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Красная шапочка

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, a young researcher headed into a castle of documents wearing a red beret as protection from the bitter cold.

The castle (or, well, archive), of course, was guarded against the cold and dirt of the outside world by two dragons... er, older ladies, who ran the coat check room.  They watched carefully to make sure that propriety was maintained, using the power of their glares to cow the most sprightly incomers.

But on that day, when the young researcher entered the coat room to face the dragon, she wore the red beret, which turned out to have magical powers...

Because the dragon saw her and was disarmed--she exclaimed, "Ой, Красная Шапочка!," and clapped her hands in delight.

"Oh, Little Red Riding Hood!" (which in Russian is actually Little Red Hat Girl)

That was just a cheap dimestore beret, kind of itchy, that tended to leave a red mark on my forehead.  But the beret was warm, and it was Russia and it was winter, and the archive had no heat.

I honestly can't remember what happened to that beret.  I might have left it in Russia.  It might have come home and been abandoned during one of my later moves.  I wish I knew.

Since then, I've kind of thought of knitting a red hat again, but somehow hadn't gotten around to it.  And then I saw Red Rose, and thought, aha.  That's my red hat.

So late last year I bought yarn--Rowan Kid Classic in Cherry Red--that glowed and was just fuzzy enough to give the hat the feel of that picture.

And after checking through various projects on ravelry, I cast on for the medium, using 4 mm needles.  And I knit and knit and knit... and realized it was too big.

No problem.  I frogged, and started again on 3 mm needles.  A nicer fabric, I thought, and it seemed like it was going to work.

And then I finished it, and realized... too big.  Not awful, but given that I knew it wanted a bit of blocking to make it look nicer and neater... too big.

And then I was sad, and threw it in my project box, and stopped.

But last weekend, I decided to pull it out again.  I reskeined the yarn.  I cast on for a small.  And just over a day later, I had a hat.

I'm finding it very difficult to get a picture that really captures the color, and utterly impossible to get a picture of it being worn that doesn't look ridiculous.  But, there you go.  Here it is, blocked.

For comparison, this is what it looked like, before blocking, straight off the needles.  Much... bumpier, I guess, and a bit smaller, too.  I blocked it over a soup bowl, one with quite a wide rim, which worked perfectly. 

This was the pre-blocking side view, which doesn't look all that different from the post-blocking side view.  Except, again, bumpier.

Even though I can't get a good picture of it, I actually really do like how this looks.  It's just too bad I decided to do this just as March came in, because it may actually be bringing spring with it.  Fingers crossed, wood knocked, and all that, but... whee!

One hat/two hats (aka Voyager hat)

I made this hat after making the voyager lace stole, designed by Shui Kuen Kozinski and Benne Ferrell, and available at http://www.elann.com/ShowFreePattern.asp?Id=258024.  Loved the stole, and thought a matching hat would be perfect.

When I knit the hat, I realized that because this lace pattern had both strong ribbing tendencies and the possibility of being blocked out well, a hat knit out of it could have two entire personalities:  a close-fitting cap, or a looser beret/tam.

So, here’s the one hat/two hat pattern.

Yarn:  Textiles a Mano “Lanita” doubled
Needles:  US #4 circular (or dpn)
Gauge: 23 st/ 35 rows per 4 inches in stockinette stitch

Cast on 120 stitches.  
Join circle and knit in k2, p2 ribbing for 1 ½ inches.

Increase row:  [K1, m1, k1, p1, m1, p1, k2, p1, m1, p1, k2, p1, m1, p1, k1, m1, k1, p2, k1, m1, k1, p2] 6 times (156 stitches)

Begin knitting leaf pattern:  Repeat pattern within red box 3 times, then begin decrease section (rows 31-40).  (Note that the stitch count varies every row).

 

After finishing row 40, continue to knit in reverse stockinette (purl every stitch), decreasing one stitch every row (p2tog) above the final k2tog, switching to dpn, 2 circular needles, or magic loop when needed.

At 6 stitches, break off yarn, thread through remaining stitches, and tie off tightly.

Weave in ends.

Like this, the hat is a fairly tight cap:  hat one!

Alternatively, wash and stretch over a dinner plate to block out into a tam.  When dry, hat two!

Just in time

Y'all, it's cold here.  It's cold in a lot of places, I know, including a lot of places people I know live.  But still, it's worth commenting that it's cold here.

This makes me all the happier that last night I finished off the hat I started Sunday evening.  The knitting went super quickly, but there was a seam I didn't feel like dealing with until last night.

The result?

 

Crappy picture, but cute, very warm hat.

I was inspired by seeing this post over the weekend--I realized that I had some chunky alpaca yarn that I'd picked up a few years ago at the Estes Park wool market, and never figured out what do to with.

And so, urchin, size medium, in Misti Alpaca Chunky, I think color "ember melange," though I've thought of it as ox-blood, on 7 mm needles.  I only had double pointed needles in that size, so I stuck needle caps on ends and used those--there's only 22 stitches per row, so that's no problem.

Most of all, since it's alpaca, even though it's got places where it looks a little loosely knit, it's quite warm.  I wore it this morning and my head was toasty.  Or as toasty as it's possible to be when the temperatures drop into, as I like to call them, snot-freezing temperatures.  Sorry, I know that's gross, but it's also the best description there is, as far as I'm concerned.

Not the most successful Christmas knitting

A bit too big, no?

My mom wore my rangoli hat when she visited me at some point last year, liked it, recently asked "so, do you still have that hat I wore when I visited you?," which made me think perhaps she might like one, and so I pulled out some brown and black alpaca from my stash and started it.  I managed to finish it while on my flight here, in large part because of the crazy delay, but the result... not so good.

Ah, well.  I've reknit it with different yarn, and now it seems to be a success.  But pictures of that, and of my other last-minute Christmas knitting, are still to come.

Quite a weekend

First, there was the snow.  Lots of snow, all Sunday.  Falling and blowing and generally being pretty and cold.

This is as far as my back door opens right now, so much snow is on my little deck.

This would be less of a problem if my shovel weren't buried somewhere under the snow.

(I'm actually fairly sure I know exactly where it is, once I get around to digging myself and then it out.  This will be necessary to move my car, eventually.)

Well, actually, first there was my mom coming to visit for the weekend. 

We ate a lot of good food, and did a bit of touristy traveling around by streetcar and subway (mostly the former, which allows for better tourist-being).

While doing all this, I was very glad for my newly finished gloves.  This is all based on some hand spun, hand dyed yarn I bought in Berlin.  It was a thick and thin, fairly bulky yarn.  First, I used just it and made a garter stitch scarf.  I was careful not to make it too long, by instead making it what initially seemed a touch too short.  But, of course, it stretched, and I am am very happy with the result.

But I had extras.  And so I put it together with some brown yarn I had around (I think it's a wool/yak/silk combination, so, fancy!) to make a matching hat.  And then I STILL had extras.  So I used it plus the brown for the cuffs, and then only the brown for the hands, of my first pair of gloves.  They took several iterations of guess work to get them sized properly, and I should probably have done them one needle size down for a tighter fit.  And I still haven't perfected the picking up of stitches to avoid holes completely, but I have now at least learned to leave long enough ends to sew any holes closed.

Ziti certainly enjoyed having another lap to sit in... and, actually, I think he prefers my mom's lap to mine!  She thinks it's because when he was staying with them he got tastier food, and so he has residual memories of that.  I think he just likes her.

On Sunday, we totally never left the apartment.  Well, I walked down to the front door twice, once to get the paper, and once to throw out some trash.

Instead we read, and listened to music, and watched a FREAKY sort of silly, sort of scary show I'd recorded a couple months ago, Jekyll, which was enjoyable.

And we made cookies.  I've decided to give cookies to some people this year, and so baking was necessary.

Here's a blurry picture of the results, pre packing into give-away boxes, due to the fact that I need to acquire more packing materials.

Those are (clockwise from top left) "Linzer stars," "Italian sprinkle cookies," "molasses crinkles," and "raspberry meringue kisses."  They're all, if I do say so myself, yummy in very different ways.

Oh, wait, we also knit.  Mom started something over Thanksgiving, but a couple of inches in she found herself stopped by a mistake, and so put her project away until now. 

Now, how cool is this?  I gave mom other, plainer wool and needles, and she set about purposefully making mistakes so she could learn how to fix them.  And she's totally showing her math teacher roots.  She wanted to know the difference between garter stitch and reverse stockinette, since initially it does look quite similar.  I said, "well, the bumps are arranged differently."  She paused for a few moments, and said, "oh, in one they're offset, and in the other they're right on top of each other."  Yes, exactly!  Pattern recognition, ahoy!

And so, we figured out the mistake (it was a dropped stitch that needed a little more help to pick up),
and she went on knitting, and got quite a bit done.  I'd post a picture, but she's looking at me like "why on earth are you taking a picture of me right now" in it, so... just trust me.  There was much knitting.

Three wee older things

Now that I know that the babies involved have received these, and therefore that any parents of said babies who read this (not sure if any do, but you never know) know about them, I can post pictures of a few tiny projects that I made over the last couple of months, and then took forever to send to their new owners.

First, for an older sister and her new baby brother, Bee hats.  (There's a reason for that.  Both names start with B.)

I charted the little bees in Excel (that link downloads the excel file), and then had to figure out how to put them on the hats.  I first thought I'd do them as a repeating pattern all the way around, doing a sort of stranded color work thing, but that got way too complicated, with too many things dangling off the back and too much twisting and confusion.

And so, instead, I just knit the hats plain, and then duplicate stitched the bees on top.  Perfect solution!

Second, a very simple little mock cable rib hat, in variegated fine cotton, for a SoCal baby.

The cotton is the stuff I bought in New York last spring, that I used (with something else) to make the Milanese lace camisole/tank.  I liked it then, and I like it now!  I still have a ton of this stuff, too.

Two more things on/off needles

I finished desiknitter's rangoli hat two nights ago, and here it is blocking.

This was a lovely quick knit.  Best of all, I didn't have to switch from circulars to double pointed needles until maybe the last five or six rows.  To that I say awesome.

The yarn's stuff I bought in Melbourne last year, from Marta's Yarns.  It's a nice wool, and I can't remember anything about it other than that (at Marta's the yarn's all on big cones, and they wind you off as much as you want; I got 100 g, and still have a small bit left over).

It turns out that my bobble technique needs work.  I don't think I did them very well, they kind of don't show up very much in real life, though I guess you can see them in this picture.

I also ended up using a size 6 needle, because I was worried about the tightness of the ribbing on size 5s.  Now, of course, seeing how the yarn relaxed when washed, I can tell that the 5s would probably have been fine.  But.  I worried.

I must admit, however, that I'm not sure I'm going to like this hat on my head.  In its unwashed, unblocked state, it looked goofy (on me, not generally!  I have weird hat issues), but we'll see how it does now.

I also just started something new with the alpaca that was going to be the frost flowers and leaves shawl.  It's the Alpine Lace Scarf from Victorian Lace Today.  This is the bottom border, and a single repeat of it will run up the sides.  In the center will be a leafy pattern.  I'm liking it so far, though working on the Orenburg shawl ruined me a bit for other lace work.  On Orenburgs, there's no purling.  And that's a good thing, in general.

I've been knitting quite a bit, despite the heat, in large part because I finally broke down and got cable.  And in a fit of profligacy and desire, a dvr.  So now I've got it recording all sorts of things (the Daily Show, Everwood, Farscape, Gilmore Girls, Slings & Arrows, Mad Men, and random movies that I've noticed) and have been very, very much enjoying this.  It's letting me catch things I missed during the spring, too.  Whee!

And, yes, I'm getting real work done to.  And even added to it, by agreeing to some additional service next week.  Man, what am I thinking?!

A whole series of little things

And now, a series of random thoughts, begun while sitting in the Lenin Library on a Saturday afternoon that started snowy, but is turning into brilliantly sunlit, in particular the gold crosses on the top of the Kremlin churches that I can see as I sit at my desk. (A note written much later, at my desk at home... the snow came back, but that absolutely beautiful sparkly kind of snow, so sparkly that as I walked away from a symphony concert the sparkling trumped the grey slush... even the grey, icky sidewalks sparkled.)

An anecdote:  Vladimir Putin walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator, where he sees a gelatine.  He tells it "stop trembling, I'm here for the cheese."

An injury:  I think I've sprained my toe.  Or something.  It hurts, and it's kind of purple, though I can still move it, and more or less bend it.  Unlike my last Russian injury (I slipped on the sidewalk by the Bolshoi theatre, which has shiny marble inlaid in it, which is freaking slippery after a snow), it has nothing to do with Russia.  Instead, as I got up from the desk to go out of my room, my toe caught the phone cord currently attached to the computer, which I didn't realize until I had actually pulled my computer off the desk, but fortunately only down onto a chair, where it snagged, which then snagged my toe.  Ouch.  Oh, and the computer's fine.  (Again, later: it still hurts, but it's less purple.  I figure that's a good thing.)

A story from my landlady:  when, in the 1960s, the BBC miniseries of The Forsyte Saga was shown on Soviet TV, the streets were empty because everyone was home watching it.  And it was spring, and the weather was even nice.  (This might seem inexplicable, but becomes somewhat more explicable when the additional factoid that the complete works of John Galsworthy, translated into Russian, are still a frequent sight on Russian bookshelves.)

A new (and sad) sighting:  I've gotten sort of used to the stray dogs (though I will grant that the stray dog sleeping IN THE MIDDLE OF A METRO CAR was a bit surprising, and not really a good start to the day), sad as they are, but I think I've now actually seen stray cats fighting for dominance.  Well, not fighting yet, but two cats were having a stand off--IN THE SNOW--in my neighborhood the other night when I was coming home.  That was mildly surprising.  And earlier that day, in an odd coincidence, I'd seen the archive cats for the first time this trip.  One was yowling to be let into the office.  He got his way.

Thoughts on The Office, with which I am now caught up, thanks to the fast free wifi that came with my cappuccino yesterday:  AUGH!  Michael Scott has been enormously cringe-inducing over the last two episodes, just when it seemed like he was being sort of normally human for a while.  MUCH more like the first season... and I actually even thought he LOOKED more like first season Michael Scott in the episode "Ben Franklin."  I actually had to stop in the middle of that episode, because I couldn't bear the thought of where he might be going. 

Thoughts on hats:  this is a very, very sad attempt to capture some of the hats I've seen.  I'm a little too shy, or something, to snap pictures of total strangers, even though there have been a lot of them that I'd like to capture.  But they are examples of the GIANT fur hat on a tiny head, a too-small fur hat on a big head, a just-right hat on a head with Brezhnev eyebrows (seriously, they were amazing), and an attempt to express something I've found interesting about a lot of the knit hats I've seen here.  First, most of them seem to be knit flat and then sewn up the back.  Second, I've seen a lot in which the band is knit in a narrow strip, and then (I assume) stitches are picked up along one long edge and knit up for the main part of the hat.  In other words, the direction of the knitting is different between the two parts.  And there are a lot of hats with very wide bands, actually.  And my favorite possibly hand-made hat I've seen was actually crocheted (or so it looked to my eye) kind of on the diagonal.  It was very cool.

And a first:  a pattern to offer (a pdf file).  It's the entrelac Mac envelope, also suitable as a bag in other ways.  Add a handle.  Add a button.  Add a zipper.  Go crazy!

I've been using it as is, with no handle, just to keep the little guy warm when it gets cold out.  Last week I had the brilliant epiphany that my computer actually fit just perfectly in my purse, and so I've been carrying that instead of my larger bag; there's then just enough room for necessities and a small book, and the occasional extra thing.  I can carry the whole shebang (minus the book, which has to be checked) into the Lenin library, which is one place I really want a bag with a handle (ever tried juggling a wallet, a passport, a computer, a pen, a packet of tissues [since there's no toilet paper] and various papers while using a toilet with no seat?  I'll tell you, it's not easy.  I end up perpetually worried that my passport's going to fall in the toilet, which would be disturbing on SO MANY LEVELS.).  But the envelope works really well at the archives, as it keeps everything together in a guard-friendly way.  And I think it's also serving its purpose of insulating the computer from the cold, which has been stronger here this past week (though nothing like the northeast and upper midwest, I know!  Who'd've thought my going to Moscow in January was going to let me be warmer than y'all??)

Anyway, the pattern may well be rife with mistakes.  I totally just wrote it up from memory of what I did, not as I went.  I think it's right, but if anyone happens to try to make it, and discovers there are major problems, let me know, and I'll fix them and repost.  Some of the instructions (about amount of yarn and gauge, in particular, I'm afraid) are kind of vaguer than I'd like, and some are more rambling than is probably ideal, but... hopefully it makes sense.

(And a final, later note, on music:  I love the Moscow Conservatory, not as much as the Philharmonic in St. Petersburg, but still.  Tonight I heard two Strauss tone poems, and two concertos by Bruch:  the first violin and the violin/viola.  The violinst was Maksim Fedotov, who I SWEAR TO GOD totally looked like Severus Snape, except less greasy, at least from a distance.  And then that got me to thinking about Harry Potter and preordering it and dealing with the being in Canada thing for that and the new movie and the really disturbing pictures of Daniel Radcliffe that have recently been sent about.  And my mind would NOT have been wandering, because the music was really good, were it not for the fact that the CHICKA sitting next to me started TALKING ON HER CELL PHONE in the middle of the first Bruch concerto.  I mean, honestly.  The hell?!?  And I'VE been called uncultured for freaking trying to carry a sweater slung over my bag instead of over my shoulders?!)

WsIP, February 2006

So, yes, this is a stranger than normal WsIP picture.  But, hell, I was feeling arty.

In front is the most recent thing I've started:  a booga bag.  Except mine will be bigger by about a half, I think.  I've just finished the bottom, and will probably pick up the stitches to start working in the round when I finish this post.

The yarn, incidentally, is Noro Kureyon #124, which I have to say is lovely.  When I decided to order the Kureyon to make that hat, I ordered 5 skeins, because otherwise mail ordering would feel stupid.  I first thought I'd make mittens and a scarf to go with the hat... but as pretty as the yarn is, it's awfully scratchy, which makes me less inclined to have it wrapped around my neck.  So, I finished the hat and decided to use the rest for something else... hence, the booga bag.  Yee haw.

Behind it to the left is the yarn for the second sock... on which I've done very little.  Like an inch of the ribbing, that's it.  But it'll come.

Then the Orenburg shawl.  Enough about that already.

And finally, the giant grey thing looming in the back is the second sleeve of the pinwheel sweater, which has been laying there pinned to the blocking board for... a couple of weeks?  Holy crap.  Yeah, I should finish that.

Completed this month, incidentally?  One sock.  One clapotis.  And one hat.

More pretty. (Still sick.)

Motherf-n' sick, more like.

Seriously, I have not been this sick in years.  And for this I am grateful, since I know that even if I've felt like crap for almost a week, it's still just having-a-bad-cold crap.

Nonetheless.  I'm tired of it.

Despite the still being sick, I went to L's yesterday and caved and bought the very pretty, expensive yarn I've been coveting.  It's her "Wuxi," which is 50% wool, 50% silk, and extraordinarily soft.  For whatever reason, I just adored these colors, the dark, rich oranges and reds. 

Because of the silk, I think, the yarn has a nice luster... that's probably why the sunlight here, even if not direct, is washing the color out a bit.  It's really made of a bunch of very rich tints, not pale at all.

Now the thing is, I have no idea what I'll do with this.  Something lovely, that I know, but what exactly?  We'll see.

I also picked up something much more reasonable:  basic cream organic cotton in a slightly nubbly twist.

I don't have an exact pattern in mind, but basically, I could use a new spring/summer lightweight cardigan type thing.  And this yarn will, I think, be perfect.  It may actually be the thing I work on next.

In the meantime, though, I've started to work on that Noro hat I linked to a few weeks ago, a stripey, ribbed sort of thing.  I broke down and ordered some Noro Kureyon which is, for those of you who read this not for the knitting (if you read these parts) is a Japanese wool that is famous for its colors and the way it knits up.  I think I read somewhere that it was one of the (or maybe the?) first self-striping yarns, which means it creates regular (more or less) stripes as you knit in the round.

Anyway.  I had much more of the hat done, but, eh.  The pattern calls for more stitches cast on than I'd do, which is, I assume, to get the striping to work out well.  But my striping wasn't coming out perfectly (though prettily), and it just seemed sillily big.  So, instead, there's this much done, and the yarn balled which means it's harder to see its prettiness.  It is pretty, I have to say, although it's also kind of scratchy, which makes me think I may not love this yarn.

But we'll see.