Tag Archives: beanie

Snow Day Knitting

Leave a reply

It’s a Snow Day!

There’s three inches of snow on the ground, the roads are slushy, buses are on limited routes (my husband’s bus has been totally canceled, so he’s staying home too!) and school has been canceled!

It’s a real, honest-to-goodness snow day.img_4542Seattle really does snow the best way, It’s here for a day or two, everyone has fun, takes walks, builds snowmen, then it all melts and we go back to normal.  None of this Midwestern snow-that-sticks-around-gray-and-frozen-until-mid-March nonsense.

I know all this Seattle snow is probably one of the signs of the apocalypse, but today I’m enjoying it.  I already took the dog on a walk, I’ve got a hot cup of coffee and I’m thinking about breaking out a movie and some knitting (surprise!).  Ollie loves the snow, but doesn’t love how his fur creates little snowballs all around his feet.  I love that though, it looks like he has little pompoms in his fur.   Adorable!img_4536I’ve got some socks I’m probably going to go work on after this, but if I had planned for more snow-day-appropriate knitting projects, I might have picked one of these:

I love the little frolicking deer in this snowy forest!  It reminds me of cross-country skiing in West Virginia as a kid.

Snow Roe Deer Beanie by Sandra Jagersnow_roe_deer_beanie0_medium1This snowflake shawl is almost too pretty for words (but I bet it would take quite a few snow days to complete.

 Snow Queen Shawl by Janine Le Crasyarma_medium21And, nothing says “Scandinavian snow day” quite like red-and-white color work mittens.  I think I might need these.

Snow Ghost Mittens by Aimee Alexandercontrast_medium21How’s the weather by you?  Have you had any snow days this winter?

Inspiration: X-Men First Class

Leave a reply

I was flipping channels last night, looking for something to watch, and I came upon X-Men, First Class.  It happened to be starting, and I happened to be in the mood for some good old-fashioned superhero action.

Actually, I was really into the X-men when I was a kid.  I watched the cartoon every day after school for years.  I have nothing against other superheroes, but I always preferred the X-Men.  Maybe it was because they acted as a team, maybe because they included some lady superheroes (which, except Wonder Woman, don’t really exist), or maybe because they did the whole “We fight for justice, even though the whole world hates us” thing, which is pretty much calculated to tug at a pre-teen’s “I feel like a weirdo” heartstrings.

Anyway, the recent X-men movies have been pretty terrible, so I kind of gave up on them for the last few years.  But this was on TV (and therefore free).  So, why not?

Result?  Awesome.  Super good, and it has the feel of the cartoon (not like these new really dark and twisted superhero movies.  Batman, I’m looking at you.).  And, most importantly, it included this hat:

MV5BMTM0OTE3MTYxMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDQ0OTE2Ng@@._V1._SX640_SY427_[1]

It was worn by the character Moira MacTaggart, who I had never heard of before, and frankly was neither a super compelling nor necessary character.  But she wore a cute hat.  So she’s got that going for her.  It’s a basic (ish) seed stitch beanie knit up with a k1p1 brim in bulky yarn.

Want to release your inner super powers?  Try one of these patterns:

pompon and seeds hat by Carolin Gall

5096500401_b1406e444b_b

Autumn by Jane Richmond

013

And, for the little mutants in your life:

Autumn Leftovers by Jane Richmond

091

n00b Hat, or Learning to Knit: Part 1

Leave a reply

So, I heard that some of you don’t know how to knit (yet).  If you’re interested, let’s fix that.

This is a pattern I created years and years ago.  I was part of my college club the “Knitting Illini” (at the University of Illinois, hence the “Illini”).  We had to teach a new crop of people how to knit every year, and we didn’t want to scare them off with great big scarves, or boring washcloths.  I thought a hat was a fun, useful, and small enough project for new knitters.  And, you end up with a hat at the end of a couple of weeks. Win-win.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

It’s a basic beanie with a garter stitch brim.  It’s knit flat and seamed up the back.  It’s pretty much one size fits all, and is super cozy.  I have a couple I’ve made over the years and I wear them all the time.

I’m going to be posting small chunks of the project every Friday for the next couple weeks.  That way you can play along at home.  As you work on the hat you’ll learn how to cast on, knit, purl, decrease and finish a project, skills that constitute about 90% of all knitting.  And, if you keep up, you should end up with a pretty nifty hat by the time truly cold weather kicks in.

“Yes!” you say.  “I want to do this!  What do I need?”

Well, dear reader, you don’t need much:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA-1 skein of worsted weight yarn.  You can go luxurious or cheap, or somewhere in between.  If you want to go the cheap route, Red Heart SuperSaver costs about two bucks and can be found literally everywhere.  If you want to go the luxurious route, find an independent yarn store and ask the clerk to get you something fancy for a worsted weight hat.  May I recommend Malibrigo?

-1 pair of size 8 knitting needles.  Whatever kind you like.  I recommend straight needles for ultra beginners.  Wood or metal, doesn’t matter.

-1 tapestry needle.  I forgot to take a picture of this.  It’s a big sewing needle.  Sometimes they are metal, sometimes they are plastic.  You’ll use this at the very end to finish your hat.

-1 pair of scissors (or really strong teeth, I suppose).  You won’t need these until the very end.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Lazy Susan Beanie

4 Replies

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I love knitting stripes.  Changing colors back and forth keeps my interest, even when making a super simple project like this beanie.  But, as you know, I am utterly lazy.  I absolutely detest stopping my flow of knitting to attach and reattach new balls of yarn.  And weaving in all those thousands of tiny ends at the end of a project is pretty much the worst.    The Lazy Susan Beanie avoids both of these issues by working both colors at the same time, knitting them in a spiral pattern that ends up looking like perfect one-row stripes (get it?  Lazy Susan?  Because it spins and is for lazy people… like me).

Also, this pattern is a great way to experiment with color and dying your own yarn.  I knit the sample with a turquoise variegated yarn and a dark purple/black semi-solid which I dyed using food coloring.  (You can read my posts for more information about dying yarn with food coloring.)  Try using different color combos for different results!

You can get the Lazy Susan Beanie pattern here:

Lazy Susan Beanie