The green yarn is from a 25 cent skein bought at Goodwill. Used the pattern for the hat (with a little customizing) from a baby pattern I bought at Walmart YEARS ago. Yes, he's five; and yes, the hat fits... I did customize it after all. It's acrylic yarn that can be a little itchy; but it's nice & warm and very durable as well as washable & dryable... important for kids items. The white is left-over from a pound of yarn I bought from Ebay - it's from Caron, yarn ends (not correct-weight for sale through traditional methods; bundled up & sold in bulk) - the pound of yarn was about $5.50 including postage; I barely used any for this.
I used a free pattern for simple mittens online at Knitting Pattern Central; always my first stop for looking for patterns... only I adapted them & used the 2-at-a-time Sock method from Melissa's book. Gotta love doing 2-at-a-time. If I could manage it; I'd do a dozen at a time. It really isn't any faster; after all a stitch is still a stitch; but if you didn't have to work from start to finish on one just to do it all over again on a second? It's a GODSEND, seriously!Then, the scarf. Well, not exactly. I loved how the yarn was working up; and at this point I hadn't thought to do a scarf; after all "a" had a scarf made for him last year... so instead I made up a second hat in the same yarn for a nephew.
Then, I realized that I really did want to make a "matching set". silly me. So, being as I decided I wanted a matching set; and being that if you knit a scarf from one end to the other; and being that the hat & mittens feature a "v" in contrasting color - in the scarf, knit traditionally - one side would have "v" and the other would have an upside-down "v". So, being still quite silly; I decide to work both ends at the same time and work my way toward the middle; I could call it similar to the 2-at-a-time method; but it's just barely similar. Actually, all told? it's probably a good way to learn the 2-at-a-time method since it's very simple in comparison, but takes the work a row on one item; work a row on the other item; turn the needles, repeat. And, the original plan was that when the two halves were long enough, I'd simply graft them together in the middle (a way of "joining" that looks just like another row of stitches).
Only, of course, being thrift-shop yarn that was probably originally sold in a store some 30-odd years ago - it was the only skein I had; and I had been silly enough to go and knit a hat for my nephew. As if he needs a hat in this soft, thick & warm (albeit cheap) yarn. I ran out of yarn about eight inches short of my goal. Go figure.
Would you believe I ALMOST went to the effort of ripping out a fully-completed, perfectly good, Christmas-Gift-intended.... hat so that I could use the yarn for the scarf? I did. I thought about it for a good two hours.
Instead... I decided that "a" would not care one little bit if his scarf had a different color in the middle. And, honestly? It's a good thing it's in the middle. I know it looks a little "off" - but it's warm & cushy & at least I still had more than enough of the white left-over. Actually - all of the white is left-over small balls of yarn that I'd used for one project or another, and had about 100 yards or so left, so they were in a basket with other yarn scraps... ready for "accent color".
So what if there's white in the middle? I could always claim I did it on purpose, that it's part of the character of the item.... lol. Good thing I'm not a type-A personality. I'd have been up all night knitting another hat, scarf & mittens that did match from another skein.
1 comment:
These are very nice, but I could never get the kids to wear homemade even though I am a good knitter- they didn't look like trash.
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