs to show off today: my Knit Your Own Adventure Hats!

Here are the specs:

Pattern: my own pattern, Knit Your Own Adventure Hats (Ravelry link, since I haven’t put the pattern page up on this website yet–bad Triona!). All three hats were knit from the same pattern. It includes 3 edgings, 3 cable patterns, and 3 crown decreases, all mix-and-matchable.

Side note: did anyone else love the Choose Your Own Adventure books when they were younger? I used to use scraps of paper to mark all the places where I’d have to make choices so I could go back if I didn’t like the outcome.

Yarn: Wool of the Andes worsted weight in Fairy Tale, Jalapeño, and Hyacinth. I used about 1.5 skeins per hat (around 160 yds). This is a really nice yarn: it’s definitely in the workhorse category, but it’s not itchy and comes in great colors. It’s very reminiscent of Cascade 220, one of my favorites.

Notes: These are pretty awesome hats, if I do say so myself. They’re long enough to cover the ears (a major requirement for me when cold weather rolls around). The purple one is finished with a slouchy crown, so now I can choose whether I want one of the warmer beanies or the hipper, less warm hat.

And isn’t my model adorable? She’s my friend Cheryl, who apparently cannot look bad in a picture. I had tons of good ones to choose from after this photo shoot.

I had fun taking glamour shots of the hat components in my lightbox for the pattern, too. The crown ones were stretched over a balloon, which worked surprisingly well!

FO Friday: Daisy Cloche and Mittens

I have two FOs to show off today–and they’re both new designs!

Here are my Daisy Cloche and matching Daisy Mittens:

The specs:

Pattern: my own–in testing now, planning for a release in about a week

Yarn: Cascade Ecological wool held double, left over from the Neverending Christmas Stockings of 2011

Needles: Size US #11 circular and DPNs (which I had to go out and buy… I’d never used any DPNs bigger than US #10 before!

Notes: These quick projects were EXACTLY what I needed after the three-week exclusivity of my Bevin Pullover. My hands loved the switch from DK weight cotton/linen to super-bulky, squishy wool! And the hat and mittens came together with astonishing speed… I think I spent about 8 hrs on both, and that includes writing up the patterns afterward!

Now to go mess with Photoshop Actions and get the pictures exactly as I want them, hehe…

New Pattern: Europos Scarf!

My new pattern is the Europos Scarf, inspired by Barbara Walker’s interpretation of the famous “knitting” fragment discovered in the Indus River Valley around 250 A.D. The fragment was dated back thousands of years and was long thought to be the earliest example of knit fabric, but they later proved the technique used was actually nalbinding, not knitting at all.

There’s a fascinating Knitty article by Julie Theaker here that mentions the Dura-Europos fragment. Check it out if you’re interested!

Now that the history lesson’s out of the way, I can talk about the scarf, heh. The sample was really, really fun to knit–one of those designs where everything works the first time and the finished product actually looks better than what you saw in your head! The motif from Barbara Walker #2 included edge stitches to keep the piece rectangular, but I decided I liked the undulating shape without the edges (plus, it makes the scarf super-quick to knit, since you narrow down to only a few stitches between each “leaf”).

I should get bonus points for using "undulating" correctly.

I also changed the decreases, since the one BW specified looked sort of odd to me. I decided to go with a purl lifted increase (PLI) after swatching: new to me, but easy to work once you get the hang of it and looks pretty in the pattern! The scarf’s reversible, too–not exactly the same on both sides, but pretty either way.

This is apparently the only picture I took of the back. Sigh. You might have to take my word for it.

I used some pretty Rowan Cashsoft DK to knit the sample. My sister-in-law brought all the way from England for me as a birthday present last summer!

The scarf is perfect for warmer climes: a nice pop of color against a black coat, but not too warm or stifling. I think I’ll wear it a lot this winter!

The pattern for this scarf is available to purchase for $4.00 here.