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).

Just a little divergence?

OK, sometimes I just get bored even if I am currently knitting like 5 other things. Hence the name of this project - Divergent.

This is a small divergence from the current knitting path. I saw the Divergent movie recently with my daughter and hubby and was incredibly impressed with the costuming. The colours in this would fit in Abnegation perfectly. And I just need to knit a hat. I haven’t done one this year so far. I had to buy a set of 5mm dpns for this. I can’t believe I didn’t have any amongst the hundreds of needles I own!

Pattern: Molly by Erin Ruth
Yarn: Passioknit Scandy Ayres in colourway Husk, 50% Acrylic, 41% Wool, 5% Nylon, 4% Mohair. You know how sometimes you just can't resist a yarn when you squish it in a wool store. The colours in this just sing to my heart.

Trying out Mel's homemade light box. Cool stash pics now possible.

Needles: 5mm set of 4 dpns. (Their inaugural knit).

Thanks to the eldest daughter for her impromptu modelling skills. She always rocks a hat, any hat at the drop of a hat. This was the knitting equivalent of a rich dark chocolate indulgence - rich and satisfying. It only took three evenings on a couch in total. I love how it turned out.

From little things big things grow

It's been a fairly quiet blogging year probably because it has been a tumultuously surprising working year. At the beginning of February, we received the startling news that our university administration had decided to give our campus away to another university thus forming a new regional university. After the initial shock, it's been a year of negotiation and meetings, moments of frustration and despair and lots of fresh new challenges as well as exciting opportunities.

So when we threw open our doors for Open Day for prospective students this year we still didn't have an official name for the new university. The marketing slogan was 'We're growing a new university to help you grow" branded with both university logos and the accompanying advertisements showed a growing tree. This imagery of leaves and trees has reappeared in subsequent marketing campaigns. When I first saw this hat pattern the colourwork leaves reminded me of this. Our new University now has a name: Federation University Australia. And so I give you the only hat I've made for myself this year: Federation.

Knitting is my meditation; my escape from stressful times. The soothing clink of needles and yarn creating things makes tensions and annoyances unwind into the growing object. So for me, particularly this year, certain objects evoke memories of places, times and situations. But rather than these being unhappy memories, the knitted garment becomes almost like a pair of rose-coloured glasses letting me see the events with distance, perspective and insight. Knitted garments are warm and fuzzy objects in more ways than one. (I'm being particularly weirdly philosophical tonight).

So this hat symbolizes the end of the journey and a new beginning. I chiefly knitted this hat over two days of train journeys, up and back to Melbourne for planning meetings for the new year with my new colleagues. I knit on trains - a lot. It makes a 2 hour journey to Melbourne productive and I can still talk to people. This year, I made a psychological major leap forward and bought my knitting out of the closet so to speak and will now knit on journeys in front of my work colleagues. The guys I work with found the fact that I knit colour-work on four needles in the round whilst having an academic conversation fascinating. (The next secret ambition is to work out a way I can feel comfortable dragging out the knitting at meetings).

Pattern: as the leaves begin to fall by Eliza Jarvi (ifandany designs) (Free pattern)
Needles: 4mm set of 4 jumper length Antique Aero needles
Yarn:  For the leaves: Moda Vera Pure Wool 8 ply yellow green. For the background: upcycled 8 ply (DK) op shop wool, alpaca and, I suspect angora, blend in winter white/cream with small gray and black fibres.

Thanks to the boy for his expert photography skills. He always manages to make me (and the knitting) look good somehow.

2013: The International Year of Stats (no make that Hats)

I wasn't joking. 2013 is indeed the International year of Statistics or Stats for short. From a purely professional point of view this has been great. I feel extremely vindicated teaching first year stats when the whole world is having a year to acknowledge how vital, useful and cool they are.

From a knitting point of view though in a bizarre way, 2013 has become My Year of Hats! I have knitted 13 hats this year!! I didn't intentionally start off 2013 thinking, "Oh! This will be the year I knit pretty much nothing but hats", but that's the way it turned out.

Let me introduce you the hats that have flown off my needles this year...

Hat number 1
My middle daughter Mel is directly responsible for the start of the madness. She is currently in Padova in Italy near the tail end of her giant European adventure. When planning for the trip began in late 2012 she very thoughtfully put in a request list of knitted accessories to take with her. And so the first hat I made was for her. I began knitting the first hat in late December 2012 and finished it on New Year's Eve.I'm still counting this as the first hat of 2013 though. (For the full story see Newness for the New Year).

Pattern: Cables and Lace Hat by Lion Brand (Free pattern). I have to admit, I wasn't all that enamored with the picture of this one on the pattern but the reality is perfect.
Needles: Set of 4.5mm double pointed needles (dpns)
Yarn: Paton's Romance, 90% Australian Merino Wool 10% Cashmere 50 g ball (84 m per ball). It's an 8ply (DK weight)  but thick and squishy and knits more to 10 ply (aran weight). Colour: 4161 White. It took about 1 and 1/3 balls. 
Cost: Approx $9 per ball.  Bought at Clegg's Melbourne City store. Expensive beanie I know. But everyone deserves cashmere at least once in their life.

Hat number 2
aka The Birthday Beanie. My nephew seems to have had a beanie stapled to his head for the last few years. The beanie has a twofold purpose. It hides his ears and keeps his incredibly curly hair under control. The current beanie may now be qualifying as a health hazard as he never washes it, so I made him a new one for his 21st. Thanks to my boy for modelling this. (See What's on my Needles).

Pattern: Wurm by Katharina Nopp (Free pattern).
Needles: 4mm dpns (actually they are still labelled as size 8 - antique jumper length Aero dpns)
Yarn: Mystery ball of what appears to be handspun from my stash. I have no idea where this came from but it's meant this was free to knit!

Hats numbers 3, 4 and 5.
The boy enjoyed modelling the birthday beanie so much that I had to make him one of his own. Let’s call it an Easter Present. This is the first clothing item I have knitted him since he was a baby. Then I had to make a matching one for his eldest sister to stave of her theft of said hat. I am so proud of having made items of clothing so cool my hipster kidlets will wear them. And so the Matchy Matchy beanies became hats four and five for the year.

I also knitted another Wurm in a beautiful soft lofty recycled op shop wool in a light cream tan (Hat number 5). Here it's being modelled by the middle daughter in the red coat and it's at this moment starring in its own modelling trip across a European winter. I can't wait to see what its been up too. (Actually there's a sneak peek at the bottom of this post).

Pattern: Wurm by Katharina Nopp (Free Pattern)
Needles: 4mm dpns (actually they are still labelled as size 8 - antique jumper length Aero dpns). I love these needles for knitting hats. And only $2. Best op-shop buy ever!
Yarn: 8 ply op shop sourced homespun fairly greasy wool with some flecks of other fiber. Cost about 50 cents per 200g or about 50 cents per hat.

Hat number 6
And we were back to a request from the middle daughter again. She already had her eye on a cute little owl head hat from Simply Knitting issue 100. So I knitted this up in a weekend and had a ball doing it. Its so much fun to watch the face building up row by row. This classified as one of those "just one more row" knits, perhaps explaining why it took so little time.

Pattern: From Animal Hats by Rachel Henderson via Simply Knitting Issue 100.
Needles: Set of two 4mm needles.
Yarn: Cleckheaton Country in cream (1 ball - sourced from an op shop), Cleckheaton Country in Beige (Seconds from the Australian Country spinners Wangaratta Woolen Mills, a present from my mother after a recent trip there - she knows what it takes to make me happy) and the orangey mustard is aran weight wool from the stash which is so old I have no idea of its origins.

Hat Number 7
This is the point in time where where my hat madness stepped up a gear or so. In early winter we went and met the eldest daughter at her house in Melbourne and spent a chilly Sunday morning wandering around an eclectic Sunday Market whose chief specialty is second hand and vintage clothing. We were looking at what was on sale and what the young hispters were wearing and she turned to me and said, "Hats! You should knit some hats and we'll come here, get a stall and sell them. Your hats are so much cooler that ones around for sale here. My housemates keep trying to borrow mine and would pay for you to make some for them". And so the seed of an idea was born. I'd knit a stockpile of hats and we'd sell them (somehow). And so Barnaby was born, a hat  knit for the future hat stockpile with no specific person in mind. (See also Meet Barnaby - an unclaimed hat).

Pattern: Lee by Ysolda Teague
Needles: 4mm set of 4 jumper length Antique Aero needles, a 4mm medium length circular for the brim
Yarn: Cleckheaton Country Naturals (85% pure wool, 10% acrylic and 5% viscose), colours Coal and Burnt red - fully machine washable on a delicate cycle.
Details: Double layer brim lined in red, decorative raised stitch detail offset to one side in red.

Hats numbers 8 and  9 
May I introduce Twisted Silver and Latte with a Twist? When I decided to be serious about knitting hats for potential sale, I went looking for interesting free patterns on Ravelry that looked like what my girls would wear, had a sort of Unisex appeal or were something that looked captivating to knit but still trendy enough. Lina by Johanna of Joko Knits fit the bill. I knitted this originally as written using a silvery grey subtly variegated wool. And so Twisted Silver was born. I love the crown shaping on this. The cables magically diminish into the crown. But the first beanie is too exact a fit for the girls and a little too short in length (I Think this is more a large child's fit). So I made it again adding extra repeats for a more modern slouchy look (Latte with a twist).

Twisted Silver

Latte with a Twist

Pattern: Lina by Johanna of Joko Knits

Needles: my favourite set of size 8 (4mm) antique Aero jumper length dpns

Wool: Grey and fawn recycled 8 ply pure wool from the op shop,

Hat Number 10
The Graeme Street Slouch. This is a hijacked item. I swear was making this for the hat stockpile. But no sooner did it work its way off my needles than it was firmly ensconced on the boy's head. I have to admit it does suit him and he wears it heaps.

Pattern: Graham by Jennifer Adams (a free pattern)
Needles: A set each of 4 mm and 4.5 mm dpns
Wool: Brownish red 8 ply (DK) tweed courtesy of the op shop again.

Hat number 11
OK, I’m getting there with this design thing. This is my first self-designed hat pattern. The inspiration is the stitch pattern from Martin Storey’s gorgeous cowl necked cable jumper Winterbloom from The Knitter Issue 55. I knew I wanted to make a long slouchy beanie that was soft enough to drape neatly on the crown. This is a 21st birthday present for my daughter's friend and European Traveling companion Louise. (See Happy Birthday Louise - I made you a hat!).

And here it is in London. Mel is wearing her Wurn. There two are both knit from the same yarn.

Pattern: Adapted stitch pattern from Winterbloom Jumper by Martin Storey
Source: The Knitter Issue 55
Needles: 4mm set of 4 jumper length Antique Aero needles
Yarn:  Upcycled 8 ply (DK) op shop wool. Creamish brown blend. It has a really soft fuzz and light halo and blocks up with a light soft squishy feel and drape.

Hat number 12

This one is just a sneak peak at this stage. There are two reasons for this. 1. I need to take some modelling shots of this one. And seeing it is for me, I need to smile nicely at my boy to play photographer. (And it is the middle of an Australian summer so it needs to be a coolish day so I don't die of heat stress) and 2. There is a story that goes with the knitting of this that deserves its own blog post. Stay tuned.

Pattern: as the leaves begin to fall by Eliza Jarvi (ifandany designs) (Free pattern)
Needles: 4mm set of 4 jumper length Antique Aero needles
Yarn:  For the leaves: Moda Vera Pure Wool 8 ply yellow green. For the background: upcycled 8 ply (DK) op shop wool, alpaca and, I suspect angora, blend in winter white/cream with small gray and black fibres.

Hat number 13
This one was a Christmas Wurm for another nephew. It's the same silver grey as Twisted Silver above. My eldest daughter and I were Christmas shopping about a week before Christmas and she bet me that I couldn't make a hat for the nephew between then and Christmas given that he clearly needed more for Christmas than the present we has just bought him. She should know better. It was finished and blocked three days before Christmas but still damp went it went off to its recipient. I didn't remember to take a photo of it though.... You'll just have to take my word on the actual existence of hat number 13 till I get some pictures of it!

The Mad Hatter

OK, so I have been having a small obsession with knitting hats... I have made three hats this month (and by this month, I mean April which was actually a couple of months ago)... One of them in just one weekend!!!

My favorite Mad Hatter: Johnny Depp is just so cool. If you haven't watched Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland I suggest you go and treat yourself.

So I made a hat for my nephew for his 21st. My son was lucky enough to be the hat model. He so liked the hat, he requested one for himself. I was happy to oblige and then came to the sick realisation that this is the first garment I have knitted him since he was baby. I felt slightly ashamed to call myself a mother who knits. However, this was balanced by the fact that something I had knit was considered a cool enough clothing item to be coveted.

Here is the boy modelling his cousins hat. And here is the boy modelling his own hat. I made this from the same op shop wool from which I made the homework help pouch for a baby kangaroo. It's such a cool neutral-ish colour and can come across as a dirty cream, a light grey or a fawn-ish brown depending on the lighting and what clothing your pair it with. I finished this in time to call it an Easter present. There were some really bad taste jokes running around that we had turned the Easter Bunny into a hat.

Pattern: Wurm by Katharina Nopp
Needles: 4mm dpns (actually they are still labelled as size 8 - antique jumper length Aero dpns). I love these needles for knitting hats. And only $2. Best op-shop buy ever!
Yarn: 8 ply op shop sourced homespun fairly greasy wool with some flecks of other fiber. Cost about 50 cents per 200g or about 50 cents per hat.

So one highly satisfactory hat commission down. I thought I might have time to sit on my laurels and luxuriate in the glow of a job well done. However, the boys eldest sister, the future doctor daughter came home for Easter. She saw the boy's hat, promptly grabbed it, stuck it on her head, claimed it went so much better with her curls and refused to give it back until I promised to make her one too. This is despite the fact that she already has four handmade berets (see: The Beret Project Project: Chapter 1, The Beret Project:: The Second Installment and Winter Smoke: Selbu Modern Beret). We had to search her bags when she went back after Easter to make sure she hadn't accidentally on purpose absconded with the hat. (As an aside I'm patting myself on the back here as I also clearly make clothing cool enough to be the object of petty thievery!)

So there was nothing for it but to immediately cast one for a second hat. Surprisingly, it wasn't any hardship to knit the exact identical article twice in a row (The first time in my entire knitting life that I have down this). It was even fun.

Twin hats drying in front of the heater.

So now I was two hats down but I have, in fact, three children. OK, you don't have to be a mind reader to predict what is coming next. Mel, the middle daughter was pushing for it to be her turn. But not an identical beanie. She already had her eye on a cute little owl head hat from Simply Knitting issue 100.

Pattern available here

Intarsia should look just as neat from the back

Pattern: From Animal Hats by Rachel Henderson via Simply Knitting Issue 100.
Needles: Set of two 4mm needles.
Yarn: Cleckheaton Country in cream (1 ball - sourced from an op shop), Cleckheaton Country in Beige (Seconds from the Australian Country spinners Wangaratta Woolen Mills, a present from my mother after a recent trip there - she knows what it takes to make me happy) and the orangey mustard is aran weight wool from the stash which is so old I have no idea of it origins.

So I knitted this up in a weekend and had a ball doing it. Its so much fun to watch the face building up row by row. This classified as one of those "just one more row" knits, perhaps explaining why it took so little time.

And here is the owl hat in its natural environment.