The incredible Amanda Hat

Me too! Me too! I did one too! The incredible, must have Amanda Hat. Designed by Gina House for her friend and namesake of the hat. Gina House (aka Sleepy Eyes) has a blog, too. And she is also on ravelry.

Her hat is not that old, but has a huge fandom already, and her hat is almost a cult, too. With reason. The pattern is easy and a fast knit. It is also easily adaptable to different yarn and gauge. And it is absolutely stunning.

Thank you, Gina, for that beautiful piece of art!

EZs Snail Hat

Winter is approaching and bad tongues predict a very cold winter at that. Which could be true, since I'm already wearing scarves and gloves. No hat as of yet. But I'm gonna need one soon. And therein lies the problem. I do not have one.

So I've been browsing all my knitting books and there it was, the incomparable EZs Snail Hat.
Although this hat is supposed to be knittable in one evening, it took me a bit longer. Summing up, it is more like two lazy afternoons.

I do not know what sheepsdown is supposed to be, I guess it it very warm wool, so I rummaged through my humble stash and took the thickest yarn I could find which turned out to be two skeins of Lana Grossa Ragazza Lei in green and brown. Armed with a 6mm circular needle I proceeded to cast on, determined to follow EZs instructions to the letter. Which wasn't that difficult, apart from misunderstanding what she meant by 'making backward loop over R needle', which turned out to be her favourite method of M1, which she explained on page 27 already. But apart from that, it was all easy  going.

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough yarn (one would hope 100g would be enough, but turns out, it wasn't). So I had to stop during the increases at 35 stitches and sew the rest up. Because of this, there is no snail like cone at the top, which is rather sad, but it still looks good and more importantly, it also fits!

So there we go, one finished hat, and a note to myself: Better get 150g for a hat, 100g is not enough!

The financial side of knitting

Way back, when my Granny was my age, she used to knit almost all of her sweaters herself. And sewed the rest of her clothes and those of her family. Why? Because buying ready-made clothes in shops was far too expensive. Making them oneself saved a lot of money.

And today? Let's just do a quick calculation, shall we? Cascade 220 Heathers is a popular yarn for sweaters. In an online shop I recently saw this yarn sold at about 6,95€/100g, which is a really good prize. For a sweater in my size, I would need roughly about 600g. Meaning, I would have to buy 6 skeins, summing up to a total of 41,70€.
And what would a ready-made sweater cost? Made from similar material, somewhat stylish... I'd say... about 39,95€. +/- 10,00€.

Nothing really saved. Knitting is a luxury nowadays.

My darling Papa

It was my birthday last Saturday (which I spent sick in bed with fever and everything). My father was at that weekend gone to Norway with a couple of his colleagues to do a little fishing. Men stuff. And on Tuesday he returned, with bags of fish (yuck, I hate fish) and another bag, which he brought for me as a belated birthday gift. Which he didn't need, since my mother had already given me their gift, but it was still pretty nice.

And I looked into the bag and what did I find? A skein of dark purple mohair sock yarn! Isn't that amazing? My father, who usually needs a very detailed shopping list, with explanations where everything is and still often brings the wrong things, goes ahead and chooses not just sock yarn, but mohair and in a really gorgeous colour to boot! Isn't he the best Papa ever?

The yarn itself is from the old Sjolingstad Uldvarefabrik in Mandal, Norway. An old wool factory, that still manufactures items to sale, though only for the tourists nowadays.

On display, my father told me, they had a wonderful shawl, made out of this yarn. The pattern is called ringsaker sjal. Which is a very simple, triangular lace shawl. Easy for beginners, and very beautiful. Maybe I make that with the yarn. Or maybe I choose something from 'Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders'. Who knows? But I won't rush the decision. One of the most fun things when knitting is the browsing of patterns and pictures to find the next project.

So Happy Birthday to me and Happy Browsing!

Never buy Kauni

Knitting in colours is exiting and fun. Fair Isle, stranded, Mosaik, whatever. Very popular are those yarns that come with their own colouring built-in. One of those is Kauni Effektgarn. The special charme of this yarn is that the colour changes are fluid and very, very long. Ideal for larger projects like scarfs or pullovers. Knitting socks is no good with this yarn.

I made a scarf out of it. It is closely based on the 'geveldak scarf' by Nancy Marchant, which is featured in 'Knitting Brioche'.

As you can see, the beautiful colouring needs a lot of space to display its greatness.

But! And there is a huge But. Knitting with this yarn is no fun. For one thing, it is very rough, it snags on practically everything, including slightly roughened hands and bambus needles. Which is exhausting. Although the roughness does soften after a couple of washings.

The second negative point is that the thickness varies very much, too. In some places, it is very finely and neatly spun, in others, it is very rough and fluffy. And you can pull it apart rather easily, too. Try pulling Regia sock wool apart and compare it with this wool: you need a bit of strength to pull the Kauni apart, while it is virtually impossible to do with the Regia - you could probably use it to tow a car!

And for the piece of resistance: At one time the yarn snapped, and those guys from Kauni attached the next string back on again. Which does happen, I've had yarn like that before and it is a legitimate fix for a rather common occurrence. But not when the one end is a dark purple and the next a light blue!!!

And this is the reason why I'll never buy Kauni again. Colouring like that is really rare, though - as of yet I haven't found its equal. And I really adore that colouring. Maybe I'm going to dye something like that myself one day.