February | 2011 | Working out Kinks and Fingering Yarn

Casting Off

I’ve been thinking about starting a knitting blog almost since I returned to knitting. But it’s taken me at least five years to get around to it. The only way I can explain the delay is this:

Last month, I made a pair of black socks for a priest whose birthday is the day after mine. They were a Christmas gift, and a friend and I made a special trip to Jo-Ann’s to buy the yarn.

I didn’t finish the socks in time, but that didn’t matter because my family and I wouldn’t be visiting him at his current parish until mid January, so I worked on more urgent projects first (some hats and a pair of slippers that needed to be delivered sooner), and I got back to the socks eventually, working on them two or three rounds at a time, leaving them forgotten on nightstands and coffee tables, distracting myself with UFO’s that had sat in the basket for months.

The day before we went to visit, I worked on them in earnest, a pair of garter strips flanking two wavy cables that leaned into each other, then away, without ever touching—like people or good intentions—and I had more than half a sock to go: 80 stitches per round, eleven rounds per vertical inch, eternity on a yarny scale.

By morning, I was two inches short, so I left them at home. When we returned, I completed them.

Except for the cast off.

My excuse was that I wanted to make sure the band of ribbing at the top of the ankle was the same number of rounds on both socks, but the reality was that binding off meant giving them away, and giving them away meant believing them worthy of being shared.

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Be Mine Hat

This is a hat I made to match a pair of fingerless mitts. I made it while I was in the Valentine’s Day spirit. It’s girly and cute with four separate cables running from the brim to the crown. The cable used is the XO cable which looks like X’s and O’s alternating and stacked on top of each other. The brim has ribbing between each cable section or you can make a longer version that starts with plain ribbing and can be folded up.

I used Knitpicks Swish Worsted yarn but any worsted weight will work for this pattern. My hat is made out of a pretty pink color called Carnation.

Here is the download link for the pattern.

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I based the design for this hat on a pattern for fingerless mitts by Yarnthrower. . They have ribbing at the wrist and knuckles. They also have the XO cable running across the back of the hand from wrist to knuckles. They are really pretty, too. You can find them here.

Fingerless Mitts With XO Cable