Knitty Tam

A girlfriend from Colorado I'm seeing this weekend asked me to knit her a beret in "her colors." I'm not exactly sure what she meant by that but her favorite color is purple and she wears a lot of black. Her winter coat is bright red so I doubt this hat will work with the coat but obviously the solution is to buy a new coat to go with the hat.




This is Tam C in the Three Tams pattern from Knitty by Angela Sixian Wu. I think this is a terrific pattern for those new to colorwork and because you use worsted weight yarn, it is really fast to knit as well. I used 8 colors of blues and purples with the black background - mostly Cascade 220 but I believe there is some Lana D'Oro in there as well.




I blocked it over a dinner plate as per instructions.



It is a little darker than this photo.



I used my German twisted cast on variation which helps keep 2-color ribbing from curling. The K2P2 corrugated ribbing I did in lieu of the K1P1 corrugated ribbing called for in the pattern was just a mistake, pure and simple.

Easy Scrunchie Socks

Thanks to everyone who helped me decipher what color mauve really is. The answer is who knows??? The world of color names is a mysterious one.

Now when I said I was making a pair of socks in Cascade 220 that was the color of Pepto-Bismol, everyone probably guessed the color exactly.



These are the Easy Scrunchie socks (pattern in previous blog post) knit in size 6 dpns instead of size 7. I realized I forgot to put the gauge in the pattern last time so I'll add that for both sizes and add the pattern as a PDF on Ravelry for those of you who prefer to work from PDFs. This is a busy week but I'll get to it as soon as I can.



I've decided to devote the summer to knitting myself some really thick socks. I've found a few interesting patterns online so I'll post a set of links for those of you who also like socks from worsted weight yarn.

Valencia Mittens

More mittens to show you - I'm calling these the Valencia mittens and they use 3 colors of Cascade 220.

It was a beautiful weekend so we decided to take a walk around Nob Hill and Ridgecrest in Albuquerque.

The catmint was in bloom.

Everything is starting to green up.

On the way to the park.

I'm not sure the name of this park in Ridgecrest but it is my favorite park in the city.

Midnight Clear Christmas Stocking

I gave up on the 30-color armwarmer idea during the Red Sox/Angels game late last night. Instead I'm just going to do some really bulky socks in some purple stash yarns. Boring but practical. For the less exciting playoff games, I'm working on a Dale of Norway hat to figure out the color combo DH likes for the Whistler sweater.



Shown here are the Midnight Clear Christmas Stockings in two color combos in Cascade 220 (pattern on Lulu, pattern on Ravelry) with corrugated ribbing, an area for personalization with an included alphabet chart, and a snowflake design. This is the last pattern design I'm going to work on for a while.

My October blog plans include another photo tour of our recent trip to Durango, Colorado, a technique post on color dominance, compiling another long list of recommended yarns for colorwork, making a video of how I weave in ends, and possibly knitting some other Dale or Rauma accessory patterns. I will probably get started on the Whistler sweater before December as I'm absolutely chomping at the bit for some good clean Norwegian knitting fun.

Biodynamic Hat

Here's my latest hat pattern - it features a braided edge and uses three colors. (It is HERE on Ravelry and HERE at the Lulu store.) Below is the women's size in Brown Sheep Nature Spun sport weight - Snow, Evergreen, and Butterfly Blue which is my favorite yarn color of all time.



This is the men's extra-large version for DH knit in organic Vermont O-Wool Classic in Cornflower, Saffron, and Sky.



The hat has a very easy four point top.

Autumn Leaves Socks

Here are the Autumn Leaves Socks from Kristin Knits in worsted weight yarns from the stash. I used roughly the same colors she used although I added an extra shade of green and some extra colorwork near the toes.



I think Bubbles likes the new socks.



I knit the 2nd sock in one day. We drove up to Colorado for a quick visit - lots of uninterrupted knitting time as we drove through the massive Navajo reservation. I'll have some mountain pictures of Durango, CO for you tomorrow.

Put-it-all-together Gloves

I wish I could say that the colors are wrong in these gloves but alas they are real. I desperately need to get more colors of Cascade 220 to avoid this in the future. Anyway, I did knit them in less than 48 hours so I won my speed challenge.




These are the "Put-it-all-together Gloves" from Kristin Knits by Kristin Nicholas. The duplicate stitch took almost half the time.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that the Red River Gloves are indeed available for sale in two sizes and two colorways HERE at my Lulu store. I've had several questions about them because I wasn't clear about that.

I think I'll do something in alpaca next.