What to knit for your boy

My boy is off at University for most of the year studying (hard???) to become a medical engineer. (Actually I think he is really majoring in drone construction, social dorm living, light partying and online computer gaming).... Boys will be boys...

His university campus is in Victoria's second largest city, Geelong. Geelong is lovely sprawling town on the edge of a bay - the gateway to the famous Surf Coast and the Great Ocean Road - with a country town feel but still all the humming bustle of a big city. There's only one draw back (apart from the up to 5 hour journey by public transport to come home for a visit). It's cold in winter. No, not snow kind of cold, more biting winds straight off the Antarctic.

This gives me a valid excuse to knit all the hats for him. He definitely wears them and appreciates them, both as the edge to an outfit and as a way to keep his ears warm. I love knitting for an appreciative audience - though I may have got a little carried away this year so far.

So it's perhaps not surprising that I began my knitter's year of 2016 by casting on a hat on New Year's Eve and finishing it up on New Year's Day. So I got bored. It’s holidays after all and a I needed a small diversion. That’s what a hat is, isn’t it? I can almost knit one in day.

This was a little bit of subtle geekery for the boy (He's a massive Dr Who fan) but it’s a tiny bit of a failure.
Oh, its nothing to do with the knitting or the sizing. It’s lovely even colorwork and fits nicely. (I may just have blocked it by wearing a wet beanie on my head). I just didn’t choose two shades of grey that have enough contrast for the pattern to show up. Also I am using recycled yarn and there are some stains in the yarn on the crown which didn’t wash out… They almost look deliberate though…

This is a really nice pattern (Thanks Amy!). Well written and easy to follow.
Pattern: INSULATE! hat  by Amy van de Laar  - a free pattern.
Needles: My absolute favourite antique Aero jumper length 4mm dpns
Yarn: Blue grey Machinewash 8 ply from the Lifeline Op shop and leftover Bendigo Woollen Mills Stella in Shell.

It's a real pity those Daleks aren't sufficiently visible

I still had the hat bug in my system though. It clearly wasn't going to be a quick fix this time. It was about this stage, I hunted down a hat group on Ravelry and decided 16 hats in 2016 was certainly a doable and admirable goal.

I was feeling some colourwork next.. Anyone who has followed my blog for a while may have noticed the odd fox related thing sneaks onto my needles / hook every so often. Foxes are a sort of obsession of mine. I love how you can evoke a fox with just a stylised shape and colour. This particular pattern has long been in my queue. I swear I didn't actually set out to knit this specifically for the boy, but he begged exceedingly nicely when it was finished...

Pattern: Fox Hat by Eline Oftedal
Needles: 3 mm antique Aero jumper length dpns
Yarn: Cleckheaton Country 8 Ply in a fox-like colour, Moda Vera Pure Wool 8ply in gunmetal grey and Panda Machinewash 8 ply Crepe in cream

This flew off the needles (slowly). It only took a week but the three colour rounds of colour work were tediously slow. I’m slightly meticulous about exactly where to carry the yarn on the back to get the best effect on the front and this means concentration, constant untangling of yarn and slow rounds.

As this is knitted at a very small gauge for DK there were a lot of stitches (144 per round). I am really pleased with the result (But I won’t knit this one again - the colour work would get tedious in quantity). The boy tells me it is soooo warm and snugly.

I photographed this by sneaking into the boy cave, catching the boy in his natural environment in front of a a computer, plonked the hat on his head and told him to ignore me as I randomly photographed the back of his head. In hindsight this may have been the moment I lost this hat to his clutches...

The next hat off my needles for the boy was a re-knit of the INSULATE! hat - Exterminate! 2.0.

Yes, I know I’ve made one of these already this already this year. But the contrast between the two greys I used is not strong enough to really see the Daleks. And it’s too much of a watch cap fit to please the boy. He likes slouchy beanies. I needed to make another one.

This ended up being the first cast on for Village Hopelessly Over-committed Cast On Month (VHOCCOM12016) on February 1st. I still want to use the Bendigo Woollen Mills Stellar but as the main colour this time. And after running several potential colour combinations past the boy we have tweedy reddish brown Daleks (Slightly rusty - I think these are the old school Daleks that were conspiring against Winston Churchill in World war II - he called them ‘Ironsides’ - ep 3 season 5 - Victory of the Daleks).

I made some modification to the pattern for this version. I did eight rows double rib instead of six as the longer slouch the boy wanted needed a firmer longer band to maintain adequate head connection. I did fifteen rows of plain stockinette in the MC (grey) before starting the colourwork to extend the hat for some slouchiness and changed the shaping from Slip 2 K PSSO to Slip 1 K2tog PSSO.

Pattern: INSULATE! hat  by Amy van de Laar - a free pattern.

Needles: My absolute favourite antique Aero jumper length 4mm dpns
Yarn: Bendigo Woollen Mills Stella 8 ply  in Shell and reddish brown tweed upcycled  from the Lifeline Op shop.

Once again we have photographed the boy wearing a hat in his natural environment - rebuilding a quadcopter drone on my kitchen table after a particularly nasty encounter with the neighbour's fence...

The boy also got the 11th hat off my needles this year as a request. I had previously knitted Father Cables from this yarn (You'll get the see that one in another post). Whilst the boy doesn’t like that particular hat enough to snaffle it - the cables are too elaborate for his taste -  he loves the softness and feel of the yarn. So he wanted something suitably masculine made out of this yarn… He also is the person who pointed me towards this particular yarn in an op shop scrounging expedition orginally so he deserved something made out of it.

We decided on Antler by tincanknits. I’ve had this one printed out for ages now waiting for the just the right occasion. Looks like the marriage of this yarn and pattern was set to be it. So I cast on early in the week and did a few rows of rib and then a few more another day. Then on Saturday whilst manning my stall at a car boot sale (and making a perfectly respectable $8.40 profit after stall cost! - I was selling essentially trash rather than treasure) I finished the rib and worked up about three repeats of the pattern. It was quite a talking point. It still surprises me the reactions you get when you knit in the round on dpns in public. You get elderly people remembering their sock knitting years when everyone knew how to knit a sock and turn a heel. You get bafflement about how do you work with all those extra needles. You get safety admonishments about using all those sharp pointy things and accidentally taking out your own eye whilst cabling…

And then I came home and promptly ripped it all back to the rib. I hadn’t changed needle size from the 4 mm used for the band to 5 mm as the pattern suggested as my 5mm dpns are only 20 cm long and I find them a little short to work with comfortably and stitches like to commit suicide by jumping off the end of the needles. So I tend to avoid them if I can. But I needed to up the needle size to accommodate the pull-in of the cables. So I came home and started the patterning again on 5 mm. By the end of Saturday I was back to five completed repeats. The pattern calls for eight repeats for the small size but I did nine as suggested for the large size as the boy likes a really deep slouch to his hats. This was not promising straight off the needles… Long thin and weird looking. I love what blocking does to this yarn. It makes it bloom and soften till it feels like cashmere. Gorgeous hat in the end.

Pattern: Antler Hat by tincanknits - a free pattern
Needles: 4 mm antique Aero jumper length dpns and 5 mm dpns
Yarn: Cleckheaton Nature Merino 8ply in gray

The boy and I shared a lovely photographic road trip last time he was home around some abandoned refuse from the heavy industry in our area taking photos of this hat. Photo credits for the pictures of the flat hat to @larkinsmark (on instagram).

The great Scarf-ghan unveiling....

In January 2014 my needles and I started on a journey of discovery. In March 2015 after thousands of stitches, miles of seaming, many adventures and delicious knitting experiences along the way, we called a halt. The great scarf / strip afghan experiment is finished and officially in use. Anyone got cable! is a finished object and a much loved family member. There are arguments about who gets to snuggle under in on the couch on in the recliner. It's actually rarely me (and I did knit it for myself...)

The lovely ladies in the Unofficial Women's Weekly Group on Ravelry are owed a giant hug for providing the motivation to create this beauty. We were encouraging each other to complete the various knitted afghans we were making. Many of us were doing variations on the classic, knit a square - make an afghan. However the sheer horror of the concept of all that sewing was a giant hurdle many were baulking at. So I thought, why not make strips instead of squares. Essentially I knit all my favourite cable and cable and lace scarves that caught my eye recently and sewed them up into a lap blanket for me. The genesis of the idea, the inspiration and the early stages of construction are described in more detail in this blog post (Anyone got cable! - A scarf-ghan).

This was a great strategy. There was a constant variety of patterns and yarn in little do-able chunks at a time. I didn't get bored in the middle of the process. Each scarf got a chance to tell its own story along the way. See also a series of scarves = afghan for the details of each scarf strip - e.g. patterns used. As a bonus most of them are free patterns.

On Good Friday we convinced the afghan to come and play in the Sunflowers and have its final beauty shots taken. The town I live in has two giant public art installations designed to brighten up some depressed and unused industrial areas of town. These photos were taken in a field that is a giant spiral maze of sunflowers. (You can read more about the project here - #getsunflowered).

I admit, I did wimp out of this without strictly finishing it completely. I haven't added a separate knitted edging. I toyed with both a sideways knitted garter stitch and an i-cord border (and had a go at both) but felt it didn't really need it enough to make me feel justified knitting it.

Here's the boy demonstrated how you can wrap yourself head to toe in the awesome snugness. He make the blanket look like a butterfly chrysalis.

I'd like to thank my children for frolicking in the sunflowers with me. I'm off to plan the next afghan adventure now. I don't think I quite have it out of my system. I might just snuggle here under my blanket while I knit the next one.

A series of scarves = afghan

An afghan has quietly been creating itself along in the background all year this year. (Well, not exactly on its own, it has been relying on me to be quietly knitting along on the component scarves amongst all the other knitting this year).

We first met the afghan in all its glory in April - Anyone got cable! scarf-ghan though sneak peaks had made it into the blog before that.But I haven't really posted about it since then and lots of progress has been made. In fact its an almost functional couch blanket now.

It's time for round two. I have made 4 more scarves since.

Scarf number 5: Twisted ribbons
The fifth scarf is a hybrid cable and lace pattern which I started in early April. I started this using the two balls of cream coloured Panda Machinewash crepe I'd bought in an end of winter sell out. (Can't you see that this was a potentially disastrous move?) But the pattern just ate through the yardage and I inevitably ran out of yarn late April and ordered some more. Whilst I was waiting I cast on scarf number six. (Can't have idle knitting needles, can you?)

Then of course the new yarn didn’t match colourwise. I knitted about half a pattern repeat but it offended my sensibilities. The colour change was that dramatic! So frogged the lot on 1st June 2014. I bought two more balls and began again in the new cream machinewash. This was now going to be the June strip!

That was probably a little ambitious. Actually I cast this back on on the 22rd of August! I was finishing up all the the other WIPs (Two jumpers for various children being the biggest of them). And it was finally completed on 15th September. The irony was that after blocking this ended up about 2 pattern repeats too long so in early October I frogged a bit of it and redid the garter stitch edge so it fitted with the rest of the strips. This scarf should just be very happy that I am persistent in the face of adversity.

Pattern: Twisted Ribbons Scarf and Cowl
Needles: 4mm
Yarn: Panda Machinewash 8 ply Crepe, Cream, 4 50g balls

Scarf number 6: Bernadette cable scarf
I had a cold and everything else I was working on is too complicated for my brain to cope with. Cables again - waving cables interlocking gently. This was me being productive whilst coping with the saga of scarf number five (see above). This was smooth sailing in comparison. And the yarn is a dream to knit. (Pity I think it's discontinued).

Pattern: Bernadette Cable Scarf by SmarieK Knits
Needles: 4mm
Yarn: Panda Woolblend Crepe 8 ply, Gray, 3 and a little bit 50g balls.

Scarf number 7: Eagle feathers
This one is based on Eagle Feathers - a free scarf pattern with a series of different patterned bands beginning with simple chevrons and morphing through to full feathers. I started with a provisional cast on as it is worked out from each end. This was true stash busting. The yarn I used had a somewhat checkered past. I was reusing the yarn from Arundel which I had frogged during the Ravellenics. I had some some fun (not!) unpicking the provisional cast on and getting the correct amount of stitches to work the other way. This was a really fun pattern to knit and I especially love the feathers section on each of the edges. Unfortunately it ended up too long after blocking. It’s always hard to judge just how much a lace pattern will open up. So I took off one pattern repeat on each end and redid the moss stitch borders.

Pattern: The Eagle Feathers Scarf by Margaret Kiprenko
Needles: 4mm
Yarn: Patons Australia Katie, Tan / mustard, 4 50 g balls

 Scarf number 8: Beaumonde
Earlier this year I discovered the delights of dropping stitches on purpose (See Curly Wurly). I was eager to try this again. This was slated to be a cable scarf again. This pattern is a combination of cable and dropped stitches - the very definition of fun. It’s awesome to drop stitches on purpose. The yarn is some cream 12% angora, 48% viscose and 40% acrylic in a buttery cream colour I bought for $2 a ball in an end of season sale. So this something I actually bought purposely this year with this rug in mind.

Pattern: Beaumonde by SmarieK Knits. (She has an awesome collection of free cable scarf patterns available. This is the second one I have used as part of this scarf-ghan).
Needles: 4mm 
Yarn: Moda Vera Messina, cream, 3.2 50g balls

I decided to bite the bullet at the beginning of December and  sew what I had completed up in order to decide how many more scarves I needed to make to ge the width I want. This process took most of a week using my ususual evening knitting time to painstaking stitch the scarves together.

It's not quite as wide as I want it to be. I estimate I need two more scarves and one is already on the needles - a leafy lacy tendril on reverse stocking stitch. It's not too early to declare this project a massive sucess. Even at it's present size, it's a snuggly, cuddly useable couch rug. It stretches from my toes to my chest. Various family members have spent a fair bit of time trying to claim this for their own but it's mine, mine, you hear ..... (Cue evil laugh track here). However, I foresee me making variations on this theme for the next few years.... (My mum wants one, so does the hubby....)

I'm snuggled under this

Curating Ravelry: Cowls

I started this post on the last day of the first month of winter and it is freezing. The wind is blowing off the Antarctic and it is wet and soggy and the wind puts ice in your bones. I've dragged the hand-knitted neck warming goodness out of the cupboard. So in honour of an Australian winter, today's Curating Ravelry post has a theme of  cowls - free patterns of course. I'm a fan of texture and lace and here you will finds cowls knitted at a range of yarn weights.

I'm starting with the iconic free cowl pattern; the Honey Cowl designed for Madelinetosh yarns. This is a clearly addictive pattern with 16015 cowls made so far. Many people can't just stop at one.

© madelinetosh

Honey Cowl by Antonia Shankland.

More gorgeous texture in a bulky yarn this time in herringbone stitch.

© Purl Soho

Big Herringbone Cowl by Purl Soho.

Or lacey and leafy. I love this idea of fastening a smaller cowl to fit to order with a gorgeous brooch or pin.

by emilyooo

A Noble Cowl by Emily Kausalik.


Want to knit a special project with your knitting BFF? The concept for this design was to create a knitted version of “best friend necklaces”. Here's the BFF cowl from Knitty! Interlocking links are knitted flat, then grafted together for all eternity.

© Marc Smollin

I made this one. But I cheated and was my own knitting BFF. (Slightly sad but a great fun knit). This is a worsted weight project.
BFF Cowl by Ysolda Teague & tiny owl knits.

Lace and ridges

A Grey Loop by Helen G.

Or simple, effective and unisex.

by westknits

Purl Ridge Scarf by Stephen West (Westknits).

A lacey cowl that's long enough to wrap around and around and nestle into in deepest winter weather.

by knittedblissJC

Stockholm Scarf by KnittedBlissJC.

Linen stitch in leftovers, bright and rainbow and a great stash-buster.

by LadyDanio

Manic Panic Cowl by Sarah Core.

Or lace and texture blended together in a reversible loop that you can just through around your neck without having to figure out which way is up.

© Galia Lael

Casu Cowl by Galia Lael

Gorgeous milanese lace. A long loop of airy scallops.

© stipa

Mialnese loop by Tante Ehm

An elegant lace funnel shaped cowl that frames the shoulders and is long enough to warm your neck without bulk.

by AudKnits

Eleanor Cowl by Audrey Knight

Simple unisex loops combining stocking stitch, garter and rib. Matching his and hers cowls anyone?

© Tin Can Knits

Oats by Tin Can Knits

This one is designed to showcase a variegated yarn without pooling and without the yarn overwhelming the pattern.

© Knitterchristy

Downtown Cowl by Christy Becker

Or maybe colour-work is your go? Tell your life story in a wearable cowl.

© POF

I did!
My Favorite Things Infinity Scarf by Jill McGee

Knitted chevrons in an elegant buttoned cowl.

by Meliabella

Pedestrian Crossing Cowl by Melissa Sibley

Crossed stitches produce a distinctive openwork pattern.

© Reiko Kuwamura

Elis by Reiko Kuwamura

Lace and cables make for an elegant and airy cowl.

by bellanordica

My Dolphin Cowl by kniTTina

I could go on and on and on and on. I've inspired myself to get out the needles, dive the stash and plan the next cowl. Hope you enjoy knitting a winter cowl too!