Things that can be yours

Much of my blogging time is being occupied by twin management. Both are beautiful and healthy and breastfeeding very well. (All hail their mother. Nursing twins is an intense job. An intense full-time job. A job so big that someone should really sit beside you for most of your day saying “you’re wonderful” and doing all of the other jobs.) To help keep things going well, I’m sacrificing time at the computer to biking up to the hospital and back each day. I’m sure you all can get behind that. Until then, you are going to have to settle for some random stuff that can be yours.

1. I started with this:

Claudiamsroving

Fleece artist kid mohair sliver. (Interesting note? That word is pronounced “sly-ver”, not “sliv-er” like what you get running on a new deck in bare feet. I discovered this while trying to look informed using the word at a retreat. I was gently corrected.) There are two colourways there that I thought were compatible. I spun them separately,

Claudiamssingles

then plied them together to get this:

Claudiasmsyarn

About 160m of dk/perhaps heavy fingering mohair two-ply, that I’ve donated to Claudia as a prize for her MS ride. Visit Claudia, make a donation and you could win this, or something else really, really good. Claudia’s aiming for $10 000 this year and she’s almost there.

2. While I was sitting around the hospital, I’ve whipped off a wee cotton hat for Lily.

Watermelonlilyh4

It’s so cute it about gives me cramps. Now is the part where you all email me for the pattern and I break knitterly hearts by explaining that there isn’t one, and I email you back and say “you could totally fake it” and then you email me back and say “No, no. I’m not that kind of knitter. I can’t fake a hat”, and then I email you back and say “It’s not diffusing a bomb. Try it.” and then you email another note and say “I wouldn’t know where to start.” and then I email you and say “If you dressed yourself you’re smart enough for this” and then I email you the steps below.

(I’m trying to time save by just putting it here. Let me know if you really miss the other parts.)

Step one. Measure the head in question. (Lily’s head is 33cm – 13 inches.)

Step two. Find some yarn in dark green, light green, white and pink. You can look for black if you want to do the seeds. (I will remind you now that there are seedless watermelons.)

Step three. Knit a swatch. (Don’t make that face. Do a tiny one. I did 10 rows of 10 stitches.) Measure your stitches to the inch.

Step four. Multiply the number of stitches to the inch by the number of inches around the victims head. (Use a calculator if you feel woozy when I say multiply.) If you have five stitches to the inch, and the head in question is 15 inches, your math looks like this:

5X15= 75. See? Even a math-phobic like me can do it.)

Step five. Cast on this number if your recipient is a baby (their heads grow fast) or a few less than this number if your recipient is likely to have a stable head size for a while. (Hat’s knit the exact size of the head don’t stay on real well. You want it a wee bit smaller so that it clings a little.)

Step six. Knit around and around, changing colours in the places that it makes sense to, and carry on until the hat is tall enough. (This is always taller than you think.) Lily’s hat is five inches tall. (Don’t unroll the roll brim to measure. It’s not going to unroll on their head.)

Step seven. Decrease in a manner that makes sense to you. Me? I like the tops of hats to swirl, so I decrease every 8 stitches on the first round, seven on the second, six on the third…and so on until I’m knitting two together around.

Step eight. Cut yarn, thread through remaining stitches and fasten off. Duplicate stitch on the seeds, if it charms you.

Step nine. Put it on the head of the victim recipient and giggle a little. (Double sided tape helps with toddlers.)

Step ten. Stop and think how this could totally work for other hats. Feel clever.