Head coverings

I finished my "Earpaper" tonight!



Random observation: I think my hair looks great in that photo! And I can't figure out why. I didn't do anything different ... just my regular cheapo Suave shampoo/conditioner and kids' detangler. But it looks nice and chocolate-y brown and smooth and silky ... I love it!

I finished the knitting yesterday, washed it, then soaked it in a tea/coffee mixture for 10-15 minutes to tone down the pink. I blocked it (flat) overnight then sewed the ends together and wove in the yarn ends today. I like my earwarmer almost as much as my hair in that photo! Well, okay, maybe not that much, because my hair and I have a well-documented love-hate relationship so it's pretty exciting to have a good hair day moment. But I do like the earwarmer.

As usual, there's a few other photos, and more information, on Ravelry.

Then I immediately cast on for my brother's Viking hat. Yay, FINALLY I get to start my OWL! Haha. Assuming I don't get seduced sidetracked by other projects, this should go pretty quickly. It's a fairly basic hat with a bottom hem, except for the horns and beard, which are knit separately and sewn on later. I'm improvising the design, but I've got it pretty well figured out already. I'm trying to keep good notes on what I've done so that I can write up a full pattern later. I know you're interested in it, Jessica, and maybe a few other people will be too. I'm thinking about offering it as a free PDF-format pattern if it turns out well ... what do you think?

Oh, and by the way, here's all the yarn and needles I'll be using for my OWL projects, along with swatches of each yarn:

From left to right, top to bottom, you have my Caron Simply Soft Eco yarn in Natural plus a swatch of that (done on size 4 needles) for the Viking hat horns (first column); Red Heart Super Saver in Cafe, for the Viking Hat beard, with the aforementioned size 4 Knitpicks circs, plus a swatch of that yarn (also done on the same size 4 needles) and the Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller Bamboo Ewe yarn and swatch (yep, on size 4s) in Mercury for the body of the Viking Hat (second column); Road to China Light/Silken Jewels in Blue Tourmaline and a swatch (I really put those size 4s to work ...) for Mom's Hermione Hearts Ron hat as well as Knitpicks Andean Silk in Cinnamon with matching swatch (you guessed it, 4s) for my own Robin's Egg Blue hat (third column); and my size 3 dpns, the Patons Kroy sock yarn in Mercury, the completed gamer glove, embroidery floss in various colors and my Kroy swatch (hah, fooled you, this was done on 3s!) for Luke's Gamer Hat (fourth column).

I don't know how I managed to make the same set of size 4 circular needles work for all those different yarns, most of which are worsted weight and therefore shouldn't work well on 4s to begin with, but I did. The Road to China is sport weight, so it was no problem, and the Bamboo Ewe and Andean Silk both felt like light worsted and gave me a good, soft, drapey-but-not-too-loose fabric on the 4s. (The bamboo and silk probably contributed a lot to that drapiness. Both yarns feel amazing in the swatch.) I regularly knit Simply Soft on 5s, and since the horns will be stuffed with polyfill, the slightly smaller/denser gauge worked well for that. The Red Heart Super Saver is the only thing I even considered using a different needle for. Red Heart feels like a heavy worsted to me (it's actually listed as an aran weight, in fact), and since it isn't particularly soft, the gauge swatch feels pretty dense and a little stiff. But after considering the alternative, I decided to go ahead and use the 4s. After all, the beard on this hat isn't purely decorative. It also protects the bottom half of the face from the elements. A loose, floppy beard just wouldn't do as well. The fabric produced on 4s should still be loose enough to curve around the face with the hat but dense and stiff and heavy enough to stay there, even in the wind, and actually block the cold somewhat.

One last random observation: my cat is laying in the armchair, snoring quite loudly. Oh the joy of having pets. But she's so cute!

Nerdy

As you'll see on the sidebar, I'm halfway finished with Luke's Gamer Gloves, which are an adaption of Knitty's Cigar gloves.

Here's the first of the pair:


Keep in mind that my husband's hands are quite a bit larger than my own. That glove is pulled tightly around my hand and pinned at the palm so the Tetris block design is stretched out and shows up well. On his hands, the design is centered both vertically and horizontally. The fingers also fit, and the gloves don't reach almost to his elbows.

This is the right hand glove, obviously. I'm 5 rows into the second glove now. It will have a blue L-shaped Tetris piece on it. (L for left, or for Luke.)

He chose single Tetris pieces for the design because he wanted something simplistic, from a retro game, that wasn't instantly recognizable to the whole world. By themselves, these aren't automatically identifiable as Tetris pieces, at least not to non-gamers.

In order to be authentic, these pieces would both need to be the same non-descript greenish color, since that's all you got on the original Gameboy. But Luke wanted something a little brighter and more noticeable. So we went a little more modern for the colors. Which means this t-shaped piece actually should have been yellow, but he's not a huge fan of yellow, so we just went with red instead. Creative license. Most people won't know it's "wrong" anyway.

The matching hat will have 4 designs in a ring around the bottom: Zelda's triforce, Mario's P wing, an energy tank from Mega Man and the screw attack symbol from Metroid.

The P wing and the screw attack are a real pain in the butt to chart, let me tell ya. Especially when you keep either losing the chart or changing your gauge for the project, which changes the number of stitches allowed for each design. This will be the third time I've created a chart for this stupid project.

At least the triforce, the energy tank and the Tetris blocks are easy.

Oh, by the way, these gloves and hat are made from Patons Kroy sock yarn in a now-discontinued gray. The designs are added using brightly-colored embroidery floss, and the outlines are in black Knitpicks Essential/Stroll sock yarn because it was handy and I didn't have any black embroidery floss on hand.

I'll upload my charts to the blog when I finish, just in case anyone else ever needs to knit a P wing or an energy tank.

Oh, and by the way, these gloves are called gamer gloves for another reason, too, not just because of the designs on the backs. They're designed so that he can wear them while playing games. That's why I left off the tips of the thumb, index and middle fingers; those are the ones he uses most often when playing. His right hand is almost always either on the mouse or the right half of the controller, and that doesn't require the use of his ring or pinky fingers. Left hand is slightly different -- WASD games use the ring finger a little more and occasionally even the pinky -- but he'll deal.

FO!

Finished!

I finished pinning out Icarus at about 11:45 p.m., meaning I finished in about 3 weeks and 22 or 23 hours. I'm satisfied with that.

I'm also pretty satisfied with how the shawl turned out, too. It's exactly 60" across the top, which was my goal, and looks very pretty all stretched out there.

I'll get some pictures tomorrow before I unpin it.

Yay for FOs!

Now, on to Luke's gamer gloves/hat set. Which I'm already frustrated with because he decided the already-finished glove "doesn't feel right" even though he had previously given it his approval. Grrr. This is why I don't knit for my husband. He is way too indecisive. It would have nice to know that the glove's thumb gusset didn't feel right before I finished the rest of the stupid glove!

I just want to get this project out of the way so I can move on to the fun stuff. I ordered yarn for another hat and two sweaters today, and I have plans to order yarn for another shawl whenever the girl gets back in touch with me. And I have yarn stashed for a hat and gloves for myself. Plus I have to knit Zane a plush toy. I probably don't have the right yarn in stash for that, but psh, it's a toy ... Walmart yarn will do just fine, and I can pick that up any time.