A friend of mine asked for a white knit hat to wear during Yoga class. . . that was a while ago and the conference is coming up soon.
here are my thought:
somewhat open stitches
lace – like but not girly lace-like
stretchy
length is to top of ears only – don’t need a brim on this one:)
thinking of faggotting lace or some such
well – I’m off to knit. I’ll post pictures when it’s done!
In 2013 Minnesotans voted against the ban for same-sex marriage. Then, Minnesota was the first state in which the citizens voted to give same-sex couples the right to marry. . . the campaign was called “Love is the Law” Then the US Supreme court ruled marriage is a right for ALL couples!
so to honor all those new couples getting married I designed a A new hat pattern and I’m calling in it, “Love is the Law Cap”.
The cable pattern around the brim of the hat looks like intersecting wedding rings. These hats are uni-sex and perfect for any couple you know getting married!
Find the pattern on my Ravelry page!
I finally got my pattern for Kathy’s Earflap Hat edited and up for sale on Ravelry!
It is such a cute hat! And it includes twined knitting, which I adore!
I can’t remember where I was first introduced to twined knitting but I immediately fell in love with the beautiful patterning and durability of the knitting. wait – now I remember. I was browsing the knitting books at my local library and found this great book, “Twined Knitting A Swedish Folkcraft Technique” by Birgitta Dandanell and Ulla Danielsson. The photos are fabulous and I couldn’t get over the beautiful white on white designs. I wanted this book for my personal library but to my dismay the book was out of print and the cost ran 96$ and up. Luckily I have a big (and generous) family and they all went in together and purchased this great book for me.
I am always inspired when I wander through this book.
A friend of mine wanted me to knit her a cap, an earflap cap specifically, to match a beautiful woven scarf of her mother’s that had a great art deco sort of weave. . . angels and squares and subtle texture. I thought that working in twined knit would provide the perfect opportunity to create subtle texture designs. Kathy’s one of a kind hat is done in black and turned out great! 
I’ve knit many earflap hats with twined brims since this one and have written a pattern for a traditional pattern that is fun and easy to follow.
If you’ve never done twined knitting before I include a description in the pattern. There are also many youtube videos on twined knitting. In twined knitting you use two strands of yarn from the same skein,and as you knit you wrap each stitch around the next, alternating between the two strands. Yes, the result is a twisted skein of yarn, but I find that taking breaks to untwist the skein is as relaxing as the knitting. I use a double pointed needle, making an s-twist around it with both ends of yarn, then hold up the ends and watch the ball of yarn spin around and “untwist”. It’s fun!
My pattern also includes line by line directions, and graphs – you can follow which ever one works for you!
Happy knitting!
I love the local library! I found a gem of a book titled,”Latvian Dreams, Knitting from Weaving Patterns” by Joyce Williams. It was full of charts with geometric designs. The sweater patterns in the book were fashioned after the gansey, very little shaping, with the focus on the two color patterns. The sweater is knit in a traditional style of knitting in the round and using steeks at armholes and collar.
I decided to try the “High Park Pullover”. In the book it is shown in blue and white – but I think (and am hoping) that I have enough fine weight alpaca to knit this (with long sleeves). Years ago I bought tons of alpaca yarn from Richness Alpaca. I’ve been looking for a project to use it all up and I have found it!
I am racing the snow – my goal is to be wearing this sweater the first time I shovel!
The first inch of rows were the hardest. Now that I have figured out the repeats I don’t have to look at every stitch on the chart while knitting. I’ve had to frog a few rows but luckily not too often.
The book has a fun approach to the sweater patterns. Charts show the geometric patterns in the shape of the sweaters. Gauges for different weight yarns are listed and depending on which yarn you use you adjust the pattern by number of repeats. For my sweater I added 20 stitches to the charted pattern in order to get the correct size – One 10st repeat for the front and one for the back.
I can’t wait to get to the sleeve – see how clever the design is where the sleeves meets the body of the sweater! I’ll have to walk around waving my arms in the air to show it off.
I can get one round done in about 20 minutes. The sweater is charted at 270 rows. . . (not including the sleeves, I haven’t looked at those yet) I don’t want to do the math! I’m planning on working both sleeves at the same time because I’ll have to tweak the pattern and also because I’m not sure how far my different colors of yarn will stretch. Knitting both sleeves at the same time will help me use up the yarn and make sure the sleeves look the same. The sleeves are worked from the top down, picking up sts at the armholes and working down to the cuffs, and that’s a lot of fabric on my lap. Doing both sleeves at the same time prevents sleeve slap (that happens while turning the sweater to knit the second sleeve and the one that is done swings around and slaps you).
I’ll post pics of me in it – shovelling.