Knitting A Mile Square

Inspired by my knitty neighbor Mrs. H, (and even though I am in the middle of serious fall knitting madness) I foolishly believed I had an evening to spare to quickly whip up the very popular Star Crossed Beret for Emily.  I thought: look! It’s size 11 needles, bulky yarn, some sassy little cables, I could do this with my eyes closed and one needle tied behind my back.

Well, readers, let me give you some advice:  RTFP*.  This hat was frogged and reknitted 3 times in three days, ripped out right down to the ribbing.  First – and one word describes it all: gauge.  Second, I misread the cable pattern, making twice as many cables as called for, because I’m so cocky I just look at the pictures not the instructions.  And lastly, I misjudged Emily’s direction to make it “slouchy, but not too slouchy, just slouchy enough”.  What’s the median circumference of slouchy, can you tell me?

Luckily I finished it in time for the snow on Saturday.

In the end, it was only middling slouchy but I needed to get on with my knitting life!

* Read The F$%#%& Pattern

Is today really the first really cold day we’ve had this year? I can never remember the weather from one year to the next, or even one week to the next.  In any event, I was head to toe handknits today and happy about it.

For sure it was cold enough for this kid to wear her new mittens:

These mitties are a combination of a few My Neighbor Totoro patterns I found on Ravelry.  Here is a link to the one on the right: the one on the left is just a fair isle combo of soot sprites and mini Totoro.   And this was a stash buster, using up about two half skeins of Dale of Norway Baby Ull that I had left over from when, well, this kid was a baby.