November Wrap-up

Kittens, we have reached the last day of November, and I am so happy that it ends with easiest post (apart from WIP it Wednesdays)!

Yardage Totals 2010

January: 1884 yds
February: 2850 yds
March: 2893 yds
April: 777 yds
May: 856 yds

June: 643 yds
July: 751yds

August: 1716yds

September: 3046 yds

October: 1337 yds

November: 1366yds

Year to date: 18,119 yds or 10.29 miles

I knit slightly more then I did in October, which pleases me. November got off to a very slow start and I was afraid it might be my lowest yield month of the year. Now onto December! In fantasy land, I'll knit the over 3,000yds needed to average 1 mile a month for the year...but realistically, I know that will not happen.

...

I have nothing today, kittens. Talk amongst yourselves.

Under The Wire

Kittens, where I live it is still Sunday. As such, I'm making a fluff post today. 28 days of consecutive blog posts have drained me. Some knitting happened today and a little crocheting. Tomorrow, I hope to have something a bit better.

New Cast On

Some sunshine for my sister, Amy. We're trading services. For my end, this will be a Sockhead Hat. Down the line, I'll update with what I get from her. What's really cool is that the cost of materials and hours of labor for both projects is nearly identical.

Black Friday FO

Kittens, I hope you all slept in and are avoiding the craziness which is Black Friday shopping today. At Chez Knitpicking, we're doing just that. My morning started with drinking chocolate and writing up a blog post.

This post has been a long time coming...

Yes, kittens, The Dreamy Basic Cardigan has finally been photographed so I can blog it!




Please pardon the squinty smile. We went from foggy and dreary to so sunny my poor eyes could not handle it. I'm very sensitive to sunlight, and you'll find me sporting sunglasses, even on cloudy days.

So what can I say about Dreamy?

The pattern is nothing special, just an improvised top-down raglan cardigan that isn't meant to be closed. (Though it is wide enough that I could close it if I'd like to add some sort of closures.) The lazy part of me is digging this current trend. I'm sure you'll be seeing more cardigans without closures from me in the future. I used the starting numbers from my, "You Down with AOB?", as a jump off point to start the increases. It worked out really well and I'm very pleased with how this fits.

The true star was the yarn: Sundara Sport in an LE colorway I picked up in September 2009. This yarn wasn't what I was expecting when I opened the package, and I had to make peace with it before I could put it to use. At the time I purchased the yarn, the dyer had recently switched over to doing her own photography and photo editing; to put it kindly, there were...issues with photo accuracy. She also wasn't the most gracious about accepting that large numbers of her customer base were complaining about the change and went on the defensive, but that's a story for a different time. When I saw this colorway, Dreams Have Invisible Wings, on the site, it was a bright blue green. You can see highlights of it in the yarn, but it had looked like a consistent semi-solid of that color. Imagine my surprise when I opened my package to find a dark yarn, mostly black with navy and flashes of the bright blue green. This was before Sundara implemented her return policy and I sat there baffled about what to do with such a variegated colorway. I thought about destashing, but after showing off the color on the Ravelry board, most others had the same reaction to it I did.

11 months later, I finally decided to pull it out of my tote and use it for a basic cardigan to show off the colorway. Of course, I alternated skeins to avoid pooling. I probably should have alternated 03 at the same time rather then 02; there is some minor color pooling despite my efforts. Later, I realized that I hadn't left enough of the lighter skeins to go with the darker ones and the ribbing for the sweater is noticeably darker.

As for the yarn itself, I love it. Hate the price tag, but love the yarn base. Out of 05 skeins, there were 02 knots and no schlubby bits. I have two more colorways of this in-stash, and I'm hoping to crack into another after my current project is finished. It's soft and has nice stitch definition from the plying. At the gauge I knit it, it has lovely drape but is still opaque. Good yarn all around. Sundara has recently added a less expensive Sport Merino 2 to her site, but I resisted the temptation to purchase from the first round. When she brings it back, I'll nab some in the future and see how it compares.

Overall, I'm very happy with this knit and I'm looking forward to getting more use out of it when the weather decides to trend cooler again. It was 80º yesterday, kittens. 80.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you're having a good one full of yummy foods, kittens. Will be back to craft blogging tomorrow.

WIP it Wednesday

Kittens, I almost forgot that today is Wednesday. Good thing though, since I'm currently glaring at the weather and silently chastising it for being so poor for taking photos. (I also hear it is ridiculously humid out there. I think I'll play it safe and stay inside today. ;] )





My garter yoke, it's getting there! I'm about to pick up the stitches for a sleeve and work my way through the question that has been hounding me for the better part of the week: how long will the sleeves be? It's a validly tricky question. On the one hand, it likely will not be freezing cold for much of the winter and I'll get more wear out of this if I keep the sleeves shorter. On the other, this is a nice warm wool, and even with short sleeves, it's likely to be a piece for only the coldest months, so I can cheap out avoid buying a winter coat if I keep the sleeves longer.

I guess I'll see where my whim takes me as I knit the first sleeve....

Foggy Day

So no pictures. I'm hoping to get them tomorrow.

I'm almost to the end of the body on my Garter Yoke Cardigan and I will start the sleeves tomorrow. The end is near, kittens.

Hope you all had a lovely Tuesday, and it had some sort of fibery/crafty goodness in it.

More Plans...

have gone awry, due to The Husband's schedule being extended today. So the blog I originally planned to post up will have to wait until tomorrow...if the weather cooperates for pictures. YES, it was going to be an FO post today, kittens. Now, I'm scrambling to figure out what I should write about.

Right now, I haven't got much. But since yarn reviews were one of the suggestions of things I could blog this month, I thought I could share what is my biggest peeve when reading one. Anytime I read a yarn review and the words, "I found it to be splitty/ it's splitty," come onto the screen, I scream a little inside. This may be the single least helpful thing a person can, "contribute." All plied yarn if treated just right will split. Some days, you're the one who does it.

There you go. Short and a little bit cranky.

In The Making

Monster heads. Not sure how many more components I'll whip up before I start decorating these and assembling them. These are a great way to eat up 7-15 yard scrap pieces.

I'm really pleased with how my crochet is looking so far. These are much more even and nice them some of my previous attempts. Maybe I need to stick to small gauge yarn and hooks in the future. It's really slow going, but it's pretty looking.

Today...

I knit quite a bit in the car. I somehow managed to not get carsick in the process. So yay! I'm making great progress on my Garter Yoke Cardi and at the rate I'm going, I might finish a sweater in under 10 days. This would be sweater 10 of 12. If I could focus, I just might make my 12 for NaKniSweMoDo. This idea has me very excited, but I'm trying not to get ahead of myself.

I also cast on a crochet project. I love everything Halloween and creepy and cute all at the same time. So yes, I'm the sort of person who would totally decorate her holiday tree with monster heads. ( I still need to get some wool felt so I can make half-eaten, traumatized gingerbread ornaments and act out their apocalypse. What...?)

Yes.

I am not going to pretend to have a fully formed opinion on this yet, but this week, somewhere on the internet, I ran across the idea of being a Knitter vs. a knitter. This sort of question resonates with me, and this is not the first time such an idea has come up.

I feel differently about knitting then I do about some of my other creative hobbies.

As is sometimes shown here, I dabble in embroidery and sewing/quilting. But neither of these things really resonate with me and stir a passion within. They're fun to do, but I view them as hobbies. Pastimes, nothing more. If I had to describe myself I wouldn't put "quilter," or "embroiderer," anywhere near the top of that list. If one were to try and start up a conversation about either subject with me, I'd likely chat about it, but I doubt I'd get very excited and I'd do more listening then talking. (Unless talk of the modern quilting movement comes up. Then I do actually get a bit excited, and that's what drew me back into sewing. Same with zakka-inspired sewing.) These are things that I do, but I do not feel that they describe who I am.

This is where the distinction comes in, I think. Is something an expression of who you are or just a hobby, a way to pass time?

I know this: I knit when I'm happy. I knit when I'm sad. I knit when I need to think more clearly. I knit when I need a distraction. I knit in small grabbed moments of time. I knit when I have a lot of time available. I even dream about knitting and often, thinking about it is what soothes me to sleep.

I'm thinking I'm a Knitter. What about you, kittens? Are you Knitters, Crocheters, Quilters, "fill-in-what-you-are-of-choice-with-a-capital-here"-ers?

....

I have nothing again today. Lots of progress on Garter Yoke, but it's not exactly exciting to look at yet. This "blog every day," thing is harder then it sounds.

(Almost) Wordless WIPing

After such a wordy post yesterday, I decided to give my fingers a break today, kittens. Here are my WIPs for the week.




The never-ending mitts.



Mmmm. Garter yoke.

Lacewing

Kittens, after a month, it is finally done. No more teasers for you. And no more kvetching about how this will never get off of needles.

Pattern: Honeybee Cardigan, Laura Chau (Ravel it)

Yarn: Sundara Sock, Garden of Delight (May 2009 LE)

Needles: US size 6

This took much longer to knit then it should have due to a very slow start, ripping and recasting on due to math fail & brain fog, and an inability to keep moving when I was knitting. I have a couple of theories about why this happened.

As you can see from the date, this Sundara had been sitting in stash for about 18 months, and while I liked the color, I was no longer in love with it and wanted to see it used or rehomed. I wouldn't consider myself a fickle yarnie, but my color preferences do sway a bit and at the time I purchased this green, I was madly in love with the color. Right now, I'm still liking green, but not rabidly infatuated with it or seeking it out. (This changed as a I actually worked on the sweater. The process helped me refall in love with the colorway.)

The other is something I learned about myself while knitting this. To date, I haven't had an issue following a knitting pattern or trying to understand what the writer's instructions are. I'll get momentarily confused, reread, understand, and move on. It happens. With this knit, I kept tripping up and had to spend better parts of an hour reading and rereading the directions. This was not the fault of the pattern and as far as I can tell, it didn't have any errors. All of the information was correct. What I learned is that Ms. Chau and I think differently, and this is the first time I've encountered that. Portions of the pattern were--to ME--redundant and it confused me, thinking there must be something I was missing in the reading. I discovered that I fill in the blanks on my own and this was tripping me up. They were all silly things that once I got them, I laughed about it, even if I was cussing up a storm and getting irritated at the time. This will not make me avoid her patterns in the future, but it will put me on alert.

Those two things aside, this knit grew on me and I'm quite pleased with it. I learned a slick new technique.

Bottom-up, seamless set-in sleeves. LOVE. How slick is that?! I tend to avoid set-in sleeves because I can never get them to match up properly or look nice. My gauge always varies a bit as I knit separate pieces and no matter how many times I measure, the sleeves never match up with the sleeve holes. To say they frustrate me is an understatement. I have a feeling I'm going to be using this technique quite a bit in the future and will definitely alter patterns with set-in sleeves to attach them this way. I would likely knit nothing but set-in sleeves if they weren't such a pain in the rear.

Speaking of the sleeves, this was the one "major" change to the pattern I made. Rather then a 12" 3/4 sleeve, I wanted a short one. This decision was first made to make this as quick a knit as possible, but later I realized it was a good one. Alabama is not exactly cold most of the year and with short sleeves, this is adorable over dresses.

And that i-cord finish for the neckline? Such a simple--but pretty--way to finish the knit off. It was putzy and took forever, but well worth it.




My arm may fall off from all of the back patting I'm about to do. How beautiful are those picked up stitches for the button band?! After 3 years of knitting, I finally feel proficient in the technique and like I really understand it. Nice, neat, and even. No more uneven pick-ups varying between two different columns of stitches because I could not figure out how to see where to place my needle.

The buttons were some freebies thrown in my last order from GreenRayProd on Etsy. Jodi has some fabulous vintage buttons in her shop and always includes interesting information about them. Imagine my surprise when I saw these had been tossed in as a bonus. And how perfect they were for this sweater!

Lacewing is sweater 09 of 12 for IntSweMoDo. Unless I can pump out 03 sweaters in the next six weeks, I won't make it. But I'll be close!

1/2 way

And I am far too tired to do a real blog tonight, kittens. I hope you all are staying warm and dry...preferably with some cocoa and knitting.

Because I am a Tease....

This might just be a fully finished button band and finished off icord neckline.





And this just might be a seamed shoulder, one of two finished.

And my Honeybee, known on my Ravelry page as "Lacewing," might just be soaking as I type this out.

Garter Yoke...

So, this seems to be the most popular option. But I have another question, kittens: do I leave it as a cardigan, or convert it to a pullover to make it more like Cobblestone? I love that Garter Yoke is knit from the top-down, making it easy to get the fit right and it should be simple enough to convert and improvise as I go.

"The Best Laid Plans of Mice and...

bloggers, often go awry." Or so the saying should have gone.

It wasn't until I remembered that The Husband had an evening shift that I realized that my original plan for a blog entry today would not work. It will have to be done this weekend. So I've been spending most of my day debating what I should blog about instead... I did not want another cop out post like I gave you yesterday, kittens. That would be cruel.

I'm still chugging along on my Honeybee, but have made a fair amount of progress on it today. I reached the double sleeve decreases and have a couple front ones left. The number of stitches on needles are quickly reducing and I can see an actual sleeve shape. I shall be finishing it soon and I'm itching (haha!) to cast on something that I'm more excited about.

Enter the yarn:

Shelter. Brooklyn Tweed. The most awesome gray ever, named "Sweatshirt." It is fab and I've been thinking about it constantly since it arrived. This was the second shipment sent to me, since the first was lost. I've been vainly hoping ever since that the first would make its way here and I'd have double the sheepy awesomeness, but alas, after 6 weeks, it's still missing. I'm going to have to accept that it's not coming. If it would arrive, I had FABULOUS plans for it.

Here's where the problem comes in. I can not decide what to cast on. I've been a little MEH about cardigans right now and am itching (haha!²) to do some pullovers. However, this yarn is not merino and has a bit of an itch factor to it. Not terribly bad, but just enough that I would not want it touching more sensitive areas of my body.

Using Ravelry's fantastic pattern searching options, these are my top contenders that I already have the patterns for. (I've already taken yardage into consideration before choosing.)

Garter Yoke Cardigan, Melissa LaBarre. I like the simplicity of the knit and it's very similar to Mr. Tweed's own Cobblestone Pullover pattern. So it seems fitting.

Heather Raglan Pullover, Cecily Glowik MacDonald. I really like this for the same reasons that I like the last one. It's simple and would look fantastic in a tweedy gray. As a bonus, no button bands!

Then there is the option of free patterns. I'm trying very hard not to purchase additional patterns right now. I'm a collector of them.




This is from Coats & Clark, originally written for cotton. But I can definitely see it in gray tweed and it has potential. The simple lace pattern gives it some interest factor and would help prevent boredom while knitting.

So what are your opinions, kittens? Any of these strike your fancy for the yarn?

...

Not much to say today. I've been trying to think of something worthwhile to blog, and I keep coming up empty. Even if not super productive, I have continued to meet/exceed my low daily goal for the two knits on my needles, and progress is slowly revealing herself to me.

I promise to come up with something better for tomorrow, kittens. Today, I'm sort of a bum.

WIP it Wednesday

Kittens, apparently setting low, arbitrary goals helps productivity. Who knew? Last night I knit 05 rows on one project and 06 on the other. This morning, I've knit 02 rows on the first project and 04 on the second.

Go figure.

My Skull and Flowers mitts are coming along nicely. I'm still trying to decide if these will be fingerless mitts or actual mittens. I'm trying to determine the actual need for mittens down here. Warm wrists I'm sure I'll need. But will my fingers actually get cold? Hmmm.

If you look closely at the picture, you can see where the blocked portion of the mitt ends and it pulls back in a bit.

And the neckline has been started on my Honeybee. With any luck, this will pick up pace now that I've bound off a large number of stitches for it. In a few more rows, I'll be doing decreases in the sleeves every row instead of every right side row, so it will start to fly at that point. The end for this knit is creeping up.

And that's what I have for you this Wednesday.

Small Goal

My knitting mojo is practically non-existent this month after a rather sad end to October. It's not looking to be getting any better after doing my weekly weigh in. Truly, it was depressing how low my numbers were. So I've decided to set a small goal to keep me moving and hopefully pop out a couple of FOs this month: finishing things always lifts my spirit and gives me the oomph needed to work on something else.

So here it goes: Until my Honeybee Cardigan & Skull and Flower mitts are off needles, I plan to knit at least 2 rows per project per day.

A little progress is better then no progress at all. So far today, I've already knit 3 rows on the mitts, so hey, that's something. I really want something to show off for WIP it Wednesday. It will not be the cardigan, since it looks pretty much the same as it did the last time I posted it. Maybe if I try to display it in a more artful way....

Alterations: A Sorta Tutorial

Changing pace today, since I actually used my sewing machine for a quick project yesterday. I've been finding more sewing blogs to follow lately--particularly ones about altering tee shirts and pre-existing items--and a couple of them had tutorials up for how to convert little girl's tee shirts into long sleeved ones with outgrown leggings. Because raising a girl right now, it's all about leggings and I'm willing to bet that everyone has some. In fact, The Girl had just outgrown a few fun pairs and some were too short now that Fall seems to have landed in Alabama. So I took a quick glance at how it was done and decided to try it out on my own.





First, I picked out a favorite short sleeved shirt and a pair of leggings that coordinate nicely with it. Gotta love the clearance section: I believe I snagged those leggings for $1.99 at Old Navy back in the day. I loved the fun print and the button details on the legs. And like all good Americans, I'm a sucker for a clearance rack. For cheap clothing alterations, that's a good thing.

At this point, I pulled out one of The Girl's few long sleeve tees she owns--one that happens to be in the same style as what I'm making--and I took the measurement from the seam on the arm cuff down to the opening of the sleeve. (Since that was where I planned to sew the new sleeve to, I figured it was a good place to measure from.)

I then laid the leggings out flat on my rotary mat and cut the legs off just a little longer then the measurement I took. I believe I did something right in the middle of 9.25" and 9.5" ( 9 3/8" ?) for a measurement of 9" on the original shirt sleeve. I wanted to make sure that I didn't accidentally short the sleeve by doing the exact amount.

Since the sleeve was going to need to be tapered--the leg opening was much wider then the sleeve opening was--and I didn't want to touch the side with the buttons, I pinned the leg to the cuff starting on the button side. (I attempted to make the buttons facing out and this didn't quite work out how I thought it would.) This left the excess leg on the side. I marked where I wanted to start sewing with a vertical pin and then sewed from there. I didn't use a guide, just gently tapered down the leg, but I'm not as picky about accuracy with some things. Your mileage may vary.

Comme ça.

I used a line to show more clearly where the seam was sewn to take the excess out of the leg. (On this particular leg, I could have started a bit closer to the sleeve, since I had to fold it in a bit to make it fit. I remedied that the second time around.) I then took my rotary cutter and trimmed the excess, leaving a small amount of fabric outside of the seam.

Then I went to my sewing machine and with some finagling got it properly set up to sew the sleeve into place. I used the "rim" of the cuff as a guide to line the jersey up to and used the little indentation on my sewing foot to align that all with. The seam allowance on the inside is very thin, but I wasn't too worried about it for this project.

When all was said and done...

this is what I had. I used another lovely arrow to point out that seam on the cuff I've been babbling about.

Then I repeated the project for the other side and TA DA!

Super cute new fall tee shirt for The Girl. She did not feel like modeling for me so I could get a decent picture: this is as good as it got last night.

Start to finish, this project took less time then it did for me to write this blog. It was all done in less then 20 minutes. I will definitely be doing this again with a few more pair of favorite, but no-longer-fit leggings and equally loved short sleeve tees.

Why Reading The Label is a Good Thing

If you don't, you end up with a partially felted blanket/project. (Felted portions have raspberry dots next to them to point them out.)

I was going to write a yarn review, because I SWORE this yarn claims to be superwash. Before going off though, I decided to check the Ravelry page, which led me back to the page from the online store I purchased it from. Sure enough, it says it is not superwash as I believed. So there goes my ammunition.

This is Yarn Love Anne Shirley and was washed in icy cold water on the gentle/handwash cycle. Yeah. Not superwash at all. In fact, I'm wondering how it would have fared being handwashed.

The colors are gorgeous. The yarn is lofty and soft. Even the felted sections are lovely and snuggly. Since the washing mistake was mine, I can't think of anything negative to say about the yarn, since I should have known better. I didn't even run into any schlubby bits in the skeins.

So there you go.

Inspiration

I have yet to knit from them, but my Japanese knitting and crochet books are a huge source of inspiration for me.




How could I not be inspired by them? The patterns are intricate and beautiful. They're photographed and styled beautifully. American magazines could definitely learn a thing or two from Japanese craft books.





03 new ones arrived today and I've been gleefully paging through them and making mental note of all the patterns I want to get to when I have the time to adjust for size and have the proper stash to work with it (06 in one, 04 in the second, and 02 in the third). The curious can go check my library on Ravelry: I've already found them in the database and added them to my collection.

Time to pump out those hand dyes and get some beautiful solid neutrals into stash.

Trials and Tribulations

My current project is causing me some angst. I can not seem to buck this with knitting lately. It's almost enough to make me want to switch gears for a bit, but I must knock some more projects out before I can. My tote may have had some erm...augmentation recently and it won't all fit again.

Anywho. The offending project:

I managed to get in on the Skull and Flowers Mittens KAL, where if you signed up before 04 November, you received the pattern for free. My yarn arrived 02 days ago, and I decided to cast on right away, since I'm super excited about these.

I have not done a lot of colorwork. What I have done has been 2 colors per row for the most part.

Now, you kittens may be asking yourselves, "Why is that knitting in a bowl of water?" Good question. I was checking to see if upon blocking, a) the stitches would even out and b) I could block the cuff just a bit larger. Because you see, kittens, my gauge is spot-on for the smallest size, which I need for my actual wrist and most of my hand measurements, but the width of my hand is in between the small and medium. Trying to test out the mitten yesterday, it was a struggle to get it over my thumb. After the thumb, it fit beautifully. My floats are not tight and I'm purposefully not keeping my tension as I usually do. But, it was an issue.

Which makes me wonder, is this normal for colorwork mittens, or is it a sign they are too small and I really should cut my losses? I was able to block them just a touch bigger, which meant slightly less of a struggle getting them over my thumb, but they do not easily slide over either.

Bueller?

04 November 2010

Since I'm lacking the oomph needed to do a crafting related post today (should have one tomorrow if all goes well with what I'm working on... I'm still waiting to see if it's turning out or if it needs to be frogged), I thought I'd use this day to plug my other blogs. Since I'm a bit OCD and do not like my topics mixing, I have individual blogs with different purposes.

This one, obviously, is a crafting blog and my most updated one. Mostly it contains knitting and crocheting, but there are also embroidery and sewing possibilities. When I want to muse about something crafting related, it goes here.

My next most updated blog is my gluten-free cooking/baking one: The Food Blogger Wannabe. Because seriously, I do fantasize about being a food blogger, but I take far too long to post and often do not have original content to post.

For non-private, general life posts, I've started Contradictive Tendencies, but I haven't done much with it yet. I've been meaning to post more in there, since I do have some material, but postings of that nature are more involved then crafting. You need more content and focus then I need for this blog.

I also have an as of yet unposted to art blog, but I may change the title of it. I used to have a DA account, but decided to close it out several months ago. I have been focusing on crafting more then anything else, so I haven't had content to get it started yet.

WIP it Wednesday

Have one for you all today, Kittens. Though, the picture isn't very good; the weather just will not cooperate, and it's a lovely, chilly, rainy day. I adjusted the color levels as best I could. They're definitely better then the last picture of this project, where I didn't even bother to color correct.





I'm making progress on my Honeybee, slowly but surely. The very short sleeve is attached to the body and I've finished the underarm decreases. Today, I set up to start the rest of the arm. With any luck, I'll finish this up sometime, but I may take a short break to focus on other things and rally my enthusiasm again. For whatever reason, I have never been able to get into this sweater: for a cropped, short sleeve thing, it is taking forever to knit.

Maybe it will be done by the end of November....

FO Round Up...

Hats edition. Very little knitting happened in October, but I do have a couple of FOs to blog about. Both were improvised, so I will not be using my usual format to link to a pattern.

First up is The Boy's winter hat. Due to some training The Husband got into, the children and I are heading up to Wisconsin for a short late-November trip. Of course, this means the children will need actual late fall/early winter gear to keep their delicate southern selves warm. (For real, The Boy complains about how cold it is after the temperature dips under 75º. My Sconnie heart cries every time he does it.)

He wanted a red and blue striped hat, and I already had the blue--frogged some of his sweater from last winter that he outgrew, so I ordered up a skein of red Malabrigo to match and got to work. I used US size 8s and cast on 84 stitches. Nothing fancy. Since this hat used so little yarn--less then 1/4 skein of each color, I'm going to knit him an equally simple ribbed cowl. I'm debating if I'll make it perfectly matching or not.

Next, we have The Girl's Hello Kitty hat which was part of her Halloween costume this year. Again, this was improvised with a little guidance taken from another pattern to figure out how to knit the ears in the round and get the shaping correct. I did the same with the bow: peeked at a pattern, saw how it was done and then just did my own thing.

Overall, I really like this hat, but the yarn was way too heavy for the bow. The next time I try this, I'll definitely use a lighter weight yarn for that part. This was knit with some Cotton-Ease partials I had in-stash and need to use up or send on their way. Cotton-Ease is fine for toys, but I'm not so enamored with it for garments. It's a bit too thick and bulky for that and has a slightly odd, plastic-y, almost-oily feel to it from the acrylic content. ( I have some KnitPick's Comfy in stash that I need to use that is the same fiber make up, but the feel of the two is way different.)

And that's what I have for you this second day of November, Kittens.

NaBloPoMo

Ah, November. The month of many month-long events with silly names. This month, I'm going to attempt to participate in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) and charm you all with an entry a day. I'm going to attempt it all on this blog specifically, so they'll have to be crafting related posts. But that leads to the question, other then WIP it Wednesdays, FO posts, and the monthly tally on the last day, what on earth should I blog about?

Any ideas, kittens? Anything you're dying to know?