Badass Knitter Tuesday, January 15, 2008

I somehow stumbled upon Fig and Plum last week and immediately became obsessed with the idea of the Koolhaas hat by Jared Flood . OBSESSED.

So it was only fitting when the new man joked that he wanted me to make him mittens that I was "No mittens, but how about a hat instead?" (I would make him mittens but he doesn't really strike me as a mitten-wearer and I insist that my knitted items be worn not shoved in a drawer never to see the cold.)

I ordered two lovely skeins of yarn fromLoop (who happen to ROCK! They shipped super fast and even wrote a cute "Thanks Skeezix!" across the top of the receipt). It seems everyone is making the hat from Malabrigo and like I lemming I had to as well. God, their blue color is just lovely. And soft. And nice to knit with. Go buy some. Ok?

In addition to the yarn I also went down to my local yarn shop and picked up another pair of Addi Turbo needles. These seriously made my life beautiful. Sure, they are expensive but worth every penny, from here on out they are my go-to needles. I adore them.

So needles in hand and yarn wound into a ball I got to work. And nearly immediately cocked the whole goddamn thing up. But I trudged on thinking I could fix it/figure it out. Yeah. Not so much. It was my first time working with traveling stitches/cables and while it was a rocky start I'll say that I think I've figured it out. And by rocky start I mean I totally and utterly fucked up the hat and had to rip it all out (about 5 hours worth of work) and start all over again. I think partial blame goes to Brett Farve because I kept stopping what I was doing to watch him rock the Seahawks. Then I'd forget where I was and things just sort of fell apart from there.

See, I thought I could fix the cock up I made but it just devolved into a pattern that looked nothing like the Koolhas hat at all. Although it did still look like a hat, just a had with big fat center cables. So Sunday morning I sat down and ripped it all out, then loudly began berating myself for doing so because I had several false starts with the goddamn ribbing (too many stitches/not enough because I cannot count to save my goddamn life). So I turned off the TV (what I listen to while I knit) and sat in silence until I did the first whole set of stitches, and it was like something in my head clicked into place and bam! it started working for me.

So I sat on my couch for an ungodly number of hours alternating between watching Friday Night Lights and the Cowboys/Giants game. Finally I put the damn hat down at about 9:30 and then tossed and turned worried that I would fuck it up again when I started to do the decreases. Seriously. I laid there for 2 hours thinking about it. I should have just gotten up and starting knitting again but I didn't.

Last night I finished up the decreases and didn't mess up, I'm so bloody proud of myself I can't even tell you. I'm beaming with pride. Now all that is left to do is worry that the slight pink tinge that is present in some parts of the yarn is too girly for a boy.



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Skeezix  Tuesday, January 15, 2008

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