Time to catch you up on my knitting. First, a couple hats:
(left, my last hat for the homeless)
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, Thyme, and some anonymous camel-colored wool worsted. Total 56 grams, 123 yards.
Needles: Addi Turbo US#6.
Pattern: Generic, worked on 96 st.
(right, for Matthew's new-ish girlfriend Alex)
Yarn: Knit Picks Andean Silk, color Allspice, all but about a yard of 3 skeins (~288 yards).
Needles: Knit Picks Options w/ Zephyr tips, US#8.
Pattern: 16-Cable Hat. The pattern gives two sizes, one for head circumference 16 - 19", and one for 18 - 22". Alex's head is 23", so I cast on 182 st to allow for one more 26-st cable repeat. My head is also 23", so I was able to try on the hat as I knit to check the sizing.
Alex had been describing the kind of hat she wanted to Matthew about a month ago on a day when Smokey happened to be present. He immediately piped up to say that he knew someone who would be delighted to knit her a hat. What he later told me she had described sounded to me like a chullo, so I found a few examples in Ravelry and sent her links. She looked at them but, in her own words, got sidetracked to the 16 Cable Hat. So 16 cables is what I knit (although my upsizing resulted in rather more than 16 cables).
Note: this is a very flattering hat. I may make one for myself. Never thought I would want a beret-ish or slouch-ish hat, but I like this one a lot.
This hat has a lot more stitches than a typical hat. But I loved the yarn so much that it was no hardship to knit the equivalent of two hats. Andean Silk is 55% fine alpaca / 23% merino / 22% silk, and knitting it is like petting a very soft kitteh.
Next on my knitting agenda is a pair of Dimorphous Mittens for myself. Right now I am swatching to determine what size needle I need to make my yarn for the inner mitten match the pattern gauge.
Inner mitten: Outer mitten, striped:
The yarn for the inner mitten is Frog Tree Pediboo, a very soft but tightly plied 80% merino / 20% bamboo light fingering weight that will feel lovely on my hands. The yarn for the outer mitt is two colorways of Noro Yuzen, a discontinued 56% wool / 34% silk / 10% mohair DK weight that I will stripe like a Noro striped scarf.
The weather forecast for the immediate future is cold with a side of frigid, so I need to knit like the wind on these.
