Introducing Amethyst

Here's the screen test for my puppet, Amethyst, who intends to teach an "annoying little man boy" how to knit. I'm still working out the kinks with my video skills, but I'll get it eventually.

Dreadlock Tube Hat with Corset Lacing

I went through my knitting this afternoon and came across my most popular hat.  I would say that it is my most requested pattern, but people don't ask me for the pattern.  They ask me where I bought it.  This was actually one of the first hats that I designed, and it was made right after I fell in love with steampunk.  Today I share it with you.


Honestly, I can't remember exactly what yarn I used (except that it was cheap stuff), but it's really pretty simple.  I recommend that you measure your head and knit a gauge swatch to see if it will fit you.  Adjust your needle size, or the number of repeats of the pattern, to get it right.  If this is hard to read or follow, please, please click on comments and let me know. (Just because it's all obvious to me, doesn't mean that it makes sense to someone not inside of my head.) 

Again, if you can't read this, yell at me. I apologize in advance for not getting off my butt and learning to chart more professionally.

Crown of Thorns Tam

I made this hat this spring, and it's the one that I'm wearing in my profile picture (for now).  So far, all of my dreads fit under it, but I'll probably need to go back to the drawing board for this coming winter.  This fair aisle type tam is made a little more roomy than a classic tam, so that it would fit over my big head with my big hair. It uses a worsted weight yarn, and I believe that I started with size 6 needles and moved up to size 8 after the knit 1 purl1 edge. I'd tell you exactly what yarn that I had used, but when I made it, I didn't realize that I'd ever be sharing the pattern.  Lesson learned, for now it'll have to be sufficient to say that the yarn is a mainstream cheaper brand that I picked up at a big name store, rather than a nice yarn shop....

In time I'm going to figure out the best way to reproduce my charts in a more professional way, but below is the chart I wrote out on graph paper.  The darker squares are what I actually did in this hat, but I've added green for the parts of the pattern that I would change if I ever do this design again.  I felt that the vines on the crown of thorns weren't as clear as I'd like them to be so the green in the chart beefs them up a little.  Work chart A from the bottom up, followed by B, and then A again. For the triangle shaped decreasing chart, begin at the top and work your way down.  You can use whatever method of decrease that you'd like, so long as you make those decreases at the edge of each repeat, in order to keep up with the stitch count.  As you can see, I did my knit one purl one beginning with alternating colors, and if you look closely you'll notice that I added one plain row between each chart. Whenever I knit in only one color, however, I still carried along the alternate color just to keep consistency in the thickness of the hat.  This pattern fits a head with a 23 inch crown measurement.  If your measurements are far off from this, either adjust your needle size or add/decrease stitches to fit (just remember to add or subtract them back to do the charts).

I hope this works for you, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to click on the word comments below and ask.  I really want to communicate clearly enough to be of help.
 

Crown of Thorns Tam Chart

Knit Lace Kerchief Project

I love that on the Oregon coast, I can wear my knit pieces any time of the year.  This is an idea for converting any triangular shawl pattern into a kerchief for your hair.  Using a shawl pattern that begins at the bottom point, simply follow the pattern until your piece is as wide across as the measurement from one ear, over the top of your head, to your other ear. Set this aside, still on your needles.  Begin making a 4 stitch i-cord with the same yarn on the same sized double pointed needles.  When your i-cord reaches 12-18 inches in length, you will begin picking up one stitch from your set aside shawl piece for each i-cord row (beginning at one end).  Knit as follows: knit 3 i-cord stitches, Knit 2 together (one i-cord stitch and one kerchief stitch).  Repeat until you've picked up all of the kerchief stitches, and then just continue the i-cord by itself until the two ends match in length.  Tie in your yarn ends and you're finished.

For this particular piece I used a Lotus Blossom Lace pattern. It was found in the book "Shawls and Scarves" from "The Best of Knitter's Magazine".  I'm sure you can find the charts for it, but really any triangular increasing pattern will work.  Get creative and use your favorite look.