Hat update

 

Since the last time you saw this hat, I have flipped up the facing to the inside, and sewed it down, using a stretch stitch on my sewing machine.  It looks much nicer on the inside now.  

This had the effect of making the hat shorter, and it felt a little like a beanie.  I decided to add some ear flaps.  I knitted them today on the Brother bulky that Ed and I just set up a few days ago.  Makes it look like a totally different hat. 

I am finally cleaning up and organizing my studio.  It was a disaster during our move-in a year ago.  I took some photos back then. 

There were boxes everywhere.  Bins of yarn and books on the shelf, not enough shelves, so books on the floor and the table and everywhere. I had no hope of finding a pattern because all the organization in the old house was not heeded when shelving the magazines here.  It was overwhelming.  

The weaving loom is surrounded and covered with boxes of yarn.  The extra knitting machines are taking up a shelf unit that I previously used to store the bins of yarn in our old house.  

No room for a cozy spot for the circular sock knitting machine or the spinning wheels.  The yarn trees are back in the corner, away from the window, because I don't want sunlight fading the dyes.  

The motor drives for four machines were in boxes and taking up a lot of space. 

Now, it's over a year later, and FINALLY I have got all four of the motor drives up and running. 

Ed is going to install electric outlets on the wall side so I don't have to run extension cords over the floor.  We are also looking at different lighting, the current lighting is compact fluorescent and it takes a while for the bulbs to warm up enough to give off good light.  I think LED is the way to go these days.  

There is still a lot of organizing to do. I have been putting random pattern printouts I find among projects into a three-ring binder. When I clean up this table, it will be a place to work on patterns or do some hand-knitting.  The KH-930 with the garter carriage is against the table, and there is a bulky punchcard machine sitting flat on the far side. 

 I can at least see a path to my weaving loom.  I need to use up about half of the yarn I have in bins and boxes and bags and on the yarn trees.  

I feel more like knitting when I am not overwhelmed by a huge mess.  This week I made a couple of hats for my granddaughter.  I am lining all the hats with Polar Fleece now, as last year my son-in-law complained that the knitted hats let the wind through.  The cute bear hat turned out to be almost too small for her, it fits tightly, and the bicycle one, which is 12 stitches wider, fits perfectly. 

Bicycling hat

 Well, I did not use either of the patterns I have created for bicycle hats.  Because we were travelling last weekend, and it is quite a bit more comfortable to do hand-knitting as a passenger in the cab of a truck than machine knitting, I printed off a pattern from Julia Stone on Ravelry and hand-knitted a hat. It took all of the 10 hours in the truck plus a few at the farm. After we arrived home,  I lined it with Polar fleece, sewing the lining in using a stretch stitch on my sewing machine. 

I didn't follow the pattern exactly.  I did not achieve the pattern gauge using the yarn and needles I grabbbed on the way out the door.  So instead of knitting the "large" hat, which would have fit me, I knit the "small" hat knowing it would come out larger.  

The hat is knitted in the round. The pattern had an interesting two-color cast-on technique.  However, the YouTube video referenced by the pattern is no longer available, so I had to come up with my own version of a two-color cast on.  After knitting up to the rider's foot, I could see that the bottom of the hat was flaring  excessively and curling.  I decided to knit a facing.  Using the larger of the two swatches, and the larger set of needles, I picked up and knit every other stitch (easy because it was the CC) for three rows.  Then bound off.  I realized the bind-off was too tight, so I knit one more row, increasing in every stitch by making a stitch from the row below.   This facing has a curl of its own.  If I leave it alone, it curls to the outside, giving an additional border beyond that intended by the pattern writer. 

If I turn it under, I will need to tack it down or stitch it down, probably using an overcast hand-sewn stitch.  This will hide the edge of the Polar fleece, which is a raw edge, and give a more finished appearance.  However, it also marginally makes the hat shorter and I may need to add some earflaps to cover my ears before I am finished. 

Versailles pattern - Manos del Uruguay

 Last week I shared with you my process for turning a graphic into a design.  I have taken the next steps and actually punched a punchcard. 

I also loaded Design-A-Knit 8 onto the desktop computer that I typically use for my blog posts.  I have to leave the CD in the drive as that is their copy protection mechanism, and I had the permanent install on my ancient laptop downstairs.  So I spent a couple of hours re-acquainting myself with DAK. 

I think I have a knittable fairisle design for a hat.    I will start knitting at the crown, knit the fairisle portion, then when I get to the vertical stripes I will turn down the tension by two notches, knit half the rows, do a EON transfer for a picot edge, knit the remainder of the stripes, turn the tension back to the original, then knit the hat lining.  Bind off, gather the ends, and sew the seam.  We'll see how it goes.  

If you follow my other blogs, you know that I sets myself a challenge to plan and execute a bike ride through each of the cities and villages in Ohio that are named after European cities, a Grand Tour of Ohio roads.   The last ride was Versailles.  

I looked for a Versailles knitting pattern and struck gold.  I found that Manos de Uruguay has released  their back library of hand knitting patterns, including a sweater pattern named Versailles.  I'll need to convert it for machine, but I think it is doable.  Click the link to their site to download the pattern. 

I also found a lovely lace shawl pattern named Versailles on Ravelry, but it is not free.  

Bicycle knits

 I decided to make my own bicycle graphic for knitting.

Step 1 - find a suitable graphic. I found this one that has clean lines. 

Step 2 - download knitters graph paper.  I got mine from Tricksy knitter.  Knitting graph paper is scaled to be more proportional to a typical size of a knitted stitch.  Normally, stockinette stitch is a ratio of 4 stitches to 6 rows, or typically on a machine with standard gauge, 7 stitches to 11 rows.  Using quadrangle graph paper would flatten the design. 

Step 3 - trace the bicycle outline onto the graph paper. 

Step 4 - identify the squares inside the traced outline.

Step 5 - reproduce the design by marking the selected squares.

My first attempt resulted in a design of 24 stitches.  This will not work for a punchcard, because there will be no space between the designs.   To create a design for a punchcard, I would repeat steps 1-5 using a slightly reduced version of the graphic, perhaps printing the graphic at 94 % of its original size.  I could avoid the necessity to repeat this step by first measuring the width of 22-23 stitches on the graph paper, then printing the bicycle graphic to fit the scale.

Step 6 - enter the design into the Knitting machine.   

Step 6a - for machines without automatic patterning, manually select the needles according to the graph.

Step 6b - for punchcard machines, punch the design into a blank card, making sure there is space between motifs.

Step 6c - you can enter the design directly into the control panel of an electronic machine, following the instructions in the user guide for your machine.  On Brother machines, you can then store to disk if you still have a disk drive.

Step 6d - alternatively, you can enter the design into Design-A-Knit as a stitch pattern and save.  

Since I am using my 25-stitch pattern, and an electronic machine, I will proceed with option 6d.

Bicycle knits

 I found a reference to this book online and ordered it.

  It arrived while we were away. When we got home I could not wait to see all the bicycle motifs inside.   Alas, the one on the cover is the only two-color motif in the booklet. It is a 39-stitch repeat for a top-down yoke, with increases, there are 8 plain stitches between the base of the panel and four stitches between the wheels.    Sizes go up to a 41.5-inch bust.  This would not work for me, so to knit it will require complete redesign.

There is a pattern for a yoke sweater where the ribs radiate from the neck, referencing the spokes of a bicycle wheel.  Also included are directions for a crocheted basket and handlebar streamers. A men's Aran-style drop-shoulder sweater emulates tire patterns.  They spell it "tyre" as the booklet was compiled by a knit shop in the UK.  There is a felted messenger bag and a lace shawl, a crocheted slouchy hat, and fingerless mittens with diamond-shaped cables inspired by bike frames.  

I've also found a few charts on Pinterest for bicycles.  One is a 24-stitch repeat, suitable for punchcard machines.

I ended up downloading a pattern from Julie Stone Designs on Ravelry for a bike hat and beanie.  It also shows a headband version with picot edging.  There are currently 37 projects using this pattern in Ravelry.  It's a handknit, and not an even multiple of 24 stitches, but I'll work something out.