A Little Accessory Knitting

Tis the season for the sewing room to be fridged which means KNITTING ALL THE TIME.  Or at least in the evenings when my lizard body has had it with temps below 65 degrees. This month I stuck with small projects to use up some of those random balls of yarn sitting in the stash.

First project was the Bosc Hat.  Knit in Cascade 220 Superwash in the color Ruby.

I have some mixed feelings about this hat mostly stemming from my yarn choice. When it comes to superwash yarn, sock weight is delightful but worsted weight kind of skeeves me out. When I touch it my brain screams, "EWWWWW, it feels weird. So gross." Apparently my brain is a 5 year old girl.
The only reason this yarn is in the stash is thanks to a very sleep deprived Past Heather who thought she was going to knit baby Desmond a bunch of sweaters.  Poor Past Heather, she should have just gone home and knit another garter stitch blanket. Instead she bought a bunch of Cascade superwash and now I'm stubbornly trying to use it.

The Bosc hat pattern comes with two sizes and I cast on the larger one. This turned out to be the wrong decision because the stretchiness of superwash yarn made the brim circumference larger than I prefer.  Oh well, when you refuse to gauge swatch hats these things are gonna happen.  On the plus side the yarn shows off the stitch pattern nicely and I'm pleased with the amount of slouch in the beret.

I have nothing but good things to say about the pattern itself. The instructions are clear and include charts for the stitch pattern, which is my preferred method. This was my "purse project" so I can report that it's easy to figure out where you are on the chart by reading your knitting.  So long story short, I recommend the pattern but not the yarn.

Second project was another beret, the 16 cables hat.  Knit in Rowan Lima in the color 881. (Already glimpsed in my last post.)

I'm much more pleased with this FO because the yarn choice is to my liking and the beret fits around the head snuggly. Being fresh off the Bosc project, I decided to use the large hat size again but go down a needle size for the ribbing. That worked perfectly and I got the snug fit I prefer in a hat. The rest of the knit was pretty straight forward, other than discovering that I couldn't cable without a cable needle.  Between the width of the cable and the yarn construction it was impossible not to start dropping stitches all over the place.  I'm sure the almost black color in a dimly lit room didn't help matters either. I pressed a DPN into service as a cable needle and carried on.

The cable pattern is not charted in the directions, but it is very simple to follow.  Most of the knitting is just knit and purl rounds and all the cable crosses are at regular intervals.  I managed to knock this hat out in a week because it was hard to stop knitting it. I'd recommend both the pattern and yarn on this project.

Finally I made good on my promise to knit Des some socks. Here are "Spice Kids" knit out of some Wollmesie, cause I'm really nice.  Someone might have destroyed the tag when I was winding the yarn so the colorway is a mystery.

I find all Yarnissima patterns a pain in the ass to knit because they use my least favorite construction techniques.  Toe up sock, ick.  Judy's magic cast on, hate it with the heat of a thousand suns.  The recommended M1 technique, there are much easier ways to do this!!!!  (And yes I do them on DPN's because magic loop is my mortal enemy.) But I keep knitting Yarnissima patterns because they're pretty and they feel great on your feet. Something about that annoying to knit gusset construction makes them the most comfortable socks to wear.
In this case I also thought doing them toe up would keep me from knitting the foot too long.  NOPE. Despite trying the sock on multiple times the darn thing was about 1.5" too long once I finished the heel. Ended up knitting the gusset area three times on the first sock, all while muttering a few choice words.  But as you can see I suffered through and fulfilled my Mom promise of handknits.  He's happy and that's what's important. Look at that great smile! Maybe you'll get another pair of socks out of me.......after a couple of months.