Halloween & Hats

Carving pumpkins is always harder than you think it's going to be!


I'M JOINING IN AGAIN, because that's what I do. This time it's the Woolly Wormhead Mystery Hat, I've knitted some of her hats before, mystery and non-mystery and they always turn out brilliantly and are so well written, I needed very little encouragement to join in this year.


The mystery hat calls for sport-weight or light DK and at first I thought I didn't have anything suitable, I thought about it for about 5 minutes and came up with a few possibilities, when I went to look at my stash I found several options. (This is what I call stash-amnesia and usually results in me buying yarn without even looking). These were are the 4 I've got to decide from:





I'm leaning towards the reddish Malabrigo Arroyo on the end, I think it would fit nicely into my in-use hat pile...

Tombolo Tombolo

When I was in Shetland I visited St Ninian's Isle:





It's a tied island, connected by a tombolo - a thin strip of land created by wave refraction. It's very beautiful and very cool display of scientific theory in action.


These mittens were inspired by my visit: Tombolo








I used The Knitting Goddess 4ply high twist sock yarn in a lovely slate blue, it's a great yarn with fantastic stitch definition. You can get the pattern and the yarn to make your very own pair here.

The mittens have a ribbed cuff which leads to an undulating cables and twisted stitches. The pattern includes instructions for both fingerless and full mittens.

Size: 8”/20.5cm hand circumference

Full Mittens: 11”/28cm total length 7”/18cm length from beginning of palm to tip

Fingerless Mitts: 8”/20.5cm total length 4”/10cm length from beginning of palm to bind of edge





As always, I'd love to see your mittens in the Coop Knits ravelry group!


(I'm sure I once knew a song with a lyric 'tombolo, tombolo' in it somewhere, it might have been a French song, I can't remember anymore of it and my google-fu has failed. I sang 'Tombolo, Tombolo' in my head and out loud for the majority of our stay.)

Una and her especially pretty heels

The Una sock pattern is now available:





They were part of the Biscotte & Cie club, the inspiration came from Neil Gaimans fabulous novel Stardust. The character Una gives a glass snowdrop to her son to protect him and this lead to the snowdrop lace pattern which runs down the leg and foot, the extended cuff has a twisted stitch, jewel motif which also appears on the rather special afterthought heel.





I find this afterthought heel fits me better than a short-row heel, it's a nice solution to the problem of a heel flap and gusset interrupting the sequence of a striping yarn. I'm looking forward to seeing what colour combinations these socks get knitted in, you'll need about 50g each of two colours of sock yarn.


I've got 2 socks, not a pair, 2 different socks waiting for afterthought heels and this will be the type I do when I get to them:





Thats one Van Gogh sock and one *ahem* Eurovision sock, the second socks are both on the needles - it's all downhill from here!

Holiday Hat No. 1

I went to Shetland. It was amazing. I had such a lovely time with lovely people and lovely wool, I can't even begin to tell how good it was!


It's such a beautiful place, with it's treeless views and an abundance of rainbows:





On this holiday I knitted two hats. This is the first one - Puffin Apple by Jen Arnall-Culliford.





I took this when I was freshly off the needles, I stayed up late to finish it, the pattern is beautifully written and laid out, the whole collection is fantastic.





This is a photo the lovely Ella took of me wearing it at Jamieson & Smith. This was pre-blocking, I knitted some extra rounds in the ribbing because I like my hats slouchy and the fabric is a little bit stiff in this photo. When I got home I employed my favourite hat blocking technique:





The balloon. I blow up the balloon to the circumference I want the blocked hat to be, put the hat on dry and then wet the body of the hat, keeping the brim dry so it doesn't stretch out too much.


This is my new absolute favourite hat. I love it. A lot. The yarn softened in the blocking and it now has a lovely slouch, the colour is so happy - everyone should have a yellow hat!

It's not easy being green (again)

I've been trying not knit green socks. This is difficult because my favourite thing is knitting green socks. Sometimes I don't have a choice - publishers SEND me green sock yarn and I HAVE to knit green socks. You'll be seeing a few pair of green socks sometime in the not-too-distant future.


I was getting my knitting ready for my trip to Shetland and I noticed that quite a bit of the yarn I'm using or getting ready to use is... um, green.





October has started and I'm one of the featured designers in the Sock Knitters Anonymous group, I'm also having a 'double dip' prize draw in my Ravelry group - any socks that have been entered in the Sockdown can also be entered in my prize draw, you just have to be a member of my group, there will be some lovely prizes and I'd love to see chatter and progress updates.





I need VERY little excuse to go to the sweet shop.