yarny

Sorry about the lack of updates!

Knitting has been slowing down a little over here. I've decided to stop knitting scarves since the weather is getting warmer. Scarves were such a huge part of my knitting repertoire that now I have nothing to knit.

In my last post I had finished the ski hat with ear flaps. The fit was a little weird and the knitted fabric ended up being really thin so I decided to try again. This time I double stranded the yarn and added a few size changes.


^{new prototype!}

The flaps and the bottom inch and a half are ribbed. I double stranded Malabrigo (in Autumn Forest) and Rowan Yarns Silk Wool (leftover yarn from Odessa).
The middle section was Malabrigo and Wool Pak Yarnz (in Brownstone).
The top was just double stranded Malabrigo.
With all the changes the hat is now much thicker and much more fitted. I'm still not too happy with the ear flaps. No matter how much I adjust them to look more rounded instead of pointed the ribbing just pulls in and messes up the shape.

Because I had no idea what to knit I decided to try a pattern on-line for fingerless gloves. Knitty.com came out with their Spring 2007 issue and it had Dashing, a more male-friendly counterpart for their Fetching pattern.
I'm in love with Malabrigo and so I decided to use it for Dashing. The colorway I chose (Vaa) is a bit dark, and it's quite varigated so I paired it up with Catalina (a silk and wool blend). The Catalina was a solid lighter blue so I figured it would help balance the Malabrigo and help the cables visually pop out.


^dashing!

Dashing turned out pretty well. I had spent a whole night swatching Malabrigo + other yarns and when I finally got to the Catalina I got lazy and decided to just go for it with a size 8 needle. The fit turned out alright but it ended up being about 2~ inches longer than the pattern stated (I even left a few rows out!).
It knit up fairly quickly and it doesn't take much yarn (only about half a skein of Malabrigo!).


^{modeled by my friend kevin}

Isn't Kevin a great model? ^_^
He recently bought a Nintendo DS Lite. It's like the more current version of the Game Boy. He bought a case for it and was a bit disappointed because the case was very thin--not protective at all. So, he asked me to knit one for him.
I looked on-line for a pattern but the only nice one I found required some sort of Turkish Cast On using 2 24 inch circular needles in a size 8. I didn't have two... I didn't even have one... so I decided to create a pattern myself.


^DS!

It's a pretty basic pattern. I just knit two separate rectangles and left them on the needles. I used the 3 needle bind-off to connect the bottoms and then I just seamed up the edges. The yarn is Carron Simply Soft. It's a REALLY soft acrylic but acrylic and I don't really get along. It just seemed to want to stick to my wooden needles. o_O But, I finished and I'm happy with the results.

@nikki: My first Odessa I used Rowan Yarns Cashsoft (142 yards) and it took less than one ball. The second Odessa I increased the pattern a bit (to fit my big head) and used Rowan Yarns Silk Wool which only has 96 yards and I ended up needing about 7 more yards from a second ball to finish.

That's my update for now! Hopefully I'll find more things to knit soon.