stitchingmystressaway.com

This is primarily a knitting blog but I won’t hide it – I’m a pretty liberal person. Two uppity liberals raised me and I’m quite proud of that.

A thread was started in the Knitters for Barack Obama group to show our support for the Wisconsin democrats and four republicans who voted against the governor’s legislation that cut public employee’s benefits. So what did we do? We knit hats for them. It was a little funny. The original poster, Carrie, listed all the senators and representatives. As someone whose last name is listed always in the bottom, I felt so bad for the folks listed last. They were getting no love. So I asked to knit a hat for Amy Sue Vruwink.

Pattern: Fulled Star Hat by Ruth Sorensen

My Ravelry Project Page
Yarn(s): Crystal Palace Yarns Mini Mochi and Reynolds Soft Sea Wool
Colorway(s): 101 (Rainbow) and 103 (Cream)
Needle(s): US 6 – 4.0 mm
Casted On: March 13, 2011
Casted Off: March 15, 2011
Modifications: none

Now I hope Ms. Vruwink likes her hats with a slouch and/or she just happens to have a big head.

(and I'll even admit--my head is HUGE!)

I absolutely love the hat patterns in Ruth Sorensen’s book. I want to knit all of them. But I realized that these hats are knit at a way looser gauge than what is typical for me. The last hat I knit was too tight for me.  The pattern called for size 2s and I, as you can see, knit mine with 6s. And usually that’s ok, but I forgot about row gauge this time and what resulted was a taller than usual hat

And for goodness sakes, Laura. This is for a woman in WISCONSIN….they get a lot of use out of hats in that neck of the woods, no?

I hope you enjoy it, Ms. Vruwink. I thank you for what you did! Hope you enjoy the extra hat “to cover your ears”

Greetings!

I didn’t fall off the face of the planet. I know it’s been a while. Things at work have been crazy busy. I then get home and the last place I want to be is in front of a computer. Then the holidays came through…yeah things have been crazy.

One of my New Years Resolutions is to blog more I might not have been writing them down but God knows I’ve been thinking a lot about future projects and the ones I’ve finished and wanted to finish.

I have some hats to show off. One is for my friend Maureen and the other is for my friend’s awesome husband Corey. He’s like a brother-in-law.

Here’s Maureen’s:

Pattern: Hat With Stars by Ruth Sorensen
My Ravelry Project Page
Yarn(s): Classic Elite, Fresco
Colorway(s): 5367 (teal) & 5322 (purple)
Needle(s): US 6 – 4.0 mm
Casted On: November 14, 2010
Casted Off: November 16, 2010
Modifications: none

I guess I was in the mood to get some fair isle done so this hat flew off my needles. It was done within 48 hours!  The yarn felt absolutely lovely too. I can see why people make lightweight sweaters out of it. I hope to use it again soon!

And here is the second hat for Corey

Not a bad photo of my husband, is it?

Pattern: Koolhaas by Jared Flood
My Ravelry Project Page
Yarn(s): Malabrigo Worsted
Colorway(s): Brown
Needle(s): US 6 – 4.0 mm, US 7 – 4.5 mm & US 8 – 5.0 mm
Casted On: November 2, 2010
Casted Off: November 20, 2010
Modifications: none

When Jermaine was modeling it, he complimented me on how much he liked it. I’m not surprised, it’s a very guy-friendly pattern with some yummy yarn! I contemplated giving him the hat at one point.

It wasn’t till after I took these pictures though, that I realized that this particular brown up against Jermaine’s skin provided little contrast! So I went to a wonderful shop in Alexandria and got some Malabrigo Rios for his hat that is a teal color.

I hope everyone had a nice New Years! Happy 2011!

At work, during lunch, I was thinking….

that….HOLY CRAP 25 MORE DAYS TILL HANUKKAH AND 50 TILL CHRISTMAS!

then uh oh…I started in on a list:

Believe it or not, I think I’m OK with many of these handknit projects. Jermaine’s socks are almost done and the socks for both mom and Rose are thankfully patterns that fly off the needles. I’ll be making hats for the two wonderful photographers for our wedding. One of them is stranded. I seem to be in a stranded mood of late so that will fly by. I am about to start a shawl for my buddy Jess. Every time she’s in my office, she looks at my Haruni so me thinks she wants one of her own The last two are sweaters for two darling puppehs, Max and Winston whose humans are my coworkers Gina and Andrea respectively. They’re short haired pups that actually prefer to have sweaters and I’ve always wanted to make dog sweater so why not . They might be Valentine’s Day presents though, if worst comes to worst…heehe

This doesn’t mean I won’t be busy. Might actually have to start taking lunch hours at work so everyone can get their presents

My office is right near our break room and I heard my coworker Iliana talking about wanting a handknit hat.

Oh Really?

I won’t go into details here but she has helped me a lot with some situations of late so OF COURSE I wanted to make a hat for her. I express my love, appreciation and thanks through handknits so this was perfect! So I made her….

Pattern: Syncopated Caps by Kate Gilbert from Interweave Knits, Summer 2007
My Ravelry Project Page
Yarn(s): Crystal Palace Yarns Mini Mochi & KnitPicks Palette
Colorway(s): Rainbow and Steel Grey, respectively
Needle(s): US 3 – 3.25 mm
Casted On: June 6, 2010
Casted Off: June 10, 2010
Modifications: None

However, if I were to make this hat again, I’d probably lengthen it a little more. Do you notice above that the hat covers maybe a third of my ear? Well, it was the same for Iliana so I was a little disappointed about that. Next time I will lengthen this hat–There are rows where you: K2 in CC (rainbow) K1 in MC (grey) consecutively for four rows. Next time I think I’d do it for five or maybe even six rows.

Despite that, I still loved making this hat–Making something stranded with multicolored yarns is always thrilling.

Hopefully after Iliana wears this hat a few times, it stretches out a little more. She’s from Miami so she’ll use this hat if DC gets a little breeze