Month: March 2018

cumulus cowl

Posted on by trish

I had a vision of this cowl when I saw the yarn, which was Loops & Threads Barcelona in Arc­tic, and I bought it because it was on mas­sive sale. It is a very fluffy yarn and with the colours it reminds me of clouds. I want­ed to cre­ate a sub­tle cable tex­ture where the cables may not be super notice­able at first glance, and the cross­ing of the stitch­es are a bit hid­den, like clouds, which are eas­i­ly tak­en for grant­ed unless we take time to stop and notice their forms and shapes, and twists and turns.

I was hap­py with the way it came out so I thought I’d share what I did. The fab­ric is dou­bled so it’s extra warm and squishy. It would work nice­ly with any bulky yarn with long colour tran­si­tions of grey and white. (or oth­er colours you like!)

 

It is a loom knit­ting pat­tern, and if you’re new to it now wor­ries! I include links to video tuto­ri­als for dif­fer­ent tech­niques. Loom knit­ting itself is quite easy, so a begin­ner would be able to fol­low this pattern.

Mate­r­i­al:

Half a skein of Loops & Threads Barcelona — about 150 yards.

41 peg Knit Quick round loom and loom knit­ting hook

4 mm cro­chet hook (for weav­ing in ends)

Pat­tern:

Mark the pegs with elas­tic bands or stitch mark­ers. Mark the first two pegs, *skip two pegs, mark the next two*, repeat from * to * around until there are 3 pegs left.

E‑wrap cast on all the pegs around the loom.

E‑wrap every round until piece is 2″ in length.

Cable round: *Take off and hold the loops from the first two marked pegs. Place the loop from first peg on the sec­ond peg, then place the loop from the sec­ond peg on the first peg, then e‑wrap the two stitch­es* (cable stitch com­plete). E‑wrap the next two stitch­es as usu­al. Repeat from * to * over the next two stitch­es on marked pegs to work cable stitch. Con­tin­ue around work­ing cable stitch over the stitch­es on marked pegs, and work­ing reg­u­lar e‑wraps over unmarked pegs. (Here’s a video for the cable stitch, except that in the video u‑wraps and purl stitch­es are used, where­as in this pat­tern only e‑wraps are used)

E‑wrap 3 rounds.

Repeat the last 4 rounds until piece is 16″ in length.

E‑wrap until the piece is 18″ in length, don’t fas­ten off.

Seam­ing:

Place the cast on loops back on the pegs, care­ful in match­ing the loops to the pegs (i.e. the first loop of the round in the first peg, sec­ond loop on the sec­ond peg, and so on). Bind off loose­ly, treat­ing the bot­tom two loops as one. Fas­ten off and weave in ends.

Move the seam towards the mid­dle of the cowl, and enjoy the fluffiness!

Hap­py week­end, friends! :D

 

the sharing hat

Posted on by trish

This hat was made and the pat­tern writ­ten while Mike and I par­tic­i­pat­ed at the Warm­ing Toron­to event at the end of Feb­ru­ary, which was an event in which peo­ple gath­er togeth­er and make hats and scarves for shel­ters and out­reach pro­grams in the city. So I’m shar­ing this pat­tern with these intentions:

1) The hat is quick to make. I had to restart sev­er­al times while I was fig­ur­ing out a pat­tern, and I was also eat­ing a very deli­cious plate of fish and chips (AWAY from the yarn — this set­up was only for Insta­gram!), but I made the hat from start to fin­ish with­in 4 hours, so mak­ing it from the pat­tern should take much less time!

2) Since it’s such a quick make, I’m hop­ing that this will encour­age you to make one for your­self and make anoth­er to pass it on to some­one who can real­ly use a thick and warm hat!

Behold the cozy yarn pile — by the time I fin­ished the hat we’ve col­lect­ed 114 fin­ished items! :D

The event took place at a pub, which has an upstairs library with couch­es and fire­place, per­fect for yarn-craft­ing and pro­vid­ed back­grounds for my pho­to shoot that are much more inter­est­ing than what I usu­al­ly have :D

The hat is worked side­ways then seamed togeth­er. It has rows of braid­ed puff stitch and tex­ture cre­at­ed by cro­chet­ing into the 3rd loop on the back of a half-dou­ble cro­chet stitch. If you haven’t tried nei­ther of those stitch­es, don’t wor­ry, I took plen­ty of process pho­tos to show how it’s done :)

The hat mea­sures about 9″ tall (brim fold­ed) and 20″ around. 

Mate­r­i­al:

Two skeins of Bernat Sof­t­ee Chunky, or oth­er super bulky weight yarn (the hat uses about 150 yards, so 3 skeins would make 2 hats! :D)

Con­trast­ing colour yarn for pom pom.

9 mm hook, and a small­er hook for weav­ing in ends.

Yarn nee­dle.

Pat­tern:

*Note: begin­ning ch does not count as a stitch through­out the pattern.

Row 1 (RS): ch 26, hdc in 3rd ch from hook, hdc in each ch to end. (24 hdc’s)

Row 2 (WS): ch 1, hdc in back loop only (BLO) in the first 6 hdc’s, then hdc in the 3rd loop in each of the remain­der of the hdc’s, like so…

You would insert the hook into the strands of yarn in the direc­tion of the arrows. This cre­ates a nice raised braid on the right side :)

Row 3: (puff braid row) ch 3, skip first 2 hdc, dc in next hdc…

[yo and pull up a loop] three times in the first hdc of the row, then pull through all loops on hook (puff stitch made)…

*skip next hdc, dc in next hdc, puff st in the same hdc as last dc made* rep from * to * till there are 7 hdc’s left in row, dc BLO in each hdc to end.

Row 4: (puff stitch row) ch 1, dc BLO in next 7 dc, sk next st, dc in next dc (between 2 puff st’s)…

puff st in the st before the skipped st…

*skip next st, dc in next st, puff st in st before skipped st* rep from * to * till end of row. When arriv­ing at the end of row, work last dc in the very last st…

Then end with a puff st.

Row 5: ch 1, make sure the first hdc is made in the very first st…

Then hdc in next 17 st’s, hdc BLO in last 6 st’s.

Row 6: ch 1, hdc BLO in first 6 hdc’s, hdc in the 3rd loop in the remain­ing 18 hdc’s.

Row 7: ch 1, hdc in first 18 hdc’s, hdc BLO in remain­ing 6 hdc’s.

Repeat rows 2–7 three more times, except in the last repeat, omit row 7 and end with row 6.

Decrease row at top: ch 1, 2 dc tog even­ly across the top of the hat.

Cut yarn and leave a long tail for sewing. Thread yarn tail in yarn nee­dle, weave yarn tail through the stitch­es at the top of hat, cinch close and tie to secure. Turn hat inside out, sew seam. Make and attach pom pom. Fold up the brim for extra warmth!

I hope you enjoy mak­ing the hat! Leave a com­ment if you have any ques­tions or need clar­i­fi­ca­tions. And if you’re look­ing for places to send your yarn-craft items… 

Here’s a list by the Toron­to Knit­ters Guild of places that accept yarn-craft­ed good­ness in Toronto.

Warm Hands Net­work col­lects and sends hand­made items nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly, espe­cial­ly to north­ern locations.

For friends in the USA, the lists on Men­tal Floss and Red Heart may be good places to start :)

With glow­ing heart and busy hands — hap­py yarn-crafting!