Mittens

Quick short post as I haven't posted or knitted in a while. Last night I was experimenting with knitting a top-down mitten with my left-over yarn, but it's a disaster. *cry* Not much else to say. I need to think about this some more.

Starting the simple top-down double-knit hat after the i-cord cast-on is complete

In yesterday's vlog post, I had set up my DPNs and was ready to start a circular piece, in this case my simple hat. Today I post the remainder of my vlog about starting the hat.

Row 1 of the hat:

It's kind of hard to see by essentially what is happening is that the red (outside) hat is knit in one round (round 1 a), and then the light blue (inside) hat is purled (round 1b). The purl stitch is just the back side of a knit stitch, so when you look at the blue stitches on the other side of the hat, you see a knit fabric.

As you knit the circle outwards, every odd round will be a simple knit round for the side facing you, and then a simple purl round for the side on the inside.

Row 2 of the hat: increasing # of stitches

Every even round of the hat will consist of increases while you knit the circular piece outwards.

I-cord Circular Cast On in Two Colours

Part One: A Two-colour cast-on


Erratum: At 2:11 I say something ridiculous about a "blue loop". I actually meant a red loop/stitch on the needle. :P

Part Two: Knitting a Two-colour I-cord


Part Three: Lifeline and I-cord increase


Part Four: Setting up the stitches on DPNs

Errors in part four: I kept blathering about "4 colours" when obviously there are only 2 colours. I probably meant to say "4 stitches on each needle".

Simple top-down double-knit hat is finished!

My simple top-down double-knit hat experiment is done.

It took me ages knitting this with my 2mm circulars. Lessons learned in the course of faffing about:

1) Use larger needles. Maybe 4mm or 5mm circulars (and an appropriate yarn for that)

would have made the project faster.
2) If I ever make a hat like this again, I will use an i-cord circular cast on for this project and not a modified Emily Ocker cast-on.
3) This hat was not allowed to be "girly" because it was for DH, but I think ribbing would have been a better move than of stockinette.

The inside of the hat turned out to be a disaster. I blame this on the cast-on, needles-size and tension that resulted. Looks like this will be a non-reversible hat, but at least it will still be warm!