Hat Update:
Look! The brim of a hat! Unjoined, but will be joined in the next round! Woo!
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| Ignore potato quality yellow light. It gets dark here early! |
But let's start at the beginning, shall we? In our last episode, I was deciding between NINE (9) different stitch patterns for my hat. I ended up selecting this one, called Cascading Leaves:
It knits up very nicely. How do I know this? Well, I knit a swatch! I knit it in the "round", with a 24 stitch cast on. The cast on itself was different for me, as it was a tubular cast on. I followed this video by Ysolda Teague. Once you get the hang of it, it's very rhythmic. However, if you stop paying attention, you start getting the knits and purls confused!
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| Front of swatch |
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| Back of swatch |
As you can see, I didn't do a full swatch in the round, I did one row, then loosely held the yarn and went to the next row. However, I didn't cut the back to lay it flat. I'm concerned about how much yarn I have, since this is only 160yds total, and I don't yet understand how much yarn is used up by each type of stitch. I then pinned out my swatch, loosely, to see what measurements I got. Turns out my pattern width is approximately 3".
Based on that 3" measurement (which is 14 stitches), my cast on for the full brim of my hat is 96 stitches! I cast on the first three rows using the instructions from the tubular video on size 8 straight needles. The next row, I put the knitting onto the size 7 circulars on a 20" cable, and I re-organized the stitches into a k2, p2 pattern. My next row, I will join the brim in the round and begin the real knitting in earnest! I'm excited! :)
Other Knit Items:
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| Even modular men need mittens! |
Future Projects:
I'm heading to Vegas for a week-long conference, right after Thanksgiving (Oh, and I'm also going to be in a car for at least 8 hrs driving on the way to Thanksgiving), and I'm optimistic this hat will be done or almost done before then. I've started thinking about other projects I want to do, that I could work on in all of this travel time. Below is a quick list, that I will extrapolate on in another post.
1) Tutu, in KnitPicks Duchess Heather
2) Kai Mei by Cookie A, in Copper Corgi Midnight
3) Unknown custom pattern for me, in Wandering Wool, Udaipur Fingering, Cranberry Bog
4) Unknown custom pattern for mom, in Unknown yarn, in either dark blue or wine color
Other News:
I'm doing pretty well on my P90x endeavors (I say this as I skipped today, and only did Ab RipperX yesterday). I'm impressed that I've kept up with it, and I actually enjoy parts of it. Enjoy it enough to WANT to do it! It's so weird, especially for my lazy, slow-moving butt. ha!
I've started reading a book called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. I struggle a lot with enjoying what I do for a living. I don't have many goals, never really had many in life, other than to be happy and comfortable. I'm understanding that may not have been the best of goals, and now I am starting to look into what do I really enjoy, enough to make a career out of it. I know I have many interests, and many places I would rather be than at work, I just need to prioritize and figure out which of my many interests I could pursue more. It's rather confusing, as I've never really been one for solving problems. I'm good at pointing them out, but solving them, that's a whole other story! I can definitely talk to other people when they have concerns. It's much easier to work out a solution when it's not your own! There are too many thoughts in my brain, so making sense of them really does take quite a bit of effort! I think I'm going to spend some time with that book now, before I head to bed.
Thanks for reading!
J
