I love the idea of winter: bundling up in warm sweaters, wool socks, cozy stocking caps and mittens. In actuality, I didn't really like the excessive cold when I lived in Nebraska during college and a few years after. I prefer our Central California winters where it's often around thirty degrees in the morning but hits fifty or more by noon. I may begin my day with a warm coat, but hats, scarves, and gloves seem superfluous most of the time. But, I love small knitting projects like hats, scarves, and gloves, so my "lucky" nieces and nephews get to be the recipients of most of my winter-type knitting projects. This weekend I knit the Thorpe hat from Through the Loops. It was an easy pattern although I did have to pay close attention to the intarsia part. The pattern also calls for a double-half crochet on the edge of the finished hat, which intimidated me a little, even though she told me not to be. Youtube is so great for things like that. I found an excellent tutorial that explained it perfectly. I've been meaning to knit a Thorpe hat for a long time, and I had several left over skeins of yarn in colors I wasn't crazy about, but I knew that my six year old nephew would love, so after a long Sunday afternoon of knitting, I had a hat. I still need to add the ties, but that won't take long. You just braid them. I'm teaching Frankenstein for the first time next semester, so I double-dipped by listening to Heather Oardover on Craft Lit talk about knitting and Frankenstein. She uses the Librivox recordings, but I like how she interjects her "English teacher" thoughts about each book beforehand.
I also worked some more on my nephew's orange socks that I started on our little trip to the alpaca farm. I'm not using a pattern, and there's a chance that they won't fit him. Fortunately, my sister has several other little candidates running around her house. I'm kind of proud about how well they've turned out. I cast on 48 stitches and used 24 stitches for the heel. They're nothing great, but they look good, and they're a fun mindless project.
6 comments:
Wow, that Thorpe hat would have killed me. Hats off to you! (please feel free to groan)
The socks are very pretty indeed!
Beautiful knitting (as always)! I LOVE the color in your socks. So, tell me, if I were sitting in your class, would you let me knit while listening to your lecture? Great literature and knitting all at once -- heaven!
Loving the hat...great colours...was in a shop locally and they had all these sort of hats.
Great hat!
And it's good to have some mindless knitting now and then :)
With Christmas coming up I'm frantically knitting socks, scarves and hats, the pressure is building so its not totally relaxing but nice to finish projects quickly. Love those orange socks, very cosy and bound to fit someone.
Great knitting!
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