FO Friday: Basketweave hat and neckwarmer

I actually finished this last weekend but with photographing, tagging and all that am only just posting today. Hope that still counts for FO Friday ;0

I had contemplated sending this in to LKC magazine as a submission but A) it’s pretty basic and more importantly B) it fits me perfectly, which means it will be too small for most adults with hair.  I didn’t want people to get disappointed.

So here it is instead!  I had two skeins of Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk in Aran weight (I still think Alpaca smells of dog when wet but oh well, it’s sooo nice to knit with!) that I had gotten half off at the John Lewis after Christmas sales in Newcastle.  It had gotten lost in my stash for a while until I was looking for something to go with my Harley jacket (the jacket you always see me in in photos where I am in the chair) which has charcoal grey lettering on the back.  So I pulled this out  hoping to make something in time for the Paris trip and I might have succeeded if I hadn’t frogged the first three attempts.  The yarn’s softness was lost in a detailed stitch pattern (frog #1) but I found I wanted a pretty edging rather than purely functional (frog #2) and eventually (after frog #3) settled  on a basketweave border with plain stockinette for the rest.

I used the Reader’s Digest loom and used a little bit tighter tension for the borders as I want a little bit of “grip” like you would otherwise get from ribbing.  I did five rows of k2p2 ribbing, then five rows of p2k2 and then five more k2p2.  Then knit as long as I wanted (28 rows in this case) and do the border again for the neck or closed up for the hat.

The neckwarmer looks insanely long but it actually pulls up over my mouth, nose and the bottom of my ears.  The hat comes down to meet it around my ears and thus is forms a pseudo-balaclava but a little more dainty and of course they can be worn separately and the neckwarmer can be scrunched down when it’s not so cold.  (I have problems in very cold weather with my lungs due to my asthma and doctors have suggested that I breathe through a scarf to help pre-warm the air before it hits the lungs.  It does seem to help.)  I also wanted something that could go under the collar of my jacket so that when it zips up I have a layer protecting me from wind — my biggest complaint with that jacket is that the neckline is a little too big. (My second biggest complaint is that if I am wearing a sweater under it it looks like I have scary uniboob happening around my waist, soooo unflattering, especially as it flattens the actual boobs so they don’t show and I get this weird look instead :/  But I have yet to find a knitted solution to that!)  So this has fit both bills 🙂

I have to say that I LOVE this yarn.  It handled the frogging pretty well and I think it will bloom a little when washed, but right now the stitch definition is excellent. It feels a little softer when sliding through your fingers while working with it than in the finished garment, but the end product is still really nice.  WEBS has this for half price (I think it was just under US$5 for a 50g ball) so I got four skeins in an eggplant colour and I hope to do a cabled scarf to go with my burgundy coats (maybe a hat if there is enough left!).  I totally recommend it. 

Oh and for the record the neckwarmer took a little over one skein and the hat a little under, but again that’s because I made the neckpiece longer than most anyone else would want it.

I’m also proud that it looks needle-knit rather than loom-knit.  The flat knit stitch (Isela’s way) really makes sooooo much difference to the finished project that I have switched to it exclusively.