Did you know Remembrance Day used to be called Armistice Day? Because it was to honour the end of war, and celebrate peace? Somehow that got lost in the shuffle…
Anyway, I decided to knit a white poppy for peace, a longstanding tradition back to 1936.
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| White Poppy for Peace |
And here’s a free pattern for anyone who wants it and believes in peace!
I thought I posted about this before but I guess I’m mistaken!
Last year I started going to a Russian sauna/bath house, aka banya, with a friend of mine. One of the traditions of banya is to wear a wool hat to keep your head from getting too hot. With my friend’s birthday coming up, I decided to knit and felt a hat!
It did not work!
I mean it kinda worked, but not really. Shape right, size wrong. I had modified a pattern, and also substituted the yarn as I couldn't find the one they recommended, and after all of that it turned out waaay too big.
So I decided to start again (this is why I bought extra yarn!) and I think I’ve got it!
I completely altered literally everything from the original pattern I started with, so here it is, my banya hat pattern:
Banya Hat instructions
Using 2 balls of Istex Alafos Lopi and 9 mm circular needle
Cast on 84 sts. Join to work in round.
Work in stockinette (knit every stitch). Place markers every 21 sts.
Brim shaping:
Row 4: *Knit to marker, sl m, k1, k2tog* repeat 4 times across row (80 sts on needle)
Row 8: *Knit to 2 sts before marker, ssk, sl m* repeat 4 times across row (76 sts on needle)
Continue working in stockinette.
Crown shaping:
Row 38: *Knit to 2 sts before marker, ssk, sl m, k1, k2tog* repeat 4 times across row
Continue working in stockinette repeating row 38 until you have 4 sts on needle.
Next row: k1, k2tog, k1. Slide sts to other end of needle.
Work these 3 sts as i-cord (sliding to other end of circ or dpn to work in same direction, rather than in the round) until the i-cord is 6” long. Fold over, break yarn leaving long tail, and graft to top of hat near base of i-cord, closing any gaps at top of hat.
Felt. I find by hand is more successful than by washing machine, even if it is kinda miserable.
I have a double kitchen sink, so what I do is fill one side with hot water (and a squeeze of dish soap) and the other with cold. Keep a kettle and ice cubes on hand to keep the hot hot and the cold cold as necessary.
Wearing rubber gloves, put the hat in the hot water and go at it like a puppy with a chew toy. Agitate, agitate, agitate. Imagine you are Lady MacBeth crying, “Out, damned spot,” as you go postal on your handwashing. Then squeeze it out and plunge it in the cold water. Agitate, squeeze, and return to the hot.
Keep going back and forth like this, adding boiling water (pour it right on the cold hat!) and ice cubes as needed to keep your water temperatures extreme.
Also keep a ruler handy so you can measure your progress. I find it takes about half an hour of back-and-forth to get ’er done. About 10” across the bottom is what you’re aiming for.
Use your hands to shape/sculpt the wet hat until it looks about right. Let air dry for a bit so it retains its shape—I put it over a milk bottle (to keep it upright) on a floor vent (for airflow). Stuff loosely with a hand towel, zip into a mesh lingerie bag, and finish in a hot dryer. Put a dry bath towel in with it to help get the moisture out.
A hat for mrs brown is complete!
And the weather to match seems to have arrived at the same time.
At first I wasn't sure what to do once I'd gathered it in at the top. I needed a little button - preferably to match?
then I had an idea for something just the right size.
A few stitches to hold it in place...
And voila! Yarn covered "button" I didn't need to leave the house to find.
Tadah! (remember, I'm a knitter, not a photographer.)
I started this a while ago, and then lost steam. But I got all inspired again, because of a good cause: we’re sponsoring a refugee family from Syria!
I had been feeling really helpless about the situation in Syria—so awful, and seemingly so little we can do from so many miles away. So I was excited when the Unitarian congregation I attend announced a new project: to sponsor a refugee family to come to Canada!
The family we are bringing over has two little girls, and for the past two years they’ve been living in a refugee camp. That is no way for a child to live. On average, refugees eat 400 calories worth of food each day—that is not nearly enough for a growing kid!
So as one of our fundraising efforts, I got myself together to chart and write up a Side with Love scarf.
Side with Love is an interfaith public advocacy campaign that seeks to harness love’s power to stop oppression. It is sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association and all are welcome to join.
The campaign is “open-source” so side with love in the way the spirit moves you, but honour the intention of the campaign, and harness the power of love to stop oppression!
It is also asked that you stay true to the official colour scheme, which is black, white, and a rich orangey-yellow (Pantone 137). patons classic wool superwash dk has the perfect gold for this! Right now I’m working from stash, but I have some Patons on order to do it up right!
The pattern is for a double-knit scarf to keep warm during the next “thirty days of love” campaign, which typically runs from Martin Luther King Jr. Day through Valentine’s Day. You need to understand how to work double-knit to make this pattern (there are plenty of great tutorials online), but you could just as easily use the chart to add a bit of love to something else!
I am asking that anyone who downloads this free pattern makes a donation of $5 or more to our refugee sponsorship. You can find out more about the family we're sponsoring and make a donation here. The link is through Canada Helps, so an income tax receipt will be generated for any donation of over $20.
And once you’ve made your donation, here is the link to download the side with love scarf pattern, or you can find it on Ravelry. enjoy!
oh procrastination!
i ought to be getting the kiddo ready for school, but instead i did a quick alphabet chart for knitting prince george's sweater. i just love the way he is looking at the dog lupo in this picture!
here's a closer look at the sweater:
and here's a simple chart of his name:
if i get my real work done, i'll chart the rest of the alphabet later.
it's new year's day, and we decided to kick off the new year in the best way possible: with cake!
we were invited out to a new year's day brunch, and thought it would be a good occasion to try smitten kitchen's honey cake. it's a bit of a huge recipe but absolutely simple technique-wise, and i was looking forward to having three loaf cakes - one to take, one for home, and one to save for a rainy day (tomorrow, maybe?). and honey cake to guarantee a sweet new year is a lovely tradition.
i soon realised however that i only have two loaf pans! so i went with the two layer cakes opetion instead.
i read the notes, especially observing the update on leavening to solve the problem of the fallen middle. however:
wah.
i salvaged it by gamely chopping the fallen center out of the cake, slicing the remaining edge pieces into neat rectangles, and arranging them on a plate. i felt bad bringing it, but the reaction was overwhelmingly, "is that honey cake? yay!" so i guess it was all right.
next up was finishing my cable rib cowl.
i decided to go with the drawstring hat option, because why not?
then i tried to take a picture of what it looks like as a hat, indoors in poor light, with my own shaky hands holding the camera, with varying degrees of failure.
ah well.
shelburne cowl (inspired by shelburne mitts)
need: 2 skeins rowan big wool, and a 5mm circ
gauge: 14 sts = 4 inches in cable rib pattern, unstretched
cast on 60 sts using long tail technique, or other stretchy cast on of your choice. join to work in round.
row 1: (k2; p1) repeat till end of round.
row 2: (k into second stitch, then k into first stitch, then slide both off needle together; p1) repeat till end of round.
repeat these two rows until work measures 8 1/2" ending with row 2.
drawstring row: (k2; yo k2tog; k1; p1) repeat till end of round.
next row: as for row 2.
work 5 more rows in pattern, ending with row 1. bind off in pattern using stretchy bind off of your choice, such as yo; k1; slip first stitch and yo over last stitch. weave in ends.
cast on three sts for i-cord. k3, slip 3 purlwise to left needle, hold yarn behind. repeat till measures 34". weave in ends. thread through holes in cowl.
the puppy-ness is worked in textures rather than colours, so it's not "too too." it's mostly garter stitch, for extra thickness for warmth. best part: when the kiddo is running and the ears flap in the breeze! three sizes, for baby, toddler, and young boy, in ella rae or briggs & little (for bigboy durability!)
ok, here is the link for sale on ravelry:
Xmas is less than 3 months away! And the kid now has an elf hat to go with his socks to get him in the spirit. I've written up the pattern as well, in case anyone else can't stop thinking about the holidays already. I've only written it up for their size (3 1/2-year-old with a big head) but it should be easy to size up or down, as long as your cast-on is divisible by 8. Here's the pattern! I knit it out of Briggs & Little Tuffy - bought on sale, that means a hat and socks for only $5! yay.
A couple of things you will need to know for the hat: short row shaping, s2sk (like ssk, except you slip 2 tog, then one, and then knit through all 3 - a centred decrease from 3 stitches to 1), kfbf (knitting in the front and back and front of a stitch to make 3 out of 1.
now that loudxmouse has received the package i sent for the miyazaki swap, i'm going to post my blurry pics here!
loudxmouse said that she was keen on kodama, among other things. kodama are little sprites that look like this:
so i decided, why not recreate that image as a handbag?
i made the handbag out of a few different-but-similar shades of dark green fabric. i appliqued a few leafy bits on, and to hold the kodama dolls, i made leaf-edged pockets, and top-stitched them so they'd stay nice and pointy:
then, i knitted and felted some little kodama dolls to tuck into the shrubbery:
here's a close up of my favourite little guy:
again, i chickened out of trying to felt them in the washing machine, and just did them in the bathroom sink - it only took fifteen minutes! - and then propped them in front a heating vent to dry quickly.
i've written up a pattern for knitting the wee kodama dolls, if anyone is interested. i made up the pattern using the two-needle tube double-knitting technique that erin explained to me a while ago. i also took a couple of snaps of the work-in-progress, which i'll put up tomorrow, since double-knitting is easy to do once you get it, but tricky to figure out the first time.
