Monday, December 10, 2007

Hat-tac-ular

Cold wintry weather signals the start of hat-knitting season. Let's give a warm welcome to the newest head covering FO's:


This fun child's hat was knit by JF for his 2 year old niece. It's modeled here by one of my Cabbage Patch Kids who was excited to put it on as she hasn't had anything new to wear in the last couple decades!


I'm having trouble finding the tag to tell you what the yarn is. All I remember is it's an Italian yarn we bought at WEBS. As you can see it's both thick and thin and also has boucle bobbles making it a bit of a challenge to work with but well worth it. I think the floppy pom-pom JF added really puts the cuteness factor over the top. It went into the mail to Texas today. Apparently there are a few days during the Texas winter when it's cold enough to be hat-worthy (and I don't mean cowboy hats!)


Next up is my purple alpaca hat I knit from yarn I purchased at Rhinebeck. (You'll have to excuse my memory as I'm not doing too well on naming yarns in this post.) It's modeled by our very own half goat, half ram puppet, the one and only Goatram.


Here's the side view. I didn't originally intend for it to have ear flaps but after it was all done and I tried it on it felt too short. It looked alright but I prefer for my winter hats to cover my ears, lobes and all. These mini-ear flaps are just big enough to get the job done without looking like a full on ski hat. At first they kept flipping up a la Pippi Longstocking braids but a little blocking fixed that. I had originally made a flower to go on it but am debating whether it will be a bit much now with the ear flaps and all. On the plus side the color of the yarn coordinates perfectly with my new glasses. It's the little things in life ;-)


Finally, here is my current intarsia piece in progress. It's version 2.0 of JF's original '48' hat he made last year. The '48' is for his favorite NASCAR driver Jimmy Johnson (who, for those who care, won the Nextel cup this past season). I've only been able to work on it at home and all the color changes are making me a bit nuts but I'm happy with the way the logo is coming out.


Here is the first version of the hat. At first glance it looks ok. However the yarn was so chunky that the '48' looks felted and somewhat obscured. Since it was knit in the round there are a million little ends on the back that make the logo very stiff and thick. Plus it's an inch or so too big and the top was finished in black and grey when JF ran out of blue yarn.

JF designed the logo both times. The plan for version 2.0 was to knit it flat until past the logo, sew a seam then finish knitting in the round. Since the intarsia part was being knit flat there would be less ends to sew in at the end. I'm knitting it this time, however, as he decided after casting on that 130 stitches across just wasn't his thing. One night I had nothing on the needles and picked it up off the coffee table and started knitting it so it became my project. I'm going to attempt to bring it out of the house so I can make some more progress on it. Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Alyssa said...

I love all the hats! I hope V2.0 come out better from what I can see in the picture it looks better already.

And I know I've been knitting a lot of socks lately. I think I'm addicted.

Sarah said...

You guys are certainly all about the hats right now! I love the models! Good luck with the new version of the hat.

I stopped by a yarn store today and was so tempted to add more to my stash of things to work on... Its either a hat or a felted bag thats up next...