November 2012

By pile I mean two, but that seems like a lot when you don't have pets.

I've been cat sitting for a couple of days now. It's made knitting a bit tricky, not only do the little beasties pounce at anything that twitches, but the cat hair gets into the wool. Instead I'm concentrating on planning and design for a bit. I'll get back to making at the end of the month.

02/12/2012

My Hands Hurt

"Come the weekend I may even have time to add a new page to the design section..."

Hahaha hehe hahaHAHAHA HAH HAH HAH. But seriously, I'm woking on that page for the design section.

I have made my ODDknit hat and typed up the pattern. It took a lot longer to knit than expected. Maybe I've become so used to making little ODDknits that I forgot the shear amount of graft you have to put in to full sized knits. Not that a hat is big. I am in awe of jumper knitters.

In return for the pattern I'm going to ask a favour. Not a big favour, just a little indulgence.

Let's pretend it's still November.

Reasons:

1. I'm not ready for it to be Christmas.
2. I am enjoying the comedy moustaches.
3. That way the November pattern I just uploaded won't be late.
4. I spent a good part of the weekend plumbing in a washing machine that should have been installed by the people that delivered it and I would quite like that time back thank you very much. On the plus side I now own a wrench and haven't flooded the kitchen (yet). On the downside I can smell hot plastic.

So let's pretend it's still November and we'll start the month over again tomorrow. OK? Good. I'll update to December soon but as it turns out typing up knitting patterns, on top of removing transport bolts from washing machines, on top of speed knitting hats in rib, is not good for the hands. I've decided to relax until everything stops clicking.

29/11/2012

The Answer

The answer to life, the universe and everything may be 42, but I like to think that the answer to knitting is 12 (which is half of 42 backwards, but I'm not sure if that's significant).

Cast on a multiple of 12 stitches and you can work patterns with a repeat of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 12 stitches. If you design a hat with 12 stripes you can use 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 or 12 colours in a neat design. 12 is brilliant because is a low number with a lot of factors.

Hence my hat will have 12 stripes. From above it will look like a cartwheel.

I've worked out a simple design for my hat based on straight sides and flat top built of triangles. Come the weekend I may even have time to add a new page to the design section to show how I did it. Meanwhile I better get knitting. There's only a few days left in November to get this pattern up!

27/11/2012

The Most Important Question...

The easiest way to knit stripes is to change colours at the end of a row. Usually when I knit a hat I work back and forth, from the brim...

...which gives me horizontal stripes.

Since I want to knit a hat with vertical stripes...

…I should knit at right-angles to the brim.

I'm planning on knitting the hat in sections. Each section will form a stripe and will taper at one end to shape the dome.

Now comes the most important question of all: how many stripes should there be?

26/11/2012

It's all LIES!

Every month I draw a cartoon. Usually it includes this little character:

She's supposed to be me. I've just realised how wildly inaccurate a portrait it is. I don't own a hat like that.

Luckily I know a way to fix this. I'm going to knit a vertical striped hat.

13/11/2012

Big Ideas I'll Never Use 2

Yesterday I had a good look round the Natural History Museum. I haven't been in a while and it seems I remembered it wrong. While I was expecting cabinets crammed full of fossils and insects and other knitable treats, what I found was exciting and interactive and not really my cup of tea.

I did enjoy the dinosaurs, but then who doesn't.

Hmmm...

Knitted Dinosaur.

Does it make me strange that I like the mineral room best. Big, beautiful room full of oak cabinets with hundreds of carefully labelled mineral specimens. Apparently it's the least changed room in the museum. That's right I like my artefacts 1880s style! That reminds me, I keep meaning to knit a geode.

07/11/2012

Big Ideas I'll Never Use

Today I've been hunting for inspiration at the British Museum. It's huge so when I visit I either concentrate on a period or run around looking for specific things. Today I was mostly enjoying the Assyrian sculptures.

There are beautiful big man-headed winged-beasts and sculpted stories of battles that take up complete walls. I liked the background textures as they looked like they would be simple to knit. Take this photo:

The shield could definitely be ribbed and the background looks like a variation of bell stitch.

I want to make Assyrian Panel Cushions.

I also want to knit a horde of gold. This is a project I've had in mind ever since I knitted my simple golden torc. I ran round the European rooms of the Museum to sketch bracelts for style ideas.

And I was home in time for tea.

P.S. If your're wondering what happened with the great worm experiment...

It didn't work. The dye got soaked up by the wool until it was evenly spread along the worm. I think I got them too wet when I dipped them. Next time I'll try an even stronger pink and ringing them out a little. Not just now though, I'm kind of wormed out.