2024 Conference Knitting

Conference knitting has arrived! This past week when my posts were auto-posting….the family and I snuck away to a conference in San Diego. And boy howdy, did I get a ton of knitting done (and work and family time).

I was in a room with 600+ ladies and I was one of two knitters. I very quickly became “orange hat lady” and had muggles approach me in the bathroom, lol. It was a 9 hour day so I made terrific progress on my Glazed Carrot hat.

Lots of people asked to touch it and were impressed with how soft the fabric is. That is the magic of a singles yarn with no plies, its soft! Stay tuned for the finished object shots…

Happy Knitting!!

Cast On: Glazed Carrot Hat

I am gearing up for some travel and I needed a “safe” project to travel with. Something easy, on wooden needles and a project I wouldn’t mind if TSA made me pull the needles out.

I grabbed the skein of Malabrigo Worsted that I bought on my lunch walk. It’s a singles yarn, so no plies. It won’t be the hardest wearing hat but the softness is out of this world. It’s called Glazed Orange but my midwestern brain just reads “Blaze Orange” for hunting safety.

I pushed myself NOT to do a stockinette brim and work 2×2 rib for some variety. It’s my standard 88 stitch hat on US 8s. I will fold that 2×2 brim for extra warmth and for sure this one will go into my gift pile. Which is quite large by now!

Happy Knitting!!

Knitting After Dark

I am WOEFULLY behind on my KnitGirllls podcast, like months. So I camped out on the couch and stayed up way to late binging YouTube. The silver lining? My Sea Slug hat got quite a lot of knitting done on it.

This is a Malabrigo sport weight yarn. And while it does take more stitches and longer to knit, it sure does make a nice fabric. And in this color the speckles are spacing out quite nicely. They are random but even and that makes my brain happy.

I think only a couple more inches and I can crank out the decreases! Happy Knitting!!

Sea Slug Brim

I blinked and my Sea Slug Hat was ready for the folded brim.

This hat is using 112 stitches instead of my normal 88. And with that smaller gauge that I don’t expect super noticeable progress in any one knitting session. And all of a sudden when I wasn’t expecting it, I had a full brim!

I did break out my Ott light to see these stitches to get the brim matched up and knit together. I don’t mess with any provisional cast ons and I just pick up the purl bumps from the second of the cast on. It does create a little bit of a seam or seam like fabric. But you can’t feel it when you are wearing it. So I’m going to keep being me.

Happy Knitting!!

Car Line Knitting

Back at the school grind. Most of the time my kids attend after school care but this week I needed to make them car riders. And I forget how long it takes elementary school kiddos and parents to load in. I had LOTS of time to knit.

My sea slug hat is not growing very fast. This one lives in my purse and I have been swamped so that I haven’t needed purse knitting until now. I am sticking with a folded stockinette brim and in sport weight yarn it is taking FOREVER. Or maybe it only feels like it after spending the last three months using worsted weight yarn.

Happy Knitting!!

Orange Dopamine

I was having a bummer of a week at work, so I put on my tennis shoes and went for a walk on my break. My feet just so happened to take me past the yarn store and I decided I needed a dopamine hit.

I’m still all about the hats and I decided to try the singles that Malabrigo makes. It is still a worsted skein so my hat “recipe” should work. I had the yarn store wind the skein and I think this will be one of my first Pigskin Party 2024 KAL cast ons. It will qualify for extra points since it is a NFL team color!

Happy Knitting!!

Cast On: Sea Slug Hat

I dug out the Arroyo and got my next hat started after finishing the SSK Tweed Hat. This colorway is called Sea Slug so PB and I decided this should be called the Sea Slug Hat.

I’m sticking with the 112 stitch count and stockinette for the whole hat. I think the speckles are enough interest that plain knitting will show them off best. PB thinks this hat might need to be hers. But I hate to tell her that it’s gonna be big. I guess we can grow into it!

Happy Knitting!!

Color Number Three

I have made it to the third color on my Frankenstein Hat.

The pink is Malabrigo, the variegated is Potion Yarns and now the burgundy is Malabrigo again. I will need all of this burgundy and probably a wee bit of something else to top this off. I need to measure a finished hat to determine the height I need. I think I’ll put a stitch marker at “half” so I can do some easy maths and measuring.

Happy Knitting!!

FO Friday: Medusa Hat

I made myself adult and I did finish my Medusa Hat!

Pattern: My Own basic beanie “recipe” with 88 sts

Needles: US 8s

Yarn: Malabrio Rios in Medusa

This hat used 71 grams of the 100 gram skein. This probably means that I could have made the hat body longer based on my prior hats. When I tried this on, it was a fitted beanie with zero slouch. Which is fine and just means the recipients are more limited. And the silver lining is that I will have plenty of leftovers to finish my Frankenstein hat, lol.

Happy Knitting!!

Medusa Decreases

It’s scorching summer here and we are winding down with swimming lessons for Jellybean. He’s in level 4 and crushing it. Meanwhile I am sweating through my business casual in the slim areas of shade. That water was way to tempting.

It’s been good for my Medusa Hat. I am through the body of this hat and put the DPNs in to start the decreases. I love love love these blips of color in this variegation. The fabric just looks so polished and purposeful.

We still have several lessons to do so I envision this hat coming off the needles this week. Happy Knitting!!