Fiber Fool

As I mentioned in the teaser earlier this week, I have a new pattern and it is now ready for the general public! Meet Sur la Tête which I knit back in October if memory serves correctly. It was one of those ideas that hit me one night as I was starting to drift off to sleep. It got me so excited I had to get up and sketch it and start pulling together some of the pieces so I could actually sleep. It then took another several months before I settled on the perfect yarn and sunk my teeth into the actual design process.

If you look closer at the crown you can see a slight spiral. The hat is knit from side to side and uses short-rows to form the fully fashioned crown. I chose to knit this side to side so I could use a fun little scalloped edging to automatically create the buttonholes. It also allowed me to use a really great edging motif that you knit as you knit the body! The edging is so great that while I was finalizing test knitting and editing on the pattern two great shawlettes were released that would coordinate quite nicely with this hat — Cedar Leaf and Saroyan.

I had a lot of great help in finalizing Sur la Tête. Amanda not only kindly modeled the hats for me, but she bravely took the first run (the red one pictured) through the pattern before I handed it off to Ann, Anne, Chris and Mia to try out. They provided me with some fantastic feedback and were lightning quick knitters. Unfortunately the weather was a bit against us in getting the final pictures taken which delayed release by a couple weeks. But we managed finally and had great conditions - lots of fresh white fluffy stuff to brighten the gray day while more white fluffy stuff fell from the sky for ambiance.

In testing the pattern it became evident that the amazing drape of Blue Sky Alpaca’s Alpaca Silk yarn allowed two hat styles in one pattern depending upon the fit you chose. If you knit the pattern to have the standard 10% negative ease you get a beanie-style fit (see red hat above), but if you choose to knit one size larger than your head circumference you get a cloche-style fit. The difference isn’t quite as pronounced in the photos as in real life. I decided I liked the larger better so I hope to knit the largest size for myself when time allows. I think Amanda is planning on doing the same and that we are both looking at more spring-like colors.

The fine gauge of 25 sts and 35 rows per 4″ of stockinette stitch combined with the hollow fibers of alpaca and the hat is nearly weightless and a great hat for transitioning into spring! It also does not create hat head! I highly recommend knitting it in an alpaca silk blend or at least a camelid (camel, llama and vicuñas) and engineered fiber (rayon, tencel, bamboo, soy, seacell etc.) blend yarn. If that is out of your reach (or stash) a wool blend will work. I recommend one that contains at least 30% silk or engineered fiber and is not plied hard (yarns that are plied hard don’t really compress and are kind of sproingy along their length, because they don’t compress the short rows would be highly pronounced and the fabric would likely not have the drape intended for this design). Because the hat is knit from side to side row gauge is of the utmost importance for proper fit. Please do not skip swatching, and for the best outcome wash and dry the swatch as you intend to handle the finished hat.

Both Amanda and I chose to make coordinating pearl buttons for our hats from Swarovski Elements Crystal Pearls and headpins. I’ve included written instructions in the PDF on how to do the same and I hope to have a photo tutorial up here at the blog in the next week or so. But you can certainly use 6-8mm vintage or contemporary commercial buttons as well. If you wish to make your own I highly recommend FusionBeads.com as you get free shipping no matter the size of the order so you can order just 1 of several different colors and even sizes or types of beads to get a good match and then place your full order.

What is really exciting about this release is that my designer page at Ravelry is now open to the public - no Ravelry membership required to view or buy my patterns! So just visit the Sur la Tête pattern page. All monetary transactions take place through PayPal, Ravelry is just the delivery vehicle for the 4-page PDF file and does not have access to your credit card or banking information.

So what color and yarn are you going to knit yours in?

In addition to being busy pulling together the final stages of some patterns lately I’ve also been working on a series of posts for the My Sister Knits blog about knitting needles. So far I’ve published 4 posts on the subject. I know that probably sounds odd to many of you - 4 posts about knitting needles with even more to come?

Of the people I know who read me here (aka the commenters who have blogs) most are very experienced and quite knitting savvy. But I have been surprised over the years by the number of people I would consider to be well experienced and knowledgeable people who did not realize that frustrations or ease with a project can sometimes be attributed to the knitting needle of choice (or at least the needle and yarn combo).

The first three posts are really geared towards the most beginning of knitters where I covered the three different types of knitting needles - single pointed, double pointed and circular and in what situations each can be used. There may be a small tidbit in those for experienced knitters and there are some polls that would be interesting if more people answered!

Today I posted the first of four posts about needle materials which I suspect some of you experienced knitters may find interesting and perhaps you can even shed some additional light or share your personal experiences in the comments.

The blog series can be found at http://en.wordpress.com/tag/knitting-needle-primer/

A pattern that has been in development for a LONG time (as in I knit the one photographed here back in September or October) is soon going to be available! Here are a couple sneak previews for you kind of evocative of the inspiration behind the design.

Since we were thwarted twice in our attempts to visit Tent Rocks we ended up back in Albuquerque a bit earlier than planned, but it worked out well. We arrived in time to take a trip to the top of Sandia Peak via the Tram. It was an experience of a lifetime and one I never need to repeat, LOL! This tram has the longest unsupported stretch in the US and the third longest in the world (if you look very closely in this photo you can see the 2nd support from the peak - notice the first support is not at all visible, let alone the station at the base!). I was so excited and thought I’d take some shots on the ride that we hopped on first and stood at the front of the car - big mistake! I was having some stomach upset and that did not help. Add to it the stories of plane crashes in the canyon below and I was not the most enthusiastic rider in the car! But the view at the top was spectacular!

The following day we headed out to the Petroglyph National Monument on the west side of Albuquerque. Despite our worn out legs from the Bandelier hike the day before (my mind boggles at what it would have been like had we actually gotten to hike Tent Rocks too) we hit all three trails at the Boca Negro Canyon site of the park.

Parts of this site of the park were undergoing improvements. I couldn’t help but take this shot as a tribute to Shel Silverstein…

After hiking all three trails at this site we headed into Old Town Albuquerque. They also have a Native American market around a plaza like Santa Fe. I was really impressed with the diversity of styles between the Santa Fe and Albuequerque markets. We again spent good sums of money with the Native American vendors and another jewelry store along the plaza. I will admit to only purchasing jewelry from the vendors, but the jewelry stores got a fair bit of my sister’s and mom’s money, fortunately for me the things I like in those stores were firmly beyond my budget :-)

While we waited for a jeweler to resize a ring for Amber I took some of the sites around the plaza…

I think we both had a great (if exhausting) time and would like to see northern New Mexico at a different time of year some time. But there are many other places on our travel wishlist to be visiting again too soon. Amber has hinted at the Duluth, MN area the next time I go home. I haven’t been since I was kid, but I have some fond memories of Gooseberry Falls State Park and the Split Rock Lighthouse!

As I mentioned a few weeks back I was headed to Albuquerque and surrounds at the end of January and beginning of February (ugghh, I can’t believe it has been that long since I blogged, some contract work has suddenly been demanding about twice the time it normally does and has left me with little time for my own work). My sister was attending the National Mastitis Council’s annual meeting which was being held in downtown. Overall we had a good time, though the first days without a car were a bit of challenge as downtown appeared to not really be open in the evenings or on the weekends aside from clubs. Though we fell totally in love with Gold Street Caffe and Tucanos!

I ended up working or working out most of the time Amber was attending short courses and talks (though I did go to the poster session and got to refresh myself on multivariate statistics from grad school). Once the conference was over though we got to do some real exploring. Though much of that was hampered by the snow that started falling when we picked up the rental car. Just a few inches of snow kind of ground a lot of things to a halt - including closing Bandelier National Monument (pics shown above and at left) and Tent Rocks National Monument.

Fortunately, our plans were somewhat flexible and we ended up driving the Turquoise Trail (along which nothing was open) which I will admit was not an enjoyable drive, even for this seasoned snow driver. Then we went to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum near Old Town Santa Fe and then spent good sums of money at the shops surrounding the Plaza and mostly at the vendors along the Palace of the Governors. Then we opted to order in pizza to the hotel and make it an early night so we could hit the road to Bandelier very early the next morning. The plan was to hit both Bandalier and Tent Rocks the next day.

We were the first to enter the park that day so our plan worked! Only the Main Loop Trail was open as they only clear one trail of snow in the winter. Truthfully, I was quite glad as I didn’t feel ready to climb three stories of ladders that are part of the Alcove House trail (well, coming back down them is probably worse, but either way I welcomed the excuse to not be able to do so). There was still some ladder climbing opportunities along the Main Loop trail. There were three different cave dwellings that you could climb into and experience and that was quite unique. We were unable to take the full loop because we ran into this:

I’m pretty sure for both of us, Bandelier was the top stop for our trip, despite the drastic decrease in trail possibilities. We were done around 11am and were anxious to continue on to Tent Rocks, however the GPS had a different plan. It kept trying to direct us via National Forest Roads of which only one was open this time and year and looked to be entirely snow packed so opted to stay the course until we got to a more major highway. It ended up being a car tour of every Pueblo to the north and west of Albuquerque.

While I’m bummed we did not make it to Tent Rocks, I’m definitely glad we opted to go to Bandelier first as I think it was probably the most unique experience of the two monuments since we were able to climb into the cave dwellings and such.