Chemo Caps

I wish I'd made something else, but  my sister started chemo recently, so this is what I made for her. I wanted to knit a Shedir, but was unable to find a soft cotton yarn at the right gauge. And so I modified the Shedir pattern using five repeats around the hat instead of eight. I wrote my modifications on ravelry.



That's the spouse, kindly modeling for me. Please say a prayer for my sister if you read this.

Chess Whim

The husband wanted a very thin hat, in a solid color. I chose "Merino Dream" by Lucy Neatby.

Oh, how I regret that decision.

I started with 3 mm needles (the recommended needle size on the label), and ended up going down two needle sizes and using 2 mm. That's US 0. Which meant that I needed hundreds of stitches (Oh, how I miss the joy of the Addi hats, with their 46 stitches).

The yarn is also splitty, and uneven in both texture and color. The label warns you about color variations, but what I encountered were spots where the hank had been tied too tightly and the color did not penetrate. I seriously hate, hate, hate this yarn. I have about 55 grams left, enough for another hat if I wanted to, but I don't. The spouse suggested matching mittens and I growled at him.

Another problem was that the spouse wanted to have chess pieces as decoration. Without the benefit of a contrasting color, my only choice was garter figures. As I found out, those work well with light colors, but not with pitch black. So even after spending some time charting the figures and experimenting until they satisfied the spouse, once on the hat, they are very difficult to figure out.

Oh well. You can't always be happy with all your knitting projects.

Another hat

Pardon the bad picture. You all know how hard it is to make pictures of yourself. This is the hat I started recently on the addi express. Basically, I knitted 25 rows, picked all stitches up and continued knitting in the round using two 6 1/2 mm circulars, decreasing in a five point star pattern. The hat is a bit pointy. I usually decrease in a six point star pattern for hats but, what can you do with 46 stitches? I made one decrease in the first row and after that based my decreases on 45 stitches, which is divisible by five.

As for the edge, I picked up the stitches and, as I was binding off, I was also dropping every other stitch for five rows and picking it up with a crochet hook from the inside. The dropped stitches become purl stitches on the outside, creating the ribbing. I think this dropping/picking up stitches took me much longer than the 25 rows I knitted on the machine.

I also made another pot of black beans and took the opportunity to test the use of Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) as mordant.




Because even if alum is not toxic, and they use lots of it in treating drinking water, aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer's disease. And yes, I know correlation does not imply causation, and that alum is used in preserves and no one has had a problem with that, and that some of the studies liking aluminum to Alzheimer's disease were controversial. Anyway, magnesium is actually one of the essential minerals one must consume everyday and there is no controversy around its use. Not that I would recommend eating Epsom salts. I just want to try other alternatives.

It is interesting that the pretty blue I got using alum did not really come out with Epsom salts. You can tell the difference in the dye water itself, wich turns blue when you use alum as a mordant, but not when you use epsom salts. I thought the blue was a result of the pH change, but I believe now that aluminum somehow interacts with the dye, like many metals do. That is why they tell you not to use metal pots for dyeing.

Hat break

I halted all sock progress to make a hat. Not because I was tired of socks, or because I wanted to knit something with larger needles... It's just that I bought a new toy: The Addi Express. I got the King Size version, with 46 stitches.




I knit up the hat really fast, then took it off the machine and finished the crown by hand.  This was tricky and I messed up a bit. Then I picked up  the bottom stitches and made the  ribbed edge. I used the yarn that came with the machine, a wool acrylic blend called Zermatt. Today, with some difficulties, I managed to knit the rest of the yarn into a flat piece, proving that the machine can be used also for flat knitting. The equivalent needle size is about 6 mm.

It's fun, but it's an expensive toy.

Other than the price, my main objection is against the number of stitches.Why did they choose 46 needles? If you  plan on adding any decoration like duplicate stitches or buttons, or even for making crown decreases when knitting a hat, 46 is a really bad number. It is divisible only by 23 and 2. The perfect number would have been 48: divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 16.