Tag: hats

Chunky Basket Rib Hat

LeftFootDaisy3 Comments

Before you read on I feel I owe it to you to apologies in advance for the terrible photos, I keep taking more and they’re just not getting any better because of the glare of the sequins.  A good few of you will have seen me wearing the hats by now so hopefully you know what they look like.

I’d been dying to use the sparkly, sequined, chunky yarn ‘Galaxy’ from Rico when it first came in last year and finally decided to make a hat (no surprises there).  It’s fair to say I’m a little bit of a hat lover, obviously since having the shop they now tend to be of the knitted kind, but I love all hats.

My first hat purchase when I was about 13 was a vintage purple hat from the 1920’s which I absolutely adored – not sure what became of it.  Since then there have been trilby’s, cloches, flat caps, beanies both bobbled and not,70’s styled huge hats, straw ones, berets and slouchie ones I JUST LOVE EM ALL!

It shouldn’t come as a shock to find out that I love knitting them too, their quick to knit and can be great way to show of the most intricate of patterns or ‘over the top yarns’ that you just wouldn’t make a whole garment in. There also ideal to give as a gift.  Every year I think I have enough of them and then the madness sets in and I have to make more……….

So here’s my chunky beret in Rico Chunky Galaxy

Hat Size

To fit the average sized woman’s head, at least I think my head is of average size?

The blue hat is approximately 21cm/8.5″ high, whilst the purple one is 19cm/7.25″

Tension

14 stitches x 19 rows in stocking stitch

Abbreviations

k – knit

p – purl

st(s) – stitch(es)

s1 – slip stitch

k2tog – knit the next 2 stitches together

yf – move yarn forward to front of work

yb – move yarn to back of work

Materials

2 x 100g balls Rico Galaxy Chunky

The purple/green hat only took 1 ball whilst the blue hat used about a quarter of the 2nd ball

5mm & 6.5mm needles

Darning needle

Basket Rib Pattern

1st Row (rs) – Knit

2nd Row – Purl

3rd Row – K1 *s1 purlwise, k1: repeat from * to end

4th Row – K1 *yf, s1 purlwise, yb, k1: repeat from * to end

These 4 rows make up the basket weave pattern

Directions

Using thumb method and 5.5mm cast on 73 stitches.

1st Row – k1, p1 to last st k1

2nd Row – p1, k1 to last st p1

Repeat these 2 rows 2 times more and row 1 once more (you will have worked 7 rows in total)

8th row – k2, m1 to last 3sts, rib 3 (109 sts)

Change to 6.5mm needles and begin working basket weave pattern.  The purple hat took 6 sets of repeats and the blue hat took 9 repeats.

Shape crown

Decrease Row 1 – k4, k2tog to end (91sts)

keeping pattern correct work 3 more rows

Decrease Row 2 – K3, k2tog (73sts)

work 3 more rows of pattern

Decrease Row 3 – K2, k2tog (55sts)

work 3 more rows of pattern

Decrease Row 4 – K1, K2tog (37sts)

work 3 more rows of pattern

Decrease Row 5 – K2tog (19sts)

purl 1 row

Final Decrease Row  – K2tog (10sts)

Leave approximately 12″ of yarn, cut and thread through remaining 16sts using a blunt tipped darning needle to secure.  Sew seam

Leave approximately 12″ of yarn, cut and thread through remaining 8sts using a blunt tipped darning needle to secure. Sew seam.

You Forget How Small Babies Are.

LeftFootDaisyLeave a comment

I’m really lucky I have 3 beautiful children, that make every day special and I don’t mean that in the hearts and flowers sense, more in the ‘count my lucky stars’ way.  It’s been a good number of years since I had super small babies of my own and to be honest my womb very rarely nudges pangs of broodiness my way anymore.  However, there are exceptions and the new book ‘What to Knit When You’re Expecting’ by Nikki Van De Car is one of those times.

The cover photo hints at what’s to come and expect a rush of ‘ahhhs and oooooooo’s’ to overcome you, whilst your brain tricks you into forgetting all about the sleepless nights, stinky nappies and desperation to talk to any adult as long as they speak ‘grown up’.

There are 28 patterns for simple mittens, baby blankets, hats and sweaters inside according to the cover which in no way explains the delights inside.  The designs do include the afore mentioned articles in addition there is a skirt, dress, legwarmers, sleepsack (above) and bloomers.  The book is set out under the three trimesters with the patterns (where appropriate), in 3 sizes 0-3months, 3-6 months and 6-12 months.

My favourite patterns in the first trimester section of the book are:-

Summer Sky Blanket

The Summer Sky Blanket is knitted in Blue Sky Alpaca Worsted Cotton which is absolutely gorgeous but an American yarn and therefore difficult to find.  The blanket is made using 5mm’s so any standard weight aran yarn should work as a replacement.  I quite like the cotton look and would probably use Rico’s Creative Cotton Aran as my substitute.

It goes without saying that the Baby Cosy pictured on the front of the book is particularly divine and is knitted in a chunky weight yarn

In the second trimester section of the book it would be more a case of what I want to knit first.

Autumn Leaves Cardigan

The Autumn Leaves Cardigan is so beautiful and something I’d love in my size.  It’s made in a double knit yarn and is super sweet.

Striped Boatneck Sweater

The Striped Boatneck sweater demonstrates how a simple little pattern can have stunning results.  The use of double moss stitch on the bands adds great detail and the design lends itself to both girls and boys.  Again it’s knitted in a double knit yarn.

Cuffed Trousers

The Cuffed Trousers in double knit are a fabulous addition to every babies wardrobe and the addition of the little tabs makes them super practical for chubby little legs.

(oh god I so need grandchildren – be just my luck they’re allergic to wool?)

Time Flies Booties

The delicate little Time Flies Booties in the third trimester of the book, are so pretty that I’d quite like to display several pairs of them in vintage, candy colours on a shelf.  The shelf would be in my imaginary house that is always clean, tidy and organised too.

Maddox Hat

I’m also fond of the little Maddox Hat which is a great design for keeping the chill off babas ears.

Hannah Jacket

My absolute favourite garment in the whole book though has to be the Hannah Jacket.  Maybe it’s because I love duffle coats, or it could be the use of an applied I-cord edge or the clean, simple lines of the design.  Whatever the reason I think it’s a fabulous little design and would work well for either sex.  It would be a great pattern to have in larger sizes as all kids look great in a duffle coat (some adults too).

What To Knit When You’re Expecting is a great buy for those of you that like to knit for babies, or in my case long to.

Happy Knitting!

If You Love Knitting………

LeftFootDaisyLeave a comment

In an effort to try and publish posts a little more regularly I have written myself a list of the knitting things that interest me.  I subscribe to quite a number of different knitting newsletters but find a few in particular are my favourites.

In this post I’d like to talk about knitty.com

Knitty.com

Knitty is an online knitting magazine that publishes four times a year  in March, June, September and December.  If you sign up to their email list they’ll notify you when the latest edition is out. Occasionally an odd pattern or two are released as a ‘bonus’ and you’ll be emailed again.

Knitty is very much a magazine: there are features pages, product tests, letters from the editors, competitions and of course there’s patterns.  FREE PATTERNS

Yep, you read it correctly, the patterns are all free for individual use only.  That doesn’t mean the patterns aren’t great, on the contrary.  Some of the most well-known patterns have originally been published in knitty.

Clapotis by Kate Gilbert

http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall04/PATTclapotis.html

One of my favourite patterns, as I think I’ve mentioned before,  is In Leaf by Avril Lang.

In Leaf Cardigan from Knitty.com

Currently, the 41st issue is out and the magazine is celebrating their 10th year.  This issue contains 4 lovely sock patterns, 2 for gloves, 3 hats, 4 shawls, 9 jumpers/cardigans, 3 of which are for men.

I think one of the sock patterns is absolutely fab.  I have to admit that I just don’t have the time to knit socks, particularly ones like these, however I can appreciate their uniqueness.

Pair-a-normal by Barry Scates

Pair-a-normal

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEdf12/PATTpairanormal.php

One jumper that has already been added to my ever increasing ‘to do’ list is the Party Mix Pullover by Julia Farewell-Clay.  It’s an aran weight, raglan, A-line jumper that will be great for using up some of my stash.  Even better, being an A-line design it will help to hide a multitude of sins (mostly of the cake kind).

Party Mix pullover

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEdf12/KSPATTpartymix.php

I find the Cool Stuff section where books, classes, etc are reviewed particularly interesting being a keen collector of all things knitting.  For me this issue the most interesting items have been the reviews of several books I am keen to own including November Knits and the Knitters Handy Book of Top Down Sweater Designs.

I also like the Knitty Yarn Roundtable feature as it helps me to keep an eye on possible new yarns for the shop or what new trends are coming.

In addition to all of the above, not to mention the competition, crossword, adverts and shopping, there is also Knitty Spin, which is a section of the magazine aimed at spinners.  I do intend on learning to spin, I even have a lovely Ashford Spinning Wheel, which at present adorns the window sill at the top of my stairs (sadly).  This doesn’t stop me coveting fibre and lusting over the endless possibilities……

Knitty Spin has reviews of fibre that the testers spin and then knit, reviews of cool spinning stuff, a spinners glossary and yet more patterns.  My favourite this issue without a doubt are the beautiful mitts Calertne by Sandy Sitzman & Lynne Vogel – they are truly beautiful.

Calertne

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEdf12/KSPATTcalertne.php

Knitty is in my opinion, without a doubt one of the best knitting related features available online

If you’re still having doubts about signing up to the knitty.com newsletter reminder – why?  Maybe this will encourage you –

Norma

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEff12/PATTnorma.php

Norma is definitely an heirloom piece, but just look at the detail.  Meghan Jones is a truly gifted designer.

Norma Up Close

Happy knitting!

It’s Back – The Big Knit That Is

LeftFootDaisyLeave a comment

Yes, it’s that time of year again and as loathed as I am to encourage you to become distracted from knitting for the Irish Premature Baby Charity, the hats are quick and fun to make.  Best of all Innocent give 25c to Age Action for every behatted bottle sold.  The campaign also runs in the UK and the funds raised go to Age UK there.  To be fair the ones pictured above probably aren’t the quickest to make, as lovely as they are.  It’s the basic little ones I’m on about:-

Basic Innocent Smoothie Hat Pattern

4mm needles and double knit yarn

Cast on 28 stitches

Work 2 rows of 1×1 rib (knit 1 stitch, purl 1 stitch)

Work 12 rows of stocking stitch

To decrease

K2tog to end (14sts)

P2tog to end (7sts)

Cut yarn leaving approx 20 cm tail.

Using a blunt ended needle pass the yarn through the remaining stitches and sew the hat up.

Hopefully, your little hat will measure approximately 5 – 7 cms along the bottom and be at least 5cms high.

Add a little pompom to the top

Basic Little Hat

If you fancy it you can of course make some fancy ones and even try for Innocents ‘Hat of the Week’, which means a picture of your hat gets put on the website.

At the moment there isn’t a pattern available on the innocentdrinks.ie website but there are pattern ideas everywhere.

Age UK has these from last year – http://www.ageuk.org.uk/get-involved/raise-money/get-knitting-for-the-big-knit/big-knit-knitting-patterns/

A Ravelry search produces all these lovely little versions, knitted and crochet – http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/search#sort=best&query=innocent%20smoothie

Knit Today has a few animal versions – http://www.knit-today.com/pattern/innocent-smoothie-hats

Lottiotta on ravelry made 1 hat a day from October 15th 2009 for the 2010 Big Knit Campaign her blog http://365hats.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/well-hi-want-to-make-a-hat/  has some really nice little pattern ideas.  I like the Spirals Hat http://365hats.wordpress.com/tag/pattern/

The deadline for hats is 30th November this year and we’ll be aiming to send ours off about a fortnight before the deadline.

38 Hats to Start The Collection

These are ones that were dropped off a little late to us last year so we’ve already got 38.

The hats can be made in knit or crochet and absolutely any colours are acceptable – have some fun.

Happy Knitting!

Our Donations Are Off

LeftFootDaisyLeave a comment
What a collection!

Wow didn’t we do well? So well in fact that this little lot completely filled 3 black bin liners.

In total there were:-

  • Hats – 110
  • Scarves/Cowls – 86
  • Gloves/Mitts – 39

All of you that gave your time, energy, skill, yarn and most importantly care should be so proud of yourselves.  When Deena from The Chernobyl Children’s Trust came to the shop to collect the garments she was honestly shocked to see how many items we had.

The organisers gave out as many woolly items to the visiting children as they could before they flew home and intend to send any that are left over later in the year.  There are 2 lorries traveling over to Belarus later this year hopefully,  full to the brim with everything the charity can collect in to help as many families as possible.

The charity are still keen on trying to get unwanted pairs of knitting needles in if possible.  I know we’ve already sent a good few over but if you have anymore please let me know.

A big thank you once again to everyone that contributed.

Happy Knitting.

The Purple and White Knitting Initiative for Irish Premature Babies

LeftFootDaisy2 Comments

As some of you are already aware, we were contacted back in May by Mandy Daly the Family Liaison Manager with Irish Premature Babies, Ireland’s only charity supporting families in Ireland with premature babies.

Each year, over 4,500 babies are born pre-term, and many require very long hospital stays and suffer lifelong complications as a result of their early arrivals.

The charity works hard to raise public awareness of premature birth and arranges several public events every November 17th to celebrate World Prematurity Awareness Day.  This year the charity is participating in a global initiative  and is hoping to turn many Irish landmark buildings purple (the worldwide colour of premature birth). It also wants to engage in a photography project where it plans to photograph a washing line of baby socks in front of these landmarks.

The charity also wants to donate preemie baby clothes (knitted and crochet hats, socks, cardigans, etc) to the various neo-natal units countrywide. This is where we come in.

Our collection for The Chernobyl Children’s Trust has come to an end; items are being collected later this week. This means we can put all of our efforts into this campaign now.  Items can be worked in knitting or crochet and the charity has said all colours are acceptable. Of course they have to be soft yarns, that goes without saying, but the items really can be every colour under the rainbow.  Fantastic, if like me you get tired using the same colour, if however, you do have any purple or white yarn lurking around in your stash the charity would love the odd item in these shades to follow their theme.

There are obviously quite a lot of sites online with patterns for preemies in addition you might already have some paper patterns that include preemie sizes.  16″ is newborn and 12″ and 14″ are classed as preemie.

Pattern Sites

While looking for free patterns on the web, I discovered lots of broken links and many sites suggested a ‘donation’ for their patterns.

Ravelry contains well over 2,000 knitting/crochet preemie patterns, with approximately 1,500 of them available free.  I assume some of them can also be found on the other sites listed.

www.ravelry.com

This pattern from Ravelry is the one we’ve all been busy knitting as it’s so simple and lovely to knit. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/paxton-preemie-and-newborn-jacket

A Paxton by Edwina
Another Paxton from Edwina

These are the booties we’ve been making too. They take more time to sew them up than they do to knit!  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/f310-100-angora-baby-booties

Baby Booties – So tiny

I think this site is one of the best for free patterns, it has links to some of the more popular patterns on the net.  There are hats, booties, cardigans and blankets.  I had a good look through the patterns and the yarns used range from 4ply through to aran weight.  They are all knitting patterns though

http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory/preemies.php

This site has a good few knitting patterns. I particularly like the Sideways Sweater which I’ve added to my ‘to do list’

http://www.carewear.org/index.cfm?pid=patterns/knit/_knit_patterns.cfm

This site has a mix of crochet and knitting patterns for preemies, lots of them.

http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/preemies.html#bevs

These are crochet patterns and again there seems to be everything from booties to blankets.

http://www.crochetpatterncentral.com/directory/preemies.php

This site has quite a few crochet patterns on it.

http://project-angel-kisses.150m.com/1memberpatterns.html

I found this little crochet hat pattern on the Red Heart website and it looks fairly easy and quick to make (says she who doesn’t really crochet).

http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/preemie-hats

Lastly (for now) this is a blog one of my friend’s Lucy discovered for preemie crochet patterns.

http://preemiehats.blogspot.ca/

I also discovered this page with baby measurements on it for those of you that ‘go with the flow’ in your knitting/crochet.

http://tlcforangels.tripod.com/sizing.html

Hopefully, there are a good few patterns there for you to get busy creating for the latest charity collection.  Ideally all items need to be in for around the second week in October to enable them to be sorted out and dispatched to the hospitals for November 17th.  You can forward them on directly to the charity or hand them to me at the shop to go off with ours.

If you need to know any more information please email me.

Happy knitting!