Early stuff: hats

Early loom knit hats

Three Basic Hats

This is probably boring to  most of you as it’s very basic hats like we all make when starting out with loom knitting.  The purple one on the right is what I made the very first night I loom knit, it took me about three hours while watching tv in a hotel room in Virginia.  Thats Red Heart Light & Lofty, which we’ll see more of soon as I’ve just done a more fun project with it.   THe gray hat is the Bernat soft boucle that I hate, again the basic hat form with a brim, blahblah.  This one’s for t, and has a scarf and fingerless mitts that go with it (but they’re not photographed yet).  The teal one I made because I wanted something without a brim for sleeping in — Ifind the brim annoying under my neck.  So I took some Moda Dea Metro (more of that to come, I like this one) and whipped up a hat quickly with a garter stitch border instead of a brim.  Perfect for keeping the draft off my scalp.

This photo was taken at the end of the day but as these hats are pretty boring to me I didn’t feel it was worth taking the shot again another time.  I’m a very lazy photographer, I am finding, which in some ways disturbs me as I’d love to have gorgeous, professional-looking shots like on other blogs, but just can’t manage to go into the other room, set up the lightbox and tripod and all the other faff that is involved.  I think I will have to do all of that for my beadwork though, we’ll see.

I’ve got Blisters on my Fingers!

OK, only hotspots.  But still, that hated Bernat Soft Boucle is such a pain to work with, the nubby bits just get caught on each other and so trying to do a K2P2 ribbing (which I am doing for t’s wristwarmers — sadly, he liked the first one so I am having to do another) is nightmarish.  Hoping to make it end quicker, I worked for 2-3 hrs on them yesterday and got *hotspots * (pre-blisters/swollen hot areas) on my thumb and forefinger from constantly yanking at the yarn to close the loops properly.  I think it might be easier with needles but the way that you do a purl on the loom involves lifting it off the loom, putting the new loop on and then tightening, so that’s a lot of manipulating the yarn.  Owwie!

Yesterday my Colinette order came through so I am taking a day off the blasted boucle and making a neck warmer to match my Ragdoll hat.  I’ve yet to figure out how much “fringe” I want, but I have plenty of yarn this time! 🙂

Pictures are a bit of a problem with the utter lack of light in London at the moment, but we’re building a light tent this weekend so hopefully I’ll be able to take decent photos whatever the weather.  Blistery fingers crossed!