Got a Good Head Start Going

Geri's collection of hats is growing quite quickly. Her cream cloche is finished and is being put to frequent, good use. She reports it is very comfortable and has a zero itch factor.




Me thinks a hat addiction may be developing...




The next hat to hit her head is knitted in:

Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Cotton - Nut

from this pattern:

Not-just-for-chemo-reversible-cloche

This hat is actually part of a set that Geri has decided is a necessary addition to her wardrobe. It consists of the cloche with matching seed stitch wrist warmers and a scarf.

The other component in this set is a special Geri request ...

"Muuuum... do you think you could make me an Ice Cream Hat???"

Are you surprised? Me either!

The inspiration for this hat came from a picture that Geri spotted during an internet search - goodness knows what she was looking for originally, but the Ice Cream Hat caught her eye. The band of the hat will be knitted in the same taupe cotton as the rest of the set with the body in these two luscious ice cream inspired yarns:

Blue Sky Alpaca Dyed Organic Cotton - Shell

Blue Sky Alpaca Dyed Organic Cotton - Tulip

 The pattern I've sourced to use for the top is:

Swirl Hat by Gail Tanquary

but I'll be changing the band design to a simple cable pattern reminiscent of an ice cream waffle cone. It is knitting up nicely and should be finished in the next few days. However, the band will be my first foray into cabling and even though it is a simple cable, I'll be taking my time to avoid potential disasters.

Bringing up the rear is this little gem. I was planning to make a red cotton hat for Geri from this pattern:

Cloche Hat and Handwarmers

and as I've never used this stitch before I decided to do a test piece. I reduced the number of stitches cast on and set to. The stitch pattern seems complex at first but it is ok once you get going. I was working on this last October whilst Geri was in hospital and as I was sitting beside her one afternoon she looked over and said that it looked like a babies hat, as indeed it did! So that's what I turned it into. It has worked out to be a premmie size and is very cute. I'll be donating it to the Beanies for Babies organisation once I have a few other items to send along with it.

I have since decided not to use this yarn for the hat so it's back to the drawing board on that one ....

Surrogate Slippers and Toasty Toes

 WOW, so it's been three months since I posted. How did that happen? I have a lot to catch up on as I've been really busy both on the needles, in the garden and on the GeriPie front.

First up, Chris has managed to get out of India and is now based back in Melbourne. He came home on leave for a few weeks over Xmas and was feeling the cold, even though the weather in Wellington was pretty darn good if I say so myself!

Anyhoo, Pat took pity on Chris' blue feet and lent him his felted clogs. This resulted in one happy Chris with toasty warm toes. So, I decided to get stuck in and make Chris a pair of his own, even though I had sworn vehemently that I would never make anything felted ever again after the crazy measures I had to go to to get Pat's clogs to felt. I didn't quite finish Chris' before he left to go back to Melbourne for work, but I came close.

Once the knitting was finished I decided I'd try to avoid the frustrations I experienced whilst felting Pat's clogs and did a bit of research, the upshot of which was that I  discovered that lighter coloured wools don't always felt very quickly because the bleaching needed to achieve the lighter colour affects how the wool reacts during the felting process.

AH HA!!! Maybe that's why Pat's took soooo long ...

Felting day arrived and I prepared to go to war, following all of the suggestions I had come across in my reading -

* Put item in a pillowcase 
* Use a hot wash
* Use a low water setting
* Use towels or jeans to aid agitation
* Check felting progress every 5-10 minutes

and then slowly over the next hour I abandoned or augmented nearly all of them -

* Take item OUT of the pillowcase so they bash around more in the machine
*Turn the cold feed to machine off, discover water is still not  hot enough, so boil kettle 10 million times and add to the machine - ad nauseam
* Use low water setting
* Remove towels until only one remains
*Check felting progress sporadically at first as nothing happens - but DON'T get complacent as I discovered that the clogs went from Shrek size to Tinkerbell size VERY fast when I got the combination of temperature, agitation and water level correct.

As you can see, this time the process worked beautifully and Chris now has a good solid pair of clogs awaiting him on his next visit home. I guess he will require a second pair for his 'home-away-from-home' in Melbourne ...