Cozy cabled hat

The hat is complete and the pattern is ready for download! It was actually complete on Friday, but I had work to do (what the hell?) instead of updating my virtual logbook. Over the weekend I encountered some big-headed people (literally--I can't say in regards to their opinion of themselves) and I had them test drive it. They confirmed the fit and feel were fabulous! Ahem, pardon my alliteration. I covet the fabric, as always seems to happen when I knit something for someone else. So soft! I did find two minor errors in the pattern going through it. I got those corrected, and my copilot made the file into a pdf. Here, he's modeling it (though he has about a M size head):



Another angle:

Photo taken moments before the crowd of screaming women jumped on him, insatiably turned on by his sexy hat.

Since it's a bit large for him, you can see some puckering at the top, sometimes referred to as a nipple. Or as a knipple (another portmanteau! Isn't it so wonderful how we have all these new made up words to save time???? Ouch I just popped another capillary in my eye) by the TECHknitter, whom in the previous link gives some good advice how to avoid this erotic region. Aside: LOVE the TECHknitter. I use his/her advice constantly.

So without further ado, here's the Cozy Cabled Hat. Click the link, and it should be download-able as a pdf through Ravelry. You don't have to have an account.

Please, try it out! Let me know if there are errors, you like it, you hate it, etc. If you're on Ravelry, you can check out the two that I have finished. Screen name: agcertain. I'm one of those boring people who is too afraid to choose a screen name other than a derivation of their actual name. Look, I got burned back when everyone was first getting email and I chose something that was a combination of a nickname and a sport I played, and it turned out to be very close to a euphemism for a sex act that I was unaware of. One letter away, in fact.

An update on my cheap-ass double-pointed needles: I received them, and am thoroughly enjoying them so far. They haven't punctured any of my vital organs, or mangled my hands (or more importantly, yarn) with splinters, and I love that they have the size laser etched onto the sides of each needle. I'm forever holding and weighing the feel of dpns, trying to make a guess what size they are. I do miss the slight coating that the Clover bamboo needles have--the yarn doesn't slide quite as well on these, nor the needles past each other. They may smooth out over time, though. However--the set of US 5 that I need to continue work on my sweater have disappeared as mysteriously as they came. More mysteriously even, since I think they came by UPS (a dark and clandestine organization for sure, but it's hard to stay covert with those big brown trucks). I know it was in the pack, I saw it, set it out to use, and now it's gone. So to conclude:

Pros

• cost


• sizes laser-etched on needles


• fairly smooth bamboo

Cons

• no coating


• intermittent invisibility

Steam heat

My husband and I -- OK, it still feels weird to use the word husband. It sounds too much like we're grown-ups. Life-partner? Significant other? Everything I can think of seems to insinuate that we're gay (not that there's anything wrong with that). To the internets!

OK, back from the interwebs. UCSB Sex Info was glad to assist, informing me that "[u]sing alternatives for relationship pronouns such as "boyfriend", "girlfriend", "husband" and "wife" helps create a gay-friendly atmosphere". I'm there! I'm not so sure that I buy their tagline though:

"A beautiful and accurate website about sex and relationships"

Really, I've never looked at any website and thought "Damn. That website is beautiful." Maybe they intend for the website only to be used by beautiful people. That's not a very ugly-friendly atmosphere, UCSB. I hope they don't trace my IP address.

A couple of the suggestions I can't imagine using--not because they're obscene, but because I'd throw up in my mouth if I ever heard them used without a large dose of irony:

Destiny: conveys an enduring, pre-ordained love.
Divine Complement: a perfect, destined match.
Heart's Inspiration: A romantic endearment for a loved one.
We are Entwined: Indicates a closely interwoven relationship.
Twin Soul: The ultimate soulmate whom you have been destiny-driven to find and join.

Those may be setting your expectations a tad high.

I don't think I need to tell you why this is hilarious:
Bang pong: A Klingon term of endearment which is useful only for die-hard Trekkies.

How about - Meine Liebe: Translates to "my love" in German. - because romantic love is the first thing everyone associates with Germany.

But the one I found most hilarious, and therefore the one I'm going to use is:
Copilot: Indicates a long-term relationship among equals. So let's try again.

My copilot and I are really interested in backcountry skiing. This refers to skiing outside of resorts, so no chairlifts. You have to hike and 'earn your turns' so to speak. Skiers sometimes refer to the sets of skis they have for various conditions as their 'quiver'. This sort of makes sense, the skis are long and skinny like arrows, but more recently I've started hearing people refers to multiple pairs of boots as a quiver. That would have to be one big-ass quiver if you're going to jam even two sets of boots in it. Seems impractical to me. But in that spirit, I plan to start a quiver of knitted items that I'll need for winter camping and backcountry activities. It's all about the warmth, baby. One of the things I plan on investing in is a hot-water bottle.

I was browsing the most recent issue of Knitty, which is Winter '09. I know, I'm usually behind the times (want to play with my Pogs later?). I came across the most wonderful combination I've seen in a while:


Dude, it's a hot-water bottle cover.



His name is Mr. Popper and he's an awesome combination of a penguin and warmth. LOVE.

Knitting philosophy

First off, I'd like to assure you that I am not completely losing it, as I was starting to fear this week. I mean, more than usual. I work in an engineering building built in the 70's, so naturally there are very few women's restrooms (insert obligatory feminist rant here). Whenever I need to tinkle, I have to make a journey slightly shorter than that of Odysseus. Which is fine, it prevents me from melting into a lump of goo in front of my computer. But for the past few days almost every time I made a trip to the john, I heard a cat crying from somewhere. The sound didn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, but it was pathetic sounding, like a 'me-yowwwwwl'. No one else seemed to be noticing or reacting to it and I was remiss to bring it up to my co-workers for fear of, well, sounding nuts. I started picturing that someone like this had set up camp in some of the ductwork:


which would actually rate pretty low on the weirdness scale for the locale, because hell, it's Berkeley. Coming back from the little gal's room today, I decided to step outside for a stretch because it's gorgeous weather here right now (sorry Wisconsiners) and as the door closed behind me, it creaked a "me-yowwwl". I stared at it and realized I wasn't crazy, just stupid.

But what really stuck in my craw today (well, knitting-wise anyway, I'm sure there is lots of other stuff in my craw right now, like this or this) is some advice that I read on a how-to website that shall remain nameless. It had a paragraph about yarn selection, which boiled down to "choose the loudest/most bizarre colors you can find, so everybody will know it's home-made". Which is distasteful to me on two counts, one being that I lived through the '80s once and have no desire to bring back loud colors--


but more importantly, my overarching goal with knitting is to create something that is unique, but that no one will ever suspect is home-made. If a stranger (a non-knitter, because we can smell our own) ever said to me "Did you knit that yourself?" I would breathe in the sweet scent of failure. No matter how kind the tone, it would sound like this to me: [disdainful look, speaker wrinkles nose] "Did you knit [spat as though the word tastes bad] that yourself?" I want them to ask "From what expensive designer store did you acquire such an item??" but I'll settle for "Is that from Macy's?"

The importance of gauge

Does it mean anything that I wrote the title "The impotence of gauge" first?

Nobody likes to make gauge swatches. It's a thankless chore, preventing you from getting to the fun stuff. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What is gauge?

knitting gauge (or tension): the number of stitches per inch (or cm) and number of rows per inch (or cm) in stockinette (unless the pattern indicates otherwise) stitch.

Easy, right? Almost every patten, whether it's a tiny baby bonnet or an extra-large cardigan, warns you to CHECK YOUR GAUGE. Even with the menacing ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, I still sometimes neglect to do it because I regard it as a PAIN IN THE ASS. If you're wondering how one checks their gauge, there's a nice (albeit sparse) how to here. The bottom line: if you have more stitches/rows per inch than indicated in the pattern, your extra-large cardigan could end up baby sized, and on the flip side you have less stitches/rows per inch, your baby bonnet could end up being your new hat. So you knit this worthless (I know, people do cutesy things with them sometimes, but the only cutesy thing I've ever done is throw them into a drawer with the promise that I'll look up some cutesy thing to use them for then never look at them again) little swatch to make sure you're going to come out with the correct sized piece. Too many stitches/rows per inch? Try larger needles. Too few stitches/rows? Smaller needles. It grants you a peace of mind to know you're not going to create a freakish sized garment (unless the pattern is horribly written, in which place you're screwed from the get-go. Sorry about that).

What I've never seen emphasized, though, is that it gives you an example of what the fabric is going to look and feel like. I realized this in the process of making my trial XL hat, once I switched to larger needles after the brim. The fabric was far too thin for a winter cap; I could see my fingers through the stitches when holding it. It was also boring as hell; the yarn color is 'oatmeal', and on my albino-toned/tow-headed friend it would probably just blend right in to his head. If I had only made a swatch...

Snore. The photo doesn't do it justice, but trust me, my fingers are showing through the fabric.

Deep breath, no worries. It only took five years of knitting for me to come to terms with the fact that taking apart any amount of work is better than forging onward if the item is the wrong size/full of obvious mistakes/ugly. That is why I'm currently in possession of a hideous dingy yellow-colored sweater-vest, and a lovely sweater that when worn is so tight and see-through as to be illegal in most southern states. So I ripped it apart. I have a lot of wonderful green NZ merino 4-ply yarn left over from making my husband a neck gaiter for skiing (perhaps a post on that later), so I decided to beef up the size and color by holding a strand of that with the worsted weight oatmeal yarn.


My first instinct? Start in on the pattern, of course! Argh, have we learned nothing? I went through all my usual rationalizations: surely this was going to make a good fabric, these colors are great together, it will be the right size, I can just tell. After some mental gymnastics, I was resolute--make the damn swatch already!


And it was lovely.

Maybe I'll actually look up some of those cutesy things to do with swatches this time...

Fuzzy math

Since I'm stuck on my sweater progress (a silk-free Silken Scabbard) until I get the necessary tools, I started work on the XL hat for my officemate. After casting on, it was immediately clear that something wasn't adding up; rather, things were adding up to incorrect numbers. How I had calculated the larger sizes added two inches of circumference for every one inch in increased head size. Oops. My officemate might have a big-ass head, but we're talking Joe Merrick levels of hat here. I always used to get the Elephant Man confused with elephantiasis, which affects...a completely different body part. I reduced the (I hope) appropriate numbers and have the brim finished.

I also started working on my pattern layout. I like the column format best so far, although I'm not sure if having rows split onto multiple lines is confusing. They're certainly more aesthetically pleasing, so, there you go. I need to include at least one picture of the finished product, but I haven't actually taken any yet. I decided to go with a placeholder until such time when there is a competent human being around to snap a picture. ClipArt is soooo 1996, so I passed it over and went with the "Photos" folder, which turned out not to be my pictures (those are, oddly enough, in the "Pictures" folder), but stock photos included with my software. They ran the gamut from Inspirational:



to Scenic:



to Meth Lab:




to Interracial Hand Holding:



to Pornographic:



That one just wasn't the right size (cue the "That's what she said" jokes....now).

More drug abuse:



Strangely, there were a lot more drug paraphernalia photos in addition to those seen here. I guess dealers are a target demographic for Microsoft Office?

I eventually settled on this one:



I think we can all relate.

Working hard

You've all done it, don't judge. You're desperately trying to focus on a comparative study of radiation damage accumulation in copper and iron, and all you can think about is the fact that you haven't been able find your size 4, 29" circular needle and you need it to continue work on your sweater tonight. OK, maybe not exactly that situation, but some permutation of trying to work that ends in online shopping. I'm just trying to do my part to prop up the economy. Of course, one has to factor in all that time working that was lost--but since I'm a graduate student, I'm sure that there's zero impact on that front anyway. Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy have covered this topic before...

"Graduate students are the worst people."

But I digress. I'm all about supporting my local yarn shop (LYS), but I'm away from my home base, working on a project in Berkeley, CA. Trying to drive/find parking here...takes patience, shall we say, so I resorted to searching Amazon.com. A close friend of mine works for Amazon, so I validate supporting the corporate giant by imagining that I'm supporting him personally. The first item Amazon suggested was this bad boy by Oriental Touch:



That's 14 sets of bamboo goodness for $25 right there. Now, one could conclude that for such a screaming deal, the needles must be gnarled twigs for someone's front lawn, or maybe just vessels for splinters to migrate into soft flesh. Always a sucker for a bargain, I'm going to find out! Oh, and I also ordered the circular needle that I need. The multi-pack double-pointed needle purchase could be classified in the same category as grabbing a Hershey bar and a Cosmo in the checkout line.

You came to find something out about knitting...

You came to here to find something out about knitting; I started a blog (I hate that word--let's call it a 'virtual logbook') to tell you my knitting life's story, and when it's entertaining, my own life's story. It's always difficult to start something new--hard to find your groove so to speak. I think we have to begin with the obligatory introduction (it's a law in CA, I'm pretty sure).

I'm an engineer. I love to know how things work, and the mechanics of knitting provide an endless source of fascination for me. My husband and I are children of winter and live to be outdoors, so there is never a lack of need for knitted items. We're usually in the snowy clime of WI, but our jobs make us somewhat of nomads for the time being.

I recently designed my first pattern--a simple cabled hat. It's a groundbreaking design that I'm sure no one has ever thought of before (kidding, hey, you gotta start somewhere). The impetus for starting the virtual logbook was to have a place to post the pattern where it can be found by anyone (not just on Ravelry, where you have to be a member, and if you are not signed up yet, go go go now and do it!). The issue now is sizing--I made one for myself, but I'm maybe a cantaloupe--and there are casabas, honeydews, and all different sizes of melons out there. Next step: make a watermelon sized (official size "gigantor") hat. I racked my brain through the people I know...bingo. My officemate back home. My suspicions were confirmed when he sent me his measurements, so I'm starting the test for my large size conversion tonight. Here's to hoping my math skills are as good as my sleeping skills.