rollover craft minutes

 

A gift for my niece, who requested a really warm hat with a huge pompom.  Modeled not by my niece but by Leo, who was home for break and apparently is past the stage where he cares if people see him in front of the house wearing a hat with a ridiculously large pompom.

pattern: A Really Warm Hat from Melissa LaBarre (conveniently named, no?)

yarn: Araucania Coliumo (wool/silk blend) in gold-ish,  and a strand of thin fuzzy brown mohair (ballband long gone) carried along for fun

needles: size 13 us

comments: It's knit longer than the pattern, both for style, and for my niece's big head with major hair.

 

With the right attitude, it seems this could be a dude hat. I have to confess I kind of wanted to keep this one. But I might have trimmed the pompom down

 

An attempted Leaf  scarf for sister Marla, who would have liked it if it had come out as I imagined, and not like this.  Again Araucania Coliumo, which is somehow too silky-shiney and maybe too soft, to create well defined leaves. Or, maybe I should have seen it through, and blocked it, but we'll never know, will we?  Ripped, to become

Pattern: ZigZag Cowl by Mandy Powers

yarn: Araucania Coliumo

needles: size 13 us

Comments: This yarns is much bulkier than Mandy's original,  I worked out the gauge & stitch count for a 23 " circumference.  Only a zig-zag-zi before the picot bindoff. I was nervous about running out of my single skein of yarn but had plenty left . It could easily have been a zigzagzigzag sort of deal.

No worries, it was plenty tall.

 

Excuse the wretched photo, it was freeeeezing out

Don't you love the picot edge at this weight of yarn? Funny story: I mailed it all gift wrapped up. I didn't exactly say what it was, only that it should be handwashed. Marla wears the handmades with appreciation & enthusiasm. She put it on her head as a kind of open topped hat thing, and wore it like this all day

(phonecam evidence ) until dinner, when her family  questioned whether it might not belong elsewhere on her body, and she called me laughing so hard she couldn't talk. 

I said, yeah, it was a winter tube top. You GO girl.

My bookgroup long ago declared December a no book potluck dinner  & craft night. We choose a simple project every year, this one was decorating notebooks. I walked in and announced I was too frazzled to even think about collage, I was going to just eat & knit, to relax.

 20 seconds later I'd grabbed a red notebook, sloshing gesso onto it. Some years less is more, and some years, more is more....

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Oh come on, Einstein and a smoking troll and I think Hindi numbers tissue paper? Irresistible.

 

Someone commented on how...lively.. my front cover was. I had to do the back, with restraint. In this light I see it can use a final even coat of gesso,it doesn't show as darker splotches to the naked eye.

New mittens! I've been thinking about making recycled sweater mitts for years. Literally. I had a dense, tragically felted  charcoal wool sweater in the box of hoarded selectively saved-for-upcycling woolens. When the snow started to pile up last week, I finally cut a pair of mitt shapes, using the sweater's roll edge hem as the cuffs. I blanket stitched them together, raw edges out, wrong sides together. That is it. Crazy easy. If I was a perfectionist, I'd call these protoype and make another pair, more smoothly shaped on the curves  and evenly stitched.

 

But I'm not, and these are making me insanely happy. Next pair may be reversibly lined with second color of felted sweater. With decorative pompoms or buttons. Maybe more is more here, too?

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Happy 2011, what are you making?