Binary Hat FO! Cheers!

Finally. Finished.
Finished! Trumpets! I present le Hat!



Pattern: modified Binary Hat by redshirtknitting
Needles: size 8 (Boye interchangeable needles
Yarn: Blue Sky Worsted Hand Dyes Colors 2016 (brown) and 2002 (green)
Modifications: CO 96 +2 stitches to knit flat and then seam, different word, decreased differently - started decreasing on row 35 with k10, k2tog (56 rows total)

Now I can finally put this thing aside and both my brother and sister now have a hat! Yay! I have accomplished something for each. They both have a Christmas present now! Thank the heavens! This hat should have been simple, but so was not. Gauge issues (even though I swatched - grrrr.), stripe issues, length issues and decrease issues all plagued me thoroughout. It might had been easier if I had ever made a plain hat before. I ended up whipping out the Droplet Hat pattern to see how the decreases needed to be done. I liked how that hat decreased, plus it fit well on my model man's head. Good thing is, now I have made a plain hat, and future ones will be easier. (because now I have gone through everything that could possibly go wrong in a hat all in one swoop. - and if you know of other things, don't tell me. I don't want to know anything else will go wrong. ever.)

Ended up starting the decreases on 35th row. Did K1 *K10, K2tog* to last st. K1; next row, P1; next row, K1 *K9, K2tog* to last st. K1; and so on until I had 16 stitches left on the needles. Then I broke the thread, ran it through the 16 stitches, pulling tight and sewed up the seam using mattress stitch.

Decreases are much better now.

Glorious Hat! My brother better like it. (I think he will.) He better.

News Flash....binary hat not right again....stay tuned for updates

Yeah. It's too tall. And decreases too fast. Ugh! I made it practically to the end of the decreases and thought that I should hold it around my head to see how things are going. Too tall. Much too tall. And it looks like a rectangle on my head instead of fitting a head's normal shape. revamping it again.

Removing some rows. Ending up with 50 rows total.

Basic hat is now:

CO 96+2 stitches

6 ribbing

6 plain stockinette

Word (24 rows) = 36 rows

14 rows plain stockinette

BO

Decreases will go somewhere in there, over a longer period of time. I just have to figure that out now. (and figure out how to evenly divide 96 stitches at the same time so I end up with a nice looking hat. No funky sections for me.) I need some knitting elves or gnomes to come in the middle of night and finish this for me so I can be out of my misery.

Binary Hat - take 2

I have cast on again for the binary hat. Turns out, I was on with row gauge, but not with the stitch gauge. How could I have messed that up? I always have trouble counting those little stitches and my gauge was supposed to be 4 stitches per inch, but I had 4.5 stitches per inch. Oops. I had another hat made with the same yarn and same gauge so I made my Dad try it on for size. The hat fit him pretty good around but needed about three or four additional rows to be long enough. So, I figured out how many stitches to cast on to make it big enough and to make the decreases evenly spaced. I am very much a perfectionist and I also prefer to do math *gasp* to make sure everything will work out in the end. I'd seriously rather take an hour figuring it out and diagramming it than knitting it and not ending up with what I envisioned.

Here's what I ended up with:

Gauge: 4.5 stitches and 6 rows per inch

Cast on: 96 stitches to be 21.3 inches around

Work for 56 rows.

FO Droplet Hat

Yarn: Blue Sky Worsted color 0299 (cranberry)

Pattern: Droplet Hat from Knitting Nature

Mods: added an extra row of bobbles in the brim to make the hat slightly longer, kept the twisted

The first couple pictures show off the color pretty well - reddish hues are so hard to photograph!

Mods: second row of bobbles, ktbl in whole brim area, knitted in the round

I wanted a longer hat that would cover my ears so I added a second row of bobbles in the brim area - (thanks to lynnewio here on ravelry for the inspiration) just repeated the bobble row + the three rows once more.
Also did k-tbl in the knit stitches throughout the bottom band area. (even above the bobbles)
oh - and I changed this hat to knit in the round. I just thought that this hat didn’t need a seam, but this is just my personal preference.

Other notes:
This was my first hat ever knitted.
I used a little more than one skein of yarn. (I think the extra row of bobbles is the reason - and I had a knot in the middle of the skein I chose to use so that also contributed a bit.)

Binary Hat rocky beginnings

I'm knitting my brother a Binary Hat (from redshirtknitting blog). But I'm putting a different word in it.

Ugh. I cast on and knit a few inches. There is NO WAY that the man's size would have fit my brother's head. I was on gauge too. I'm going to have to measure some poor man's head. (Someone I know, of course!) Could you imagine me going up to strangers asking to measure their heads? Ha ha ha ha ha!

FO Pasha the Penguin

My sister's godmother is a really awesome lady. I've gotten to know her and really like her bunches. She's great. For Chirstmas, she goes above and beyond normal decorating and hires people to come and decorate her house. It looks incredible. And it is sprinkled with many many penguins. I had seen (and saved the link) to Pasha the Penguin on knitty.com, just saving it for some day when I would have the opportunity to knit it. I walked in her house while decorations were going up and BLAM! I knew I had found a home for a little knit penguin.

This is the cutest thing ever. I knit it up in a couple days and spent a Saturday while watching football seaming and stuffing. Oh - and one more day knitting a scarf. I just thought the scarf added a little something extra. (Plus, lots of the penguins in her house have scarves, so it went with the overall theme.)

Cute penguin!

Pattern: Pasha the Penguin from Knitty.com
Needles: size 6 - I think I used Clover bamboo DPNs or maybe my Boye interchangeable circs
Yarn: all from Michaels or Joann's -
Lion Brand Wool-Ease Solid, Color: 153, Black
Lion Brand Lion Wool Solid, Color: 187, Yellow
Lion Brand Wool-Ease Solid, Color: white frost - 501, White

Modifications: none really, although I did fold in more of the beak stitches (about half) to make a pointier beak and let those folded in stitches be the stuffing for the beak. Made a scarf out of scrap yarn. (6 stitches wide, as long as I thought it needed to be.)

Instructions are very complete. Great instructions. I did have to look up how to pick up the stitches for the short rows (my first short rows ever). Just wanted to make sure I was doing things correctly!

Top row: Under beak, close up of face
Bottom Row: View without scarf and posing with a kitty (Cassidy) for size comparison

Super Cute. I have to make one for myself! Lots more pictures on my flickr account.

We have a tree of beads!

It was inevitable that I would put the branches into tree form sooner rather than later. I now have a tree! Yipee! I just need lights and some more ornaments and I need to make a tree skirt. (and did you know that one of these suckers sold on eBay for almost $300!) Woah!
I present le tree!

Le Tree fini!


Tree with pen (for size comparison)

Yeah - it's leaning a bit. But hey - it's wire. I can bend it to straighten it out. Just didn't notice the lean. Of course, it could have happened when it fell over after this shot.....

Kaya loves to snoopervize.