The Knitter’s Curiosity Cabinet Volume 2 | Pantsville Press

Menu

Blog
Books
Patterns
- Ravelry
- Payhip
Information

Search

The Knitter’s Curiosity Cabinet Volume 2

Instagram

In which I show off the spiffy new hat and am occa

In which I show off the spiffy new hat and am occasionally interrupted by the kitten.

Look, it's January. It's the third January of The

Look, it's January. It's the third January of The Endless Plague. My heat continues to only sort of kind of work. And we are expecting a blizzard and a foot plus of snow this weekend.⁠
⁠
If you think I'm going to feel even slightly bad for knitting ridiculous frivolities from now until something thaws, you have been misinformed.⁠
⁠
I'm considering making a pile so big I can curl up under it and hibernate till spring. ⁠
⁠
(Someone will ask, so the pattern is Palpitation, and it's on both ravelry and payhip!)

Ok so you folks like one! And the good folks at @g

Highlights first as we all have short attention sp

Highlights first as we all have short attention spans right now:⁠
⁠
• Stochastic is out on ravelry (click the link in my bio, click this picture) & payhip (payhip.com/pantsvillepress).⁠
⁠
• Use RANDOM for 10% off today.⁠
⁠
• Yarn is from @gaugedyeworks, but read on for more yarn info, you have lots of options.⁠
⁠
Look, I don't love how my brain works.⁠
⁠
It desperately needs the calm, mellow vibe it gets from stockinette. And it will absolutely wander off to play in traffic if I ask it to knit anything as calm & mellow as stockinette.⁠
⁠
But I am familiar with my brain's tricks by now. Which means I can play some tricks of my own. And this yarn? This pattern? They're designed in a lab to trick my brain into settling down & enjoying itself.⁠
⁠
It starts off with a stretch of color just the right length for a brim. Right when I'm starting to get bored, it changes to a background color. That background color is occasionally interrupted with tiny blips of strategically placed color. Those blips come along just frequently enough to keep my brain from wandering off. Because every time you get to a blip, you do a fancy stitch.⁠
⁠
Now, should this be enough stimulation to hold my attention? Perhaps not. But it is. And these days I'm not fighting with my brain if I don't have to. I'm letting my poor, tired, stressed out brain do what it enjoys. And it turns out, it enjoys this. Cruising along, making easy fabric, and occasionally doing a little cartwheel to show off some pretty color. Oh, and then, then you get to do a deeply satisfying hat crown. Because that's always tremendous fun!⁠
⁠
And don't fret, you don't have to have this exact yarn to make this pattern. The fancy yarn does most of the work for you, but you can absolutely use a main color and a contrast color (perfect for mini skiens or leftovers from other projects) or a long gradient skein, or even just one single skein if you're feeling a bit subdued and make a gorgeous hat. The pattern totally tells you how. You have lots and lots of options!⁠
⁠
And I truly hope you enjoy this as much as I have. It was exactly what I needed right now. And I don't think I'm alone.⁠
⁠
#StochasticHat

So, this is The Nifty Thing that I find super dupe

So, this is The Nifty Thing that I find super duper helpful in figuring out how tall to make my hats if they have non-standard decreases. ⁠
⁠
I evenly divide my live stitches across two long needles, pinch them together (here I used a binder clip, but you can also put rubber bands on the ends of the needles if you're worried about stitches coming off). Then I try it on. If it's almost tall enough now, it will be tall enough once I work the decreases. ⁠
⁠
Standard disclaimer here about how if a specific pattern tells you to do something else, or if you have a trick in your arsenal that works for you and the heads you knit for, then do that! But this works great for me (and bonus points for looking absurd while you do it).⁠
⁠
How here's where we have to pause for the awesome set of hats from the last few weeks to come out, but when we come back, I'll show you how this one went together at the top (and I think you're going to love it)!

Look, I was fairly direct about the 'huh, yeah, pr

Look, I was fairly direct about the 'huh, yeah, pretty much the same as last time, just maybe a bit taller' stage we were about to enter. So while I acknowledge that 'same, but an inch or two bigger' might not be the most scintillating content ever to cross your feed, you can't really say you were misled.⁠
⁠
Besides, you're mostly knitters. I suspect you all have a certain sympathy with the 'right, now do that for six more inches' phase of a project. ⁠
⁠
And yes, yes the yarn is yummy. And so far I've *mostly* restrained the urge to pick at the occasional rogue speckle that feels slightly out of place. That way lies madness, and we're not succumbing to that particular compulsion right this minute if we can avoid it.⁠
⁠
Though I did give in and lift out the two tiny bits of sparkle, because speckle is my jam, but sparkle is not. We all have our limitations.

Ok, good news bad news time.⁠ ⁠ The good news

Ok, good news bad news time.⁠
⁠
The good news is I do indeed seem to remember how to knit cables, and the speckles are indeed proving every bit as diverting as one might hope.⁠
⁠
The bad news is this is going to continue to look pretty much like this, just slightly taller, for the foreseeable future. ⁠
⁠
Sorry, hats are often just sort of like that. ⁠
⁠
But this is indeed doing all the things I wanted it to do (and just wait till you see what is going to happen at the top...either you'll love it or you'll conclude I've lost my few remaining marbles and descended fully into absurdity...which should at least be amusing for the onlookers)!

I believe my general position on ribbing is well k

I believe my general position on ribbing is well known (namely 'fine, I suppose if I must I must, but I'm for sure going to pout about it at least a bit). ⁠
⁠
But I will say that the yarn (@labienaimee's Corrie Confetti) is a delight. The speckles are every bit as distracting as I'd hoped (far more than they should be frankly, but wow am I not complaining about anything that makes my tired, gloomy brain happy right now, so I'm not questioning it too deeply). ⁠
⁠
And very soon now we'll get to the cabled bit! At which point we'll see if I have enough brain cells left to reliably count to five and tell left from right. No promises.

Alrighty, back to the hat we were swatching for th

Alrighty, back to the hat we were swatching for the other week. The yarn is all wound up and cast on (and yes, yes that branch DOES look rather like a turtle/dinosaur having a chomp on the yarn, you're totally right).⁠
⁠
As usual, I used a long tailed cast on and cast on over two needles.⁠
⁠
Someone somewhere is clutching their pearls and is about to send me a note telling me casting on over two needles is a scandal and doesn't really make your cast on stretchier. ⁠
⁠
Which I know!⁠
⁠
Casting on over two needles doesn't make your cast on stretchier at all! But what it does do, at least if you're me, is make that first row of stitches the same size as the rest of your stitches. ⁠
⁠
Because you see, when you're working a long tailed cast on, you're actually making your first row of stitches at the same time as you're getting the loops on the needles. And if you're like me (loose knitter, tight cast-er on-er (cast oner? none of that sounds right)), then sometimes the row of stitches you create while casting on might be all tight and squinchy compared to the following rows. And casting on over two needles (or over one bigger needle if you have it handy, but I never do) fixes that.⁠
⁠
So it's how I do it. It works for me. It works for lots of other folks! But it really really really twists the knickers of a certain subset of folks, so I like to mention it real big and loud right up front. And this way, if someone starts getting pearl clutchy or knickers twisty about it around you, you can smile and tell them you've got it under control. ⁠
⁠
If you want your cast on stretchier, either use a different cast on or leave more space /between/ each stitch of your cast on. ⁠
⁠
Now...now we see whether the speckles are enough to stave off the January gloom!

Load More... Follow on Instagram

Twitter

Tweets by @HunterHammersen

Books

Search

Archives

Archives

Copyright Hunter Hammersen, 2009-2019