FO: Cabled Chapeau

The lovely Cabled Chapeau. I finished this hat back in December, wrote the majority of this post in January, and here it is, April 5th. And it's raining, not snowing, so no need for the hat. But oh, how I love this hat! I wore it on the cold, but not arctic, winter days here in New England. it was quick to knit (when I spent time knitting), soft and conforming, and most importantly, big enough for my head! We have big heads in my family and most feminine hats squeeze the dickens out of my head. That said, I'm sure other patterns can be customized to accommodate my cranium but I loved this pattern from the start - big cables, flexible brim, and covers my ears.



Knitting the brim was a a bit odd. I couldn't figure out what doing short rows in the middle would do to the shape. I just couldn't picture it. Also, the way the pattern is written, the two long edges are not the same length, and I thought they would be since they just fit on the inside and outside of the hat. Weird. I just kept on going with the pattern instructions and tried not to question it.

Once I finished all the pieces they cuddled up together in a bag on the couch as I tried to gather up my nerve to tackle the brim. I did have another hat to follow for brim shape, but I was anxious about doing it wrong. Then I realized if I didn't cut something, I wouldn't have a hat to wear when I went home for Christmas. And of course, I wanted to show off my handiwork!

I would have made the knit piece for the brim smaller but I just sewed it in father on the inside so I wouldn't have a baggy brim. If I make this hat again (and I think my friends back home are preparing to put in their orders) I will figure out how to make the knit piece a bit smaller, and use the cardboard template I made for the brim as a guide.

It's time to give this hat a wash in the sink and put it in with my other winter things. Or maybe I'll wear it on particularly chilling spring days...it is the perfect shade of blue!

Here is a photo of me and my big sister after the crazy northeast storm that made getting home from Christmas an adventure. Instead of flying from Rochester to Boston, I rode with my sister and brother-in-law to Montclair, NJ, then took the commuter rail in to NYC, then a Bolt bus to Boston, and then the subway home. A roundabout way of getting home after the holidays, but better than waiting for the snow to clear. I know this photo doesn't show off the hat all that well, but you get the picture!

Baby Sizing

It's that time again, time to put the pedal to the metal and crank out some baby things for a shower. How do these things creep up on me? My friend Mary made a special request for purple booties and I am happy to oblige, but of course I can't just make booties, I need to make a hat too! I've known about this since sometime in the fall, and Mary is due in April, so I had plenty of time. I made a winter hat for myself, the Cabled Chapeau (which you will see a finished picture of soon), worked on some other unfinished projects, and started but didn't finish a scarf for my sister's birthday in December. I wanted to finish the scarf before starting the baby things, but now I'm getting down to the wire.

Mary's baby shower is March 5th so I need to mail the gift by March 1st. That's two weeks from today! Now if I could just get knitting...though that hasn't been the problem. The problem is size.

I picked out the patterns months ago, bought the yarn a few weeks ago, but didn't sit down and read through everything until I was ready to start. Common mistake. I bought Plymouth Encore in worsted, but the Etanapipa snail hat calls for bulky, and Saartje's Bootees call for fingering weight. Ugh!


-Snail Hat-
1st cast on - size 10 needles, yarn doubled. Too confusing, can't figure out if the hat is the right size, pulling from both ends of one skein. Frogged.
2nd cast one - size 9 needles. Cast on 64 stitches. Slightly stretched it's 16-17" - too big for a baby, more like a toddler size. And I had added a stitch somewhere. Frogged.
3rd cast on - size 9 needles. Cast on 48 stitches. Stretched it's 12" - way too small. Frogged.
4th cast on - size 9 needles. Cast on 56 stitches. Stretched it's 14-15". Sticking with this one.

Never mind that bebecita probably doesn't need a woolly knitted hat in April. It's upstate NY. It still snows in April and May sometimes.

I've been referencing this size chart to figure out how big to make the hat.

-Saartje's Bootees-
1st cast on - size 7 needles. Seemed to crowded. Frogged.
Waiting until I'm finished with the hat to cast on again, probably with size 8 needles.

Cable complications

I got to row 10 on the Cabled Chapeau hat and just didn't like what was happening with the purl stitches in between the cables. I was ending up with loose purl stitches, particularly to the right of the cable (for most knitters this happens in the column of stitches to the left of the cable, but I'm a lefty so it's reversed, remember?) I started searching online for help and ended up with some pretty complicated methods to try.

Cat bordhi has a video for just such a problem, however it's a complicated move that I could not grasp. Side linked with this were clips on how to do the Norwegian purl stitch, which looks to be the same move. Again, a bit tricky. I read somewhere that you could leave out a purl stitch in each place where the loose purl happens, knit the garment, then go back and pull up a line of stitches in that loose area with a crochet hook. Sort of picking up a dropped stitch that wasn't there. This seems like a lot of trouble to go to, modifying the pattern, adding the potential for lots of error. Knitty has a great section on knitting cables that does mention the loose purl stitch problem and essentially says, pull it real tight!

I decided to rip back to the ribbing section and start the cables over. I realized though that my cast-on/ribbing section was looser than I normally knit, and so the stitch spacing of the whole hat would be off, and after knitting two rows I ripped it all out again.

On row 2 of the second try I noticed that when I joined the yarn I didn't join it properly and once again, I have an infinite loop instead of a hat. I did this with my second try for the baby berry hat too. I never used to have a problem joining, but it seems to happen when I use a circular needle that's longer than I need it. If I plan to use magic loop for the knitting I just cast on with the longer needle, but then it's very easy to twist the join without noticing. So, 6 days after starting the hat and knitting along, I cast on for the third time. *sigh*

I decided to reverse the directions for the cable. The pattern calls for a 4/4 LPC (slip 4 stitches to cable needle and hold to front) to make left twist cables. For me, since I am lefty, I do this and get right twist cables. I really like how the hat looks as is, so I held the stitches in the back.

I managed to finish the main body of the hat while away for Thanksgiving, and started in on the brim only to realize that I needed a refresher on short rows. The hat pattern does not include full instructions on short rows. Once I was back home and could sit in front of the computer I sought some visual aids. Everyone has their own way of explaining the strange 'wrap and turn' function that makes short rows possible. I found watching the video on knitting help to be the most straight forward for me. I think this time I finally understand! Maybe now toe-up socks won't seem so scary.

So, all I have to do is finish the brim, knit the band for across the front, find buttons, eat a container of Cool-Whip, cut a brim out of Cool-Whip lid, sew it all together, and...I think I need a nap.

From One Hat to Another

I finished a project! Late Sunday night I completed the baby hat for my friend's 17-month-old. I made them matching hats out of the Berry Baby Hat pattern and used black and white, flipping the colors so mom has the white with black top, and baby has the black with white top. I hope I can get it in the mail tomorrow. They've already had a bit of snow there!

Very late Sunday night I started a new project, the Cabled Chapeau, a pattern from Stitch Nation which is free on their site and on Coats and Clark. Last year I made a hat I loved but it doesn't look good on me. I would also need to frog it a bit and make the crown a lot deeper to get the fit I'm after, namely, to cover my bloody ears!


I'm using Plymouth Encore Worsted Tweed for this project. It's a wool/acrylic/viscose blend that is springy and soft. I noticed when casting on that this yarn is a 'Z' twist. I hope that doesn't cause too much of a problem for me. The only other time I knit with a 'Z' twist was for a baby kimono sweater in 2009. The Lion Brand Microspun has a tight 'Z' twist which gave the knitted fabric a different texture. This yarn seems to knit up fast and is very cushy and lovely so I hope that will offset the irritation of cables. They are lovely after all, so I must put up with them.

Tonight when I picked up the hat to work on it, I noticed a weird stitch. Well, not so much a stitch a mistake. There is a loop of yarn pulled from one row up over 5 rows and knitting back in. I don't know how this happened, but I will be ripping back a bit tonight to take care of it.

Also, does anyone have tips on how to knit cables? I end up with some loose stitches on one side of my cables, and I think there's a trick to preventing that, twisting the stitch, or knitting through the back? Something like that.

Black and White Hats

Little Xavier grew out of his blueberry hat, and I've had a request for a new hat, but this time with a matching one for mom, and this time, in black and white! So, Xavier's hat will be black on bottom, white on top, and Emily's hat will be white on bottom, black on top. I bought the yarns months ago but I'm seeing them in two weeks (!) so I'd better get knitting. I managed to make the 6 month hat in a week before, and that was with cotton yarn which was tougher to work with, so I'm hoping that I will be able to crank out these two hats. (holy run-on sentences, Batman!)

That means I won't be able to work on Citron OR my new socks, and once again I have way too many projects sitting around collecting dust.

Rav link for hat project: Black and White Hats

This week has been long and tiring, and I'm struggling with being hungry and getting workouts in at all. This weekend is full of activities - book group, party, outdoor music, and while I do want to go to all of them and see peple I'm just so tired. Maybe tonight I'll skip the workout and just do laundry, knit, take a nap, have dinner, wash dishes, reorganize my apartment...

it's so easy! ...or is it?

--excerpted from an email last week--

oh, I'm knitting my hat on size 10 circulars (29") and it's getting tight. I need to start decreasing and thought i could magic loop it, but I'm not sure the cord is long enough. I thought, no problem, I'll just switch to my interchangeable needles, but my stupid set does not have the same measurements as everything else! A 10 is supposed to be 6.0mm. My interchangeable Boye set has the 10 at 5.75mm. I only figured this out a few months ago and realized that part of my too tight knitting issue was NOT my fault! but actually the fault of the faulty kit designers. So in fact my too tight knitting was exacerbated by the inconsistency of the world of Boye. Right now I'm trying to figure out if I should:

a. switch to the boye needles and attempt to knit a little looser so I won't see the difference in tension

b. switch to the boye needles, notice the difference in tension and swear up a storm as I try to decide whether or not to rip it out

c. continue on with current circular needles until knitting becomes painful, THEN switch to horrible said boye tips and give myself a migraine

d. somehow magically successfully use the magic loop method to finish fantastic hat before the snow flies and avoid stupid boye set altogether

e. use boye needle tips as fondue skewers and give up knitting

f. sell boye set on ebay and pass the frustration on to another unsuspecting knitter, thereby calming the voices in my head that scream for consistency, and maybe buy myself the nicey-nice KnitPicks interchangeable set.

My friend Annmarie has been wooed by KnitPicks. Do you have any of their needles? What do you think?

I need to read patterns closer.

Started on a hat last night - finished my swatch about 1 am, and cast on. Maybe that's why this afternoon I realized that I'm on row 3 of the increases but I don't have the foundation 3 rows of plain seed stitch. I did read the pattern all the way through, and wrote it down in my book. But maybe knitting after midnight is a bad idea.

I'm really liking this yarn. I'm using some purple Lion Brand Jiffy that I found in my stash. I thought I owned it in green, but no - it's purple. I have two skeins of it but somehow never entered it in my Ravelry stash inventory. I've only been knitting for 2 years now and if I'm this disorganized I can imagine what the house of a longtime knitter looks like. Yikes!

Here's a link to the hat I keep talking about, Robin's Egg Blue Hat on Ravelry and on her blog.

Okay. I'm making this instead of the cloche, which requires actual WOOL and felting. This just requires me to know how big my head is. which i dont. how do i not know after all those conversations at knitting? I think we all measured our heads 3 or 4 times. ugh. at tonight's measuring my head is 22.5. that seems smaller than last time. am i shrinking?