Thursday, September 14, 2006

If the hat fits, or Yes, you SHOULD swatch a baby hat!

So a friend of mine is a new grandfather, and he is SOOO excited. It's a girl, and she is 1 week old as of Wednesday (yesterday.) I decided I want to make her a hat, so I scoured the net for the perfect pattern, and found it....spread out over 3 patterns.

Heh. Not a problem, really! I can handle some minor hat pattern adjustments. I CAN!

However, apparently I can't handle joining 224 stitches without making a mobius strip. (once)
And I can't handle decreasing 224 stitches down to 54 without somehow reversing my needles and stitching essentially a short row...in the round. (once)
And when 54 stitches on size 10 needles is obviously WAY too big for an infant's head, I apparently don't know when to quit and swatch, but instead I decided to just decrease for one more row, resulting in 27 stitches, which MAY have fit my daughter's favorite baby doll's head.

The good news? It's superwash wool! And sports weight, I think! I can swatch AND make a square for my blankie! Except...that would be a garter stitch, flat, swatch and I am knitting stockinette in the round. Ugh. Maybe I should just do it right instead of casting on 224 stitches AGAIN only to send it to the frog pond? *sigh*

Oh, and my double stranded sports weight does NOT work on size 10 needles, so I think I will try swatching with an 8 and see what happens.

On the plus side the kids did great today - Imp loved using the ball winder at the yarn shop, and Critter talked me into buying her more yarn (she paid me back!) for yet another project she will start. She has more on the needles than I do!

Of course we had to go to the yarn shop...didn't you read where I said I decided to knit a hat for a baby? That's a new project, and new projects need new yarn! What's that? Stash, you say? Of course I can't use anything I already have - there was nothing quite right!

Seriously, my (small, meager) stash consists mostly of bright and deep colors. I *needed* a pastel pink for this...and a coordinating green. You'll see what I mean...when I get the darn gauge right.

Oh! The kids favorite thing about today? Playing on the new play structure we had put in over the weekend. They are having a blast, and playing so nicely together! It's great, and huge, and takes up most of the yard...and so worth it! We found it used on Craig's List

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great site! It was fun reading the blogs about you and the kids settling in.

This is the person I learned sock knitting from:
http://www.wiseneedle.com/ (toe-up, i'm still working on my first pair though). She does some real nice stuff and I'm lucky enough to work with her. Though we haven't been able to have our knitting circle (too much school).

Now that I have you book marked I'll try to check in regularly to see what your up too :-).

10:34 AM  

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