Target Practice

Recently my husband asked me to knit him an Andean-style earflap hat. Now, since he's never really asked me to knit him anything before, there's really no way I could refuse. I gave him some patterns to look at, and he liked Ryan's hat from Interweave. Only trouble is, I have never done fairisle, or stranded knitting. So I had some learning to do. And I thought maybe I should learn on something other than his hat, get a litle practice first. So I looked around for the easiest fairisle project I could find, and I came up with Center Square from Knitty.com. This turned out to be an awesome first fairisle project! Super fast and easy - it knit up in less than one day. And it really helped me build my confidence about stranded knitting. I ordered some yarn for the earflap hat and now I can hardly wait for it to arrive so I can get started.



Pattern: Center Square from Knitty.com
Yarn: Paton's Classic Wool Merino in red & white
Needles: US 9 (the biggest knitpicks options tips I have. I have since ordered 11's as called for in the pattern)
Obviously, I did not mean for my hat to look like a Target ad, but it totally cracks me up that it does. It just happened to be the colors I had available. I will definitely make this hat again in more carefully selected colors.

Now I'm inspired to try other fairisle projects too. Like maybe the We Call Them Pirates hat. I'm not into pirates myself, and it seems like that particular trend must be fading, but maybe my 11 year old nephew might like it.

While I wait for my yarn and needles to arrive, I decided to start on another holiday gift - Wisp from Knitty.com. This is such a great, fast and easy lace scarf/wrap. I started yesterday and it's now about half done. I'm using some lavender alpaca laceweight yarn that my friend Katy gave me. It's got a little fuzz to it, so it works nicely with this pattern, though I bet it would be even more beautiful with some actual Kidsilk Haze.


So that's all I've got for now. I just downloaded an audiobook from Audible.com to keep me company while I knit. It's called "The Short and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", and so far I love it.