My model, Mr. Putter, was extraordinarily patient with me as he posed for this. He did, however, have a disgusted look on his face just moments after this photo was taken.
The second hat turned out really well, as the chosen tool (a Knifty Knitter loom) did all the work for me. I added little bows that pull up the brim, and I was pleased with the final result. That one is for the little girl of a FOCUS Missionary couple we help to sponsor. For their new baby boy, I'll be knitting a new edition of the hat Mr. Putter is modeling, sans messy back seam and cat hair.
6 comments:
For good directions on joining things together (and tons of other helpful hints as well) I suggest Knitting in Plain English. The directions in that book aided me greatly when I had to repair a hole that Abby inadvertently made when clipping the loose yarns on her very first sweater. No one could find the repair job thanks to the very clear directions. My solution to the seaming problem is to knit on circular needles or double pointed ones so that you never need to seam in the first place. For excellent directions in that case I suggest Jacqueline Fee's A Sweater Workshop. She has a neat hat pattern in there as well as tons of sweaters. Another good book for hats, socks, mittens and gloves is Homespun Handknit. That one has my very favorite garter stitch hat, although I'm not sure but what they do that one on two needles and seam it at the end. I do it on double point needles and avoid the seaming, although it still sort of appears to have a seam since you are switching between knit and purl for alternating rows. As you can easily see my book addiction definitely extends to knitting books. Of course if you haven't purchased it yet, you still could use a copy of Sunny's Mittens and there's a great hat in that was well.
Thanks, Liz. Clearly, I'm still a rank amateur at this. The idea of a sweater makes me break into a cold sweat. :-)
That cat's expression is a classic!!!
Believe it or not, knitting a sweater according to Jackie Fee's directions is no more difficult than one of the hats you knitted. Sure it will take longer, and yes there is that funky stuff around the armholes where you join the sleeves to the main body of the sweater (and the magical kitchener stitch that you use at the end to "knit" the resulting holes together with a needle and thread), but most of it is just knits, purls, increases and decreases and you've already done all that. Come on Abby knit her first sweater at 9 and all she'd knit before that was one pair of mittens. You've done way more knitting than she did before tackling a sweater. Cathy knit her first sweater last summer after having knit no more than a pair of mittens and a scarf. Now I'll admit they did have me hovering around while they knit their sweaters, but I'll bet you'd be surprised at how easy Jackie makes the process.
BTW Abby is now in the process of making a dress to wear to a wedding on Saturday, she's also got yarn to knit a shrug to accompany the dress. Here it is Monday and she plans on being finished by Thursday. Ah, the optimism of youth! She just couldn't find anything in the stores that she liked.
Good for you, Karen!
Well done!
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