only five things

My father died a year ago today. I knit five things for him. I don't have a picture of the wristwarmers I knit for him - those he probably wore most often.

The second item he wore most often is probably this one:

The Architect's Hat, an original design by me, just for him. He wanted it to be very plain, I wanted it to have at least something special, so I used a very understated sequence of k1, p1, k1, p2 with 5 rows stockinette in between. I've since used that sequence in other projects, too, to infuse them a little with his spirit. When I did the decreases, I accidentially created a star on top of the hat:

The third item I knit for him was a sweater, using a pattern by Renée Rigdon and Zabeth Stewart, published in Anticraft. I took the measurements from other sweaters of his, but by the time it was finished, he had lost a whole lot of weight and it didn't fit him at all anymore. I'm still not sure what to do with it now.

One of the last things he actually wore was the nightcap I knit for him. The pattern, a vintage one recreated by Franklin Habit for Knitty, gave me a lot of trouble, since the original pattern numbers lead to something that could have fit two people. In the end, I picked up stitches mid-cap, cut the thread and knit from the top down and ended up with this:

I don't remember if he actually ever wore the improved version. I do have pictures of him wearing the ridiculously large version, though.

The last item I knit was one he never got to wear. It is a woolen recreation of a hat I designed and knit for my brother using bamboo yarn. I finished it and gave it to my cousin.

I've decided to keep the architect's hat as it is, but don't know what I'll do with the nightcap and the sweater. Maybe I'll find good places for those or maybe I'll unravel them and knit something entirely new with them.

meandering through picture quality, knitting potato chips and a brief history of my stash

Today it's finally sunny here in Vienna after days and days of grey fog. I quickly whipped out my camera and took some pictures of my almost and recently finished objects on my window sill. Not the most charming background, at least compared to the balcony I used to have at my disposal, but it's the only place in my room that has enough light for my camera to not need flash - comparable to Turtlegirl's top of the washing machine. Except the sill only works when it's sunny.

Two projects belong in the "knitting potato chips" category. I had to stop myself after the second one (which still isn't done, because the jumble on my couch has swallowed the green yarn I need for the bottom edging), otherwise I think I'd knit about three, four, five ... six, seven, eight ... nine ten?

The potato chip pattern is the Telemark Pullover by Erika Flory. Top-down raglan, very easy, infinitely customizable, done in a flash and gender-neutral. The pattern is very clearly written, but as mentioned in many other project descriptions on Ravelry, once you're switching to knitting in the round, cut your yarn and add it or a new ball at the left underarm, otherwise the end of the garter stitch placket will not add up in the middle. If you don't care to finish the placket, no need to switch.

Here's the first one I made:

Made with my favorite workhorse yarn, Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000. There's a lot of history in this little sweater. The wine red yarn is from my first and to date last pair of real gloves with fingers, the apricot is a lonely ball of yarn I rescued from the sales pile a while (years) back and couldn't find a project for and the coral ... oh the coral.

The coral used to be piggy pink. Yes, really. I used it to make gloves for my mother (shown at right). I had lots of piggy pink yarn left over and it lived in my stash for many years until my friend told me of her pregnancy. I looked through the whole stash and picked out all the yarn I could use for baby knits. But this yarn was too piggy pink. Overdyeing it seemed like the best option, so I bought wine red dye and went to work. The yarn looked lovely coming out of the dye, a muted wine red. Then I put it in the fixing bath and it turned coral. I just hope it doesn't turn back into piggy pink in the first wash. It also lost weight - it's significantly thinner than the apricot and wine red yarn, which is the reason the sweater looks uneven.


The Telemark Pullover can also look like this:

More Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 leftovers, this time the green from my mother's gloves and some of the insanely bright variegated Cool Wool that I used for her wrist- and legwarmers eons ago when I got back into knitting (so, 2005). It is quite alright for kids, though, since it will make the child easy to spot. I intentionally left the arms short - this pullover turned out bigger than the other one, so it will fit longer, probably even into spring 2011, when it can be worn over a long-sleeved shirt.
And that's the end of the Telemark pullovers for me. No more! No more Telemark pullovers until all the rest of the baby knitting is done! Otherwise I'll never get to the baby socks.