Knitting Along...

I felt it time for a small knitting project run through. My friend Anki taught me to knit at the beginning of August in exchange for me teaching her how to crochet. She bought me a delightful pile of gifts, too.

The Knitter's Handbook: Essential Skills and Helpful Hints from Knitter's Magazine, darning needles, a needle size gauge, twelve cards for tablet weaving (AWESOME), two sets of stitch markers (so. bleeding. useful.), and then the bandanna it all came wrapped in.

We then trooped down to the awesomest yarn store ever and selected the needles and yarn for my first project, a simple beret, using this pattern. I fell in love with the Classic Shades yarn in Wine, a machine washable yarn (still haven't tested this, mostly for my own piece of mind--I don't want this project felted). I made it, and got to blocking it, like so:

And then I realized something. It wasn't deep enough. It was perhaps the depth of a beanie hat. I decided I was not satisfied with such results, frogged it, and--after having to buy another skein of yarn--now have the completed beret you now see before you:

May I just say that I adore this hat? I've never been much for wearing hats, but now I wear this and my teal beret Anki made me a year or so ago all the time, especially to work. They look so nice with my work clothes!

Remember these yarns?

They have since become this hat:

My family is not allowed to tell my little brother this, but this is his birthday present. A beanie in his favorite color made of hand gathered, handspun, hand dyed wool yarn. Made with my own little white hands. However, I have not sent it to him, despite his birthday having come and gone. I blocked it, as you can see in this picture and after it finished drying I discovered something that made me wanna cry. It's much too big for him--I know because it's too big for me. So it has to be felted. I have a solution, it's just taking time (and this thing took several days of blocking to dry all the way before I realized it--wool is serious stuff).

I used up all of the light green yarn and added in the brighter, deeper green on top. There's still some of that left, but I'm not sure what to do with it quite yet.

Douglas and his beautiful wife Nicole have had a baby, but Rosslyn and I anticipated this. She bought me washable cotton yarn, and I fell to.

The yarn itself striped that way. I have a teensy bit left of this as well. I'm hoping to see some pics of the new baby wearing it sometime, but it might be too big for a newborn. I can be patient. This is the only project I didn't have to frog and redo.

I'm currently working on another hat for a friend, but the who is still a secret. This one will be bigger though. I want the floppy hat to look good. So far, I might finally be able to reach the decreases, but we shall see.