Adventures of a Desi KnitterAn academic juggles knitting, sewing, and other crafts in Kolkata

Balaclava Beginnings

§ December 11th, 2005 § Filed under Caps, Hats, Etc., Turkish Balaclava Cap § 5 Comments

It is so hard for me to avoid alliterative titles. It’s like a sickness. When I worked for a magazine a decade ago, our editor used to always warn us: puns and alliterations in titles and captions only if it’s 3 am, you have a printing deadline and you can’t bear to drink any more coffee. I still think of him everytime I think of alliterative titles.

Anyway, I digress already. I started the balaclava pattern, with the Knitpicks Andean Silk in Barn Red. This colour is absolutely to die for, and the yarn is soft, luminous and gorgeous. Moves like, yes, silk in your hands as you knit. I am definitely ordering more later for a pullover.
Have knit only a couple of inches, but wanted to properly record my progress on this project, since it’s sort of a mix of various other patterns and ideas.

So far, I decided to make a simple monkey cap, with a ribbed neck base going up to the chin/mouth, then opening for the face and doing the rest of it in stockinette. In the comments to my last post Mary very kindly pointed me to this pattern and I like it, except for the ribbing at the forehead. Need to do something to that. I also like this Three-in-One Balaclava from Knitty but not the tied-up top. And the seed-stitch border at the face…. have to think of something. I’m thinking a picked up border, maybe at a tighter gauge.

I started the project just before going to see Aparna Sen’s 15 Park Avenue at the South Asian International Film Festival in the city. I loved her 36 Chowringhee Lane, a fine, sensitive film that is highly recommended if you haven’t seen it, and Mr & Mrs. Iyer was also quite good. This latest offering, unfortunately the only film in the festival I could go to, was a terrible disappointment. Badly written, plotted and directed. The acting was good, given the galaxy of competent actors, especially Konkona Sen Sharma. But overall, didn’t like the film. Wonder what the otherwise very good Aparna Sen was thinking.

Anyway, all this digression to say that I knit two inches of the ribbing through the film before I realised that the Andean Silk has only 96 yards, and I have only two skeins. Will probably need close to 300 yards, so I’ll probably do the stockinette sections interspersed with Elann’s Pure Alpaca. I have one 109-yard skein in a slightly darker shade of red, and it’s the same gauge.

Speaking of gauge, I’m knitting this on size 5s Susan Bates metals,  and it still feels a little loose! The recommended needle size is 7, and I know I knit loosely, but still.