The Tofte Hat

When the Tofte Hat first rolled through the pictures of Ravelry's featured patterns, I was intrigued.   Last week Monday, I was in the Yarnery and saw the pattern and some samples.  It was time.   The yarn came home with me that day.

Winding Malabrigo into balls from the skein can be an exercise in patience.  These skeins were little rat nests of tangles.  Each skein took around three hours to tame into a ball.  I know from experience that using a swift would not have made it better.  

The feel of the Malabrigo slipping through my fingers as I knit made the detangling worth the pain.   The hat came off the needles in less than a week from purchase.  That is a record for a short time in the stash.  I will admit to a mistake or two in the crown shaping.  By the time I figured that out....I decided and did fix the error with well placed duplicate stitching.

The Tofte hat now, on this first day of spring, rests in wait for next winter.

The Journey of a Thousand (or More) Stitches

The completed loooong scarf.

No...the journey does not begin with one stitch but with a really good swatch.

Swatching is despised by many but for me it is a necessary evil.  Not only did I need the swatch to figure out how many stitches I really needed to get the correct width, but I needed to know how loose or tight the stitches would be so that I could manage the amount of stretch the finished garter stitch would likely suffer.

This yarn is not terribly elastic.  I THINK that I knit this tightly enough to minimize stretching.  I do know that I knit it loosely enough so that the fabric would drape the way that I wanted it to.  I hope, like Goldilocks and the perfect porridge, that it is just right.

Every once in awhile, it is good to do a massive garter stitch project.  Why?  Because it gives a good chance to figure out how the finished knitting works and a lot of practice achieving nice, even knitting at varied (daydreaming happy to nutty stressed) levels of body tension.   Why do I care about the latter?  Because, when I start a project then put it down for a month or so I want the gauge to be the same.   For me, this has been an issue.

My reward for finishing this is the Tofte Hat.  I hope to knit that this weekend.

Garter Stitch.....Some May Say Boring...I Say .... Meditative

One would think that after the Pillowghan (which I now wish I had ripped back and made longer...lesson learned) that I would not be willing to do a project that requires miles and miles of garter stitch.    Miles and miles of garter stitch does not pique interest or engage the brain.  There are times in live when one wants neither of those.  Fortunately for the person who asked for a ginormous garter stitch scarf, this is one of those times for me.

One of the people at work that I like and respect, brought me a fortyish year old loooooooong garter stitch scarf that surprisingly (not) is on its last legs.    I agreed to make another if he went out and found the yarn he wanted.   

The yarn came from JoAnn's.  It is a very nice acrylic that I am actually enjoying knitting.    It is soft.  It is not splitty at all.   The color is pooling beautifully.

The yarn is Big Twist Rainbow Classic Multi.  One skein has 447 yards.   This project will take one full and one partial skein.

This is coming along nicely.  While I do have to pay attention to make sure that I don't drop a stitch in the heat of TV knitting, it is a calming project and one that I am happy to do.

Measuring the work against the old scarf this morning, it looks like there are eleven more inches to do.  As I race toward that goal, I have to decide if I will make it an inch or so shorter to allow for the famous garter stitch stretching.  I am not sure what I want to do it.   I will have plenty left to do a nice fringe to make this scarf like the original.

Will this scarf still be around in forty years?   I hope that it is used and loved as much as the first one.  Maybe it will be still around with the holes and the wear of the first.