Busy Fingerless Mitts

What have you been doing lately? I've been busy. That's me, busy little bee.

Image by Capri23auto from Pixabay

I started  fiddling around with this fingerless mitten design, and finally voilá! It's done!

Download Busy Fingerless Mitts.pdf (798.4K)

Busy Fingerless Mitts 

Materials:

Fingering weight yarn, 50g MC and 20g CC. Scraps of sock yarn are good for this. 

Size 2 double-pointed needles 

Gauge: 36 sts and 38 rounds = 4” measured over stranded knitting

Abbreviations: CC=contrast color; fbf=knit in the front, the back, and the front of one stitch, thus making 3 sts out of one; k=knit; MC=main color; p=purl; psso=pass slipped stitch over; rep=repeat; yo=yarn over .

Directions:

Using MC, cast on 60 sts. Knit 1 round. Work Eyelet Mock Cable Ribbing for about 2” (or desired length), ending with Round 2 of Eyelet Mock Cable Ribbing pattern. 

Knit 1 round, increasing 1 stitch. (61 sts) 

Purl 1 round. 

Work 10 rounds of Chart Pattern for Right or Left hand; on Round 11, work 27 stitches of chart for Left Hand OR work 33 stitches of chart for Right Hand, then knit fbf with CC making three stitches, and complete the round. This is Round 1 of the Thumb insertion. Continue working Rounds 12 - 41 of hand while working Rounds 2-21 of Thumb. When Thumb is complete, put the Thumb sts on a stitch holder or piece of yarn, cast on 1 stitch with CC, and continue the chart. 

When chart is finished, cut CC. Knit 1 round, decreasing 1 stitch at end of round (60 sts). Purl 1 round. 

Work 6 rounds of Eyelet Mock Cable Ribbing pattern. Bind off all sts in pattern. 

Finish Thumb: 

Put Thumb sts on needles and pick up 3 stitches over thumb using MC. Knit a round and purl a round. Work 6 rounds of k2, p2 ribbing. Bind off. 

Weave in ends and block. 

Eyelet Mock Cable Ribbing: 

Round 1: *slip 1, k2, psso , p2; rep from * to end. (Note: Round 1 has fewer stitches than the other rounds. It’s okay.)

Round 2*k1, yo, k1, p2; rep from * to end. 

Round 3: *k3, p2; rep from * to end. 

Round 4: *k3, p2; rep from * to end. 

Repeat Rounds 1 – 4 for pattern. 

 

Left Hand Chart: 

 

Right Hand Chart: 

Thumb Chart:

Download Busy Fingerless Mitts.pdf (798.4K)

Weird

I just knit the weirdest scarf that I have ever knit.

The yarn I had was two hard balls of Berroco Boho, a self-striping tape yarn in nylon, cotton and  rayon, now discontinued. One day, I found  the pattern: it was on a little piece of paper handed out to the knitters on one of the Unique One knitting nights by one of the knitters. She didn't remember where it was from, but she gave all of us a copy when we asked her about the weird scarves she was making.

The scarf she was knitting was knit in a tube on double pointed needles, all knit in stockinette stitch. It looked wider and shorter than I thought it should be -- until she got to the last row. That is where the magic happened. She dropped every other stitch, knit a round, and bound off! Then she proceeded to pull and push and tweak the stitches until every stitch was dropped down to the end, and the scarf became the right length and looked wonderful. Amazing!

I had forgotten about it until rooting around in my patterns one day, I found that slip of paper, and I thought it might be nice for a summer scarf in Boho which I was trying to find something to do with (thus the rooting around.)

Being a sensible ex-yarn shop owner, I didn't want to put a pattern on my blog that had a copyright, so I tried to find if it was on the internet somewhere, but I couldn't find it anywhere. There are lots of dropped stitch patterns on Ravelry, but none was the same as this one.

Have fun! Stay weird!

Download Drop Stitch Scarf.pdf (127.2K)

Drop Stitch Scarf

Materials: 200 yards worsted weight yarn; size 8 double pointed needles, OR circular needles of your choice to knit with two circulars or Magic Loop

Gauge isn’t important for this project.

Size: About 4" by 6', but mine was knit on a particularly slick nylon blend. If you use wool, it'll be a bit wider and probably a foot shorter.

Directions:

Cast on 24 stitches, 8 stitches per 3 needles.

Row 1: Knit.

Row 2: Increase 1 in every stitch. (48 stitches, 16 sts per needle)

Continue to knit in the round until scarf measures 17”-20” or however long you want (I knit to about 25”). It will be about 2-3 times longer than this when you finish.

Fun row: *Knit 1, then drop 1 stitch* around. (Back to 24 stitches, 8 stitches per 3 needles).

Knit 1 row. Bind off all sts.

Pull the scarf until all the dropped stitches come to the opposite end. Add fringe if you want.

Fun to do! Better not to use knobby or fuzzy yarn as it makes it harder to pull the dropped stitches out.

Helicopter Hat

You may remember this Navajo plied yarn that I was proud to make since my stroke:

I wanted to knit it up to see what it looked like, so I started knitting a hat with it. I estimated that it was worsted weight, so I cast on 100 stitches and used size 4 double pointed needles. I changed to size 5 needles and stockinette stitch and just kept knitting. It was coming out pretty good, not as good as my pre-stroke 3 ply, but it was pretty good.

So after about 4 inches I started to run out of yarn, which I expected. What to do, what to do ... then I thought about a post on Winwick Mum's blog about how she was enjoying knitting a sock with helical knitting. At the time I thought, big whoop. I tried helical knitting and it drove me crazy, so I immediately dropped the idea.

As I knit my hat though, I really didn't want to do any sort of stranded knitting because I've got another thing coming up that uses a lot of it, and I thought stripes would be nice if they were just little ones, though the jog drives me crazy; and suddenly I wanted to try helical knitting again.

I used a link from Winwick Mum's post and found it to be very easy, fun, and enjoyable! See for yourself; it's Jen of Arnall-Culliford Knitting's tutorial.

Helical knitting is a great way to incorporate the pesky bits of yarn (especially homespun yarn that you don't have quite enough to do anything with, yet don't want to throw away or make another scrap shawl). The little one row stripes are a great way to blend colors together too. It really is delightful.

So why did I name my pattern Helicopter Hat? Because Helical Hat is hard to say, and the first thing that people would wonder is, what the heck is that? Helicopter is easier, and the way the colors just whup, whup, whup around as you go along seemed appropriate. Also I might be going a little insane.

Anyway. Here is my really simple Helicopter Hat.

Download Helicopter Hat.pdf (177.6K)

Helicopter Hat

Materials:

200 yards worsted weight yarn (can use scraps)

Size US4 (3.50mm) and US5 (3.75mm) double pointed needles 

Gauge: 5 sts and 7 rows per inch

Size: Adult (fits both me and my husband)

Directions:

Using size 4 needles, cast on 100 sts. Work k2, p2 ribbing for 10 rows. Switch to size 5  to stockinette stitch until total length is 8 inches. (At any time during this stockinette section you can insert stripes using the helical knitting technique.)

Decrease for top:

Round 1: *knit 8, k2tog* around

Round 2: knit 

Round 3: *knit 7, k2tog* around

Round 4: knit 

Round 5: *knit 6, k2tog* around

Round 6: knit 

Round 7: *knit 5, k2tog* around

Round 8: knit

Round 9: *knit 4, k2tog* around

Round 10: *knit 3, k2tog* around

Round 11: *knit 2, k2tog* around

Round 12: *knit 1, k2tog* around

Round 13: *k2tog* around

Cut yarn, pull through the 10 stitches left and pull tight. Weave in ends.

Download Helicopter Hat.pdf (177.6K)