Honeycombs and Horseshoes

Tags

hat, rowan, scarf, snow

We’ve had a couple of snow days here in Oklahoma (although whoever invented remote desktop connection really killed the whole ‘snow day’ fun for me), so Hugo and I have been hunkering down (like the rest of the country, right?). Oh look, here he is enjoying the snow!

At least I can combat the cabin fever a bit by telling you all about my latest project, which I am completely in love with. You see, Sasha is having to face some pretty cold temperatures when he’s in Boston and he doesn’t have a matching hat and scarf set in the charcoal gray family (one of my favorite color families)! I haven’t made anything for him in a while, so I wanted to make him something really nice. We went to a couple of shops to find the perfect yarn and finally settled on Rowan Felted Tweed Aran in soot. After looking around at hat patterns for a while I remembered this scarf knitted by Brooklyn Tweed a year ago.

Once I had this pattern in my head, I couldn’t find anything else that appealed – luckily Sasha really liked the pattern as well! I started knitting the scarf to see if I could get the cables right, then once I had the pattern established I started working on the hat.

I love how the pattern looks in the Felted Tweed, and it’s really soft and warm. Sasha’s been wearing the hat for a couple of weeks so far without any complaints, and I just finished up the scarf, so we’ll see how that works for him. The hat required a little more than 1 ball of yarn, and then I ended up using 6 balls (+what was left over from the 2nd ball for the hat) for the scarf. The scarf is really long – like, 6 foot 6 inches, which is good since Sasha is tall. I used my blocking wires to get perfectly straight edges, and to even out the puckering of the seed-stitch borders.

Brooklyn Tweed’s original scarf was based on Beth Walker-O’Brien’s Aran Cashmere Scarf from Simple 1-2-3 Knitting. I don’t have the original pattern, but was able to create something close enough to satisfy myself (and Sasha). Oh, and for my non-knitter readers (mom), the title refers to the honeycomb and horseshoe cables in the pattern. :)

So handsome.

Mama Margot

Tags

lima, margot, mom, rowan

I mentioned previously that I started working on a Margot for my Mom for Christmas, as per her request after the pattern came out.  We went to the yarn store together and she picked out Rowan Lima (score!), a new nylon/merino/alpaca braided yarn in two colors (Chile and Pampas) to make a two tone version of the pullover.  After ordering the discounted yarn from Webs, I was ready to settle in for a relaxing, almost entirely stockinette knit.

Mom’s Margot did not disappoint in the relaxing knit department, and the Lima was wonderful to work with.  This is some of the softest stuff I’ve used, and I like the way it fills in once it’s knit up.  The braided nature of the yarn leads to sort of blended stitches, so the fabric looks very cohesive and the little details that alter it show up all the more (like the small holes at the yoke increases).

I think that my Mom really loves Margot, and that the two tone version turned out to be quite flattering.  The two greens that my Mom chose are gorgeous, with so many subtle colors (there’s even purple somewhere in that dark green!).  I’ve made her promise that she will actually wear it and not just wrap it up and “put it in a safe place”.

When working with alpaca, I’ve found (as have many others, I’m afraid), that the yarn has a tendency to stretch.  Margot already has such a stretchy garter stitch neckline, that the neck was loosing a lot of it’s shape (i.e. making Mom look like an extra from Flashdance).  We decided that the cast on edge needed a little bit of reinforcement, so I took a double strand of the lighter color yarn and ran it all the way around the neck, going into each stitch on the cast on edge.  It didn’t take as long as it sounds like it would!  This created sort of a drawstring, only I didn’t cinch the neckline in, we just adjusted the neck to the width Mom wanted and then I wove in both ends of the “drawstring” so that it would stay in place.  The fix seems to work well – we’ll have to see if it gets stretched out with time, but I can always readjust it if it does.

Aww, Mama, you look so pretty!