Selfish Sewing (er, Knitting) Week: Thicket Hat

It's Selfish Sewing Week hosted by Rachael of Imagine Gnats!  It's perfect for my 2014 goal of making more things for myself, so when I saw a call out for knitters, I jumped at the chance.  One can never have too many hats.  I chose to knit up Thicket by Brooklyn Tweed, since you know I'm all about cables.

My first try, though, was a fail.  I should have gone with my gut, along with a few Ravelry projects that said the pattern runs big.  I tend to be all, "Oh, I'll knit this up and even though it seems like way too many stitches for a worsted weight hat, it'll be fine!"  And then no.  Ginormous.  It's kind of cute from the back and side, but just silly from the front, not to mention in danger of falling off any second.  I know some people wear hats this slouchy and look adorable, but it doesn't work for me.

Shoddy bathroom selfie

I absolutely LOVE the cable pattern, though, so I sat down and figured out how I wanted to size it down.  How great is this detail?  I love how twisted stitches pop.

I dug through my stash and found this Knit Picks Merino Style, which was sold as DK weight, but knits up as more of a light worsted.  Then I cast on only 110 stitches and did five repeats of the pattern instead of six.  I also skipped to row 36 after I finished knitting row 27.  That did the trick.

Just the right amount of slouch

I love how the top comes together and forms petal-like shapes.  Having five sections makes it look like a star.

The main pattern is a chart only, not written out.  When I first started knitting, I thought charts were super intimidating, but once I used one, I was sold on them.  It's much easier to "read" your knitting, especially if you have to rip back a few rows.  Not that I ever have to do that because I was distracted while binge-watching Supernatural on Netflix...

One of the cables requires you to hold one stitch to the front and one to the back, so if you don't already know how to cable without a cable needle, I would highly recommend learning.  It made things much simpler.

 

Now that I've finished up my selfish knitting, I have some selfish sewing lined up.  I've been so inspired by the other SSW projects on the Kollabora page, as well as these participating bloggers:

milkybeer · Behind the Hedgerow · jm_subrn · Sew What, Sherlock? Lladybird · sew Amy sew · the Brodrick Design Studio · adirondack inspired The Crooked Banana · Sewbon · Idle Fancy · girl like the sea oona aloona · Lauren Dahl · verypurpleperson · la inglesita Groovybaby...and mama · Buzzmills · La Pantigana · sew a straight line Dandelion Drift · JustMeJay · B Yazoo · Disaster In A Dress the quirky peach · Fishsticks Designs · Seamstress Erin · a happy stitch Casa Crafty · Sarah Jane Sews · YoSaMi · Call Ajaire · miss matatabi
 

There's also a fantastic giveaway that you can enter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hats and mittens and cowls! Oh my!

*Post title brought to you by our recent startling realization that O has not seen The Wizard of Oz.  This will be remedied soon.

I've been trying to look on the bright side with the whole polar vortex/longest, coldest winter in my lifetime thing and am mostly failing miserably (although it's actually a miraculous 33F right now -- woohoo!  I'm almost ready to break out the flip flops and sundresses).  I do, however, really like winter accessories, which are a bit of consolation.  And I really like being able to cover my badly-in-need-of-a-cut hair with a hat anytime I'm out in public and being able to act like it's because of the weather.

One pattern I have fallen in love with is the Kitschy Coo bibbed cowl.  Perfect for kids, and I have been known to swipe O's for myself also.  Here's his, which is made from the same camo fleece as his hat and convertible mitts.  The other side is black microfleece. I liked this so much that I actually handstitched the opening for turning so it would be reversible.  Shocking, I know!

He's actually not going spelunking; we were going for a walk and it was getting dark.

I was so happy with the cowl that I made one for E also, even though I'd already made her a mini version of my ruffled cowl.  I also made her another pair of Sew Baby Mitten Wraps from two layers of fleece.  I lengthened the cuff for more wrist coverage.  She has teeny wrists, so I really need to move the velcro over, but the cuff of her winter coat holds them in place okay for now.  This fleece is an exact color match of her coat; I should have taken a picture.

And, of course, she needed a new hat.  I had just enough yarn left from this soaker sack that never made it onto the blog to knit her an earflap hat with a crocheted flower.  I'm pretty terrible at following crochet patterns, so I was quite pleased that I managed that little embellishment.

More recently, I made myself a Vrida Cabled Slouch hat, after I realized that the last time I knitted myself something was in 2009.  Yikes.  One of my goals for the year is more sewing and knitting for myself.  I love to make things for the kids and to give as gifts, but I've been stockpiling patterns and fabric and yarn for myself for years, and I need to make a dent in that stash!  Plus I know I'll be a grateful recipient.  ;)

This was also made to match the awesome felted sweater mittens that my sister made me for my birthday.  I meant to photograph them together, but apparently never did.  So imagine teal and charcoal sweater mittens, okay?

I am very happy with how this turned out.  I was running out of yarn and had to cut down on the body a little, so I was worried it wouldn't be slouchy enough, but it blocked nicely.  If I know you IRL, you probably either have already seen me wearing this or will soon enough!  

I also made my dad a hat.  When I saw him before Christmas, he complimented Ray and me on our red hats (the aforementioned 2009 knit for myself) and mentioned that he recently lost the hat I'd knit for him before.  And by before, I mean before O was born, so he was due for a new one!  Since I'm currently obsessed with cables, I went with the MacDuff hat and totally love it.  I made the M/L because he has a biggish head, and it's little large on me, but you get the idea.

It's a darker red in real life, but I have a lot of trouble getting reds and purples right with my camera.  User error, I'm sure.

Man, I do love a good cable, especially now that I relearned how to cable without a cable needle.  So slick.

In other news, I finally got a smart phone and am on Instagram now!

Handmade Holidays 2013

I ended up not doing a whole lot of Christmas sewing this year (I had big plans, but didn't get to most of them), but there was a fair amount of knitting.  I just mailed out the last thing this week *sigh*, so I'm finally blogging about the gifts as well.

I made O's teacher some boot toppers and also gave her some coffee and coconut oil exfoliating scrub that apparently never got photographed.  It was brown and in cute jar, so just imagine that.  I was quite pleased with the boot toppers.  (Ravelry notes)  Someday I'd like to make myself a pair.  I looked on Ravelry a couple of days ago, and the last time I knitted myself anything was 2009!  I still wear that hat too.

E's teacher and para also got the scrub, along with some slippers.  I made her teacher Bea's Slippers (Ravelry notes) and loooooved how they turned out.  They took a lot longer to knit than I was expecting, though, so I had to find a quicker option for her para.

I ended up knitting double-stranded slippers for hers, and they were super quick and quite squishy.  (Ravelry notes)  She told me after the break that her kids kept swiping them from her.  Haha.

I also wanted to give a little some thing to the secretary at E's school, since I end up bugging her to sign in and out nearly every day at drop-off and pick-up time.  She had a bio up in the entrance at the beginning of the year that said she sewed, so I had that in the back of my head and decided to make her a jar pincushion and fill it with a few chocolates.  Honestly, she had one of the best reactions to a gift that I've given in a long time.  It made my day to see how happy she was that I had read her bio and remembered that she sews.

Here's my only actual sewn project!  Ray asked for a phone cozy for when he runs in the cold.  I took this tutorial and simplified it, since I knew he couldn't care less about the piecing.

O wanted to make E a blanket and decided a tie blanket would be the way to go.  He was right, she loves the fringe. He chose the fabric, I did the cutting and Ray and I both helped him tie it, but he did a significant part of it.

It looks like E's staring down that raccoon.

Back to knitting (I have no rhyme or reason to this post, I guess), my SIL requested an earflap hat for her younger son, so I made him this one.  (Ravelry notes)  This was my most shamefully late gift of this holiday season.  Winter doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon, though, so he will have plenty of opportunity to wear it still.  Hopefully it fits!

And last, but not least, the kids' annual Christmas ornaments.  (You can see 2011's here and 2012's here.)  O has been very into watching the Peanuts holiday specials, so I was inspired by this ornament on Etsy and made him Charlie Brown.  I wanted to use a glass ball like the original, but couldn't find any when I finally went shopping (I think Hobby Lobby has them, but it was a Sunday, so they were closed).  I settled for a paper mache one instead, so Charlie Brown is a little bumpier than I would have liked, but O didn't seem to care.

E's ornament was again based on her Halloween costume (as well as her on-going love of our cat).  It ended up being a huge pain to knit and then sew up this fun fur yarn, but I do like how it turned out.  (Ravelry notes)  I used scrapbooking stickers to put her name (blurred out, obviously) and the year on the ornament the cat is holding.  Stickers are the way to go.  Much less stressful than trying to paint the name and year with a shaky hand like I did on O's!

 

And that's it!  I felt really busy, but I guess I didn't really accomplish much.  Now I'm on to working on birthday gifts, since we have several in our family in February.  Winter KCW was this week, but I didn't even make an attempt this round.  I have been enjoying looking at what other people have been making, though! Have you been sewing along?

Handmade Holidays: All the Rest

So I had big plans for blogging the holiday crafting in a timely manner with nicely categorized posts. It started off well, but then I started reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series and more or less stopped being productive entirely.  A friend sent me the first four books a couple of months ago, and I smartly decided not to start them until after I'd finished my gift-making, but I probably should've held out until I'd both blogged everything and cleaned up my ginormous mess in the sewing room.  I haven't picked up the final book from the library yet, so I'm taking this opportunity to catch up in one big blog post.  I've made a good dent in the cleaning department today too, as I mentioned on Facebook.  Tomorrow, back to reading!

E's most time-consuming gift was a stroller blanket bag thing.  Technical term for sure.  We've been using a Papooska (which seems to be defunct now, unfortunately) on our walks to school and back, but it was getting too short for her.  I basically just enlarged the Papooska, adding about 4" to the width and a foot or so to the length, so it should work for several years.

Snug as a bug

The original had a nylon outer, but I used some lightweight Windpro (I think) stash fabric along with fleece lining like the Papooska.  It's heavier and seems warmer, but the one drawback is that it's considerably bulkier.

 

Like the original, I used reflective tape -- although I wish I'd either have moved it down a few inches or added another stripe -- and used buttonhole elastic to cinch it up.  The buttonhole elastic goes down along the sides below the buckles and through a channel on the top of the back part.

 

There's also some elastic that gathers the bottom and loosely gathers the upper between the buckles.  In hindsight, I'm not sure either of those is necessary.

Other than fabric selection and enlarging it, the only other change I made was to use adjustable buckles rather than snaps.

That's her owl bag peeking out from the bottom of her stroller.

It took waaaaay longer than I thought it would, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Since we walk to school pretty much every day -- unless it's below 0F with the windchill like today -- it will get a lot of use.

I made a couple of other blankets also.  For one of my nephews, this one is made from cuddle fleece with a Lego-esque applique, minus the yellow.  The font is Legothick.

I tried to make it the same way as the kindergarten quilts, but since that method requires precision, ironing, and a lot of marking, and cuddle fleece doesn't really allow for any of those things, it didn't go well.  One of the corners is extremely wonky.  Fortunately, my nephew loved how soft is is and wasn't bothered by its issues.

I made O a fleece blanket also.  His was Star Wars fleece on one side and blue cuddle fleece on the other, turned and topstitched, which worked much better with the super-stretchy cuddle fleece.

Christmas morning action shot

Also sneaking into the above picture was the Camp Half-Blood shirt (from the Percy Jackson books) I made for him with a freezer paper stencil.  I'll be sharing more about this one next month as part of Heron's Crafts Storybook Craft Project Series.

For my younger niece, a quick headband from Heather Bailey's Hooray for Headbands (opens a PDF).  This was a fun little pattern.  I think there will be more of these in my sewing future!

Ray participated in a Secret Santa exchange at work.  One of the days, he gave her this ribbon bookmark.  He chose the ribbon, beads and charms; I just  had to put it together.

I also made Ray some Green Pepper Glove-itts like O's in some blindingly bright lime fleece, thinking he might wear them running on really cold days.  He's been wearing them to work, though, instead.  Even better!

I also made the Green Pepper Tuck-Away Balaclava hat, without the balaclava part. I'm not sure if I miscalculated or the sizing is off, but it's way too big, so I still need to decide how I want to fix that one.

And that is finally it for Christmas sewing (okay, there's one more thing I still have to make for my oldest nephew, but that's it for the completed gifts).  I have a few things that need to be sewn up soon, but I probably won't blog again until I've finished A Dance with Dragons.  ;)

Camo Fleece Hat and Convertible Mitts for the Boy

Winter never fails to catch me by surprise, despite being a lifelong Wisconsinite.  Serious denial.

O. has been wearing those cheap-o stretchy gloves, and they weren't cutting it any longer.  He really liked the convertible mittens I bought him last year, but we could only find one. So I broke out the Green Pepper Glove-itts pattern that I've had for a while, but hadn't yet sewn up.  He sketched a specific design that he wanted on the backs,and then we went to the fleece stash in the basement to "shop".  He was going to go with blue until he saw the camo, which would match his glasses.

The pattern is adult sizes, so I shrunk the small size to 90% and hoped for the best.  They were really, really, really fiddly to sew up, especially compared to quick mittens I've made in the past, but I think it was worth it.  The fit and shaping is really nice, although I never in a million years would have guessed how the pieces -- especially the finger gusset -- would go together.  You just need to roll with it!  The only issue I ran into is that the mitten flap is too long (he is only seven), even though I took an additional 1/2" off in addition to shrinking the pattern.

 

When I asked him what the appliqued designs he wanted were supposed to be, he just said it was his symbol.  He cracks me up. They don't show up very well on the camo, but he's happy with them anyway.

Then we decided to make a matching also.  His Badger hat from last year still fits, but now that he has grown out his thick hair, it's rather snug.  There was just enough fleece left to make another The Rainshed Convertible Bomber Hat, as long as I lined the ear flaps with black fleece.  I made the child's M/L again, but added an extra 1/4" to each side. Much better fit.

He's wearing his Death Eater shirt!

I tried to get an action shot of both the hat and mittens this morning, but his ride came a little earlier than I expected, so I got this instead: