Photo of cover sheet for Docker´s Beanie pattern.
I have a small vintage car that I like to drive in good weather, preferably with the windows open — but my hair hasn´t seen scissors since February 2020, and it flies around a bit, no matter how I contain it with clips or rubber bands. I needed a cap. Read more…
(Note: Thanks to the excellent influence of Jorts the Cat, my images will now show descriptions beneath. WordPress doesn´t support ALT tags for users with limited vision, so this is how I´ĺl accommodate.)
When I first saw the L´Hood Ritza hat, I swooned. It was bonkers in all the ways I love most: wide-brimmed, cape-backed, and had a weird engineering twist.
Image of an over-sized blue Ritza L´Hood storm hat with a
very large brim covering the eyes and upper shoulders of a model.
That twist was a wrap band that allowed the cape-like hat to become a smaller hood.
But . . . the Ritza was perpetually out of stock in my size, even though I waited for months. Naturally, I decided to try to make my own.
My Techo cover served me very well in 2022, and continues to do so in 2023. The Techo is such a small book; it´s really amazing how much can be crammed into that very small space.
This photo is of my completed Techo from 2022, and the new one, for 2023. In between is a neat little slim folder that I use as a bookmark for the front of the notebook.
For the past few years I’ve used a Japanese Traveller’s Notebook as my daily diary. I liked it, and it was a useful tool while I tried to figure out what I really wanted and needed, but this year I ended up with a Hobonichi Techo — the smaller of the Japanese Hobonichi datebooks.
A representative page, with privacy redactions.
I love this thing! It’s exactly the right size for everything I want to record. It’s made of special, super-thin, super-strong paper (and costs like it!), so it’s light and durable. And I can write in it with my tiny fountain pen!
After two failures, it was time to try again. Like the previous two mittens, this pair was made using Suzy’s Addi Pro Mittens Tutorial. This pair were made from double-strands of Lion Brand Fishermen’s Wool and KnitPicks Stroll fingering yarn — a combination that is possibly a little thicker than the Addi likes best, but roughly comparably in weight to the Wool Ease and Kroy Socks double strands.
Knit mittens are always a little problematic — they’re holey, after all! — but this yarn combination yields a nice, tight fabric. You’d still might want to wear some kind of woven liner under in really cold weather, but in most circumstances, these mittens would probably keep hands cozy enough.
I used Suzy’s Addi Pro Mittens Tutorial; the process looked a lot easier than socks. (But, let’s face it, socks aren’t at all tough once you figured them out!) My first attempt was done double-stranding Lion Brand Fishermen’s Wool in oatmeal and Kroy Socks in brown rose marl.
There were issues. I love the extra long cuff, which is doubled back and knitted together, but I had trouble with the thumb, which is done in a flat panel. I failed to drop the necessary stitches properly, and, well, it was a mess. Using these yarns, this mitten was also far too long for me.
I took it apart; too much was wrong, and I also hated the meh color(s).
Things got messier on my second attempt.
Smaller, fidgety, fiber arts tools need their own safe place, especially if one is inclined to haul them around. On the spur of the moment, I pulled out the last of my favorite chocolate quilting fabric, and made a little flat pack for the lovely Stephen Willette tools I like to keep handy.
Dark chocolate nonpareils, yum!
This is not an IKEA-style flat pack, of course, but an expandable little bag.
For Addi socks 97 and 98, I doubled the essentially fingering-weight International Yarns Infusions.
These rank among my favorites so far, and were easy to knit; the yarn is just a little bit heavier than fingering yarn, and, doubled, is heavy enough to create a nice heft. But my very favorite pair follows:
Yes, these just might be the “right” weight socks for my Addi Express knitting machine. Not too thick, and not too thin, with stitches just about right for the yarns.
The Addi still struggles a bit with those increases and decreases, and I take great care with them! But somehow it manages very well — how can a plastic machine be this sturdy?!? — and does the job beautifully.
Clothing has taken a back seat around here for quite a while now, but there’s stash to be used up, and, someday, maybe, clothes will be needed again. I have been eyeing *Wool&’s Rowena merino dress for quite a while, but couldn’t convince myself to buy it: the neckline’s all wrong for me; everyone complains about the pockets; and there’s the whole agony and waste of online sizing.
But I want at least one merino dress along those lines — and it’s time to start thinking about making clothes again. Why not begin with something that will act like pajamas around the house, but go outside — if that’s ever possible — perfectly well? That was my thinking, so I grabbed some ponte, bought long ago from Fabric Mart, Closet Case’s Ebony Dress pattern No. 10, and went to work.
