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Wow, thank you all for the responses to my blog poll! The crimson won out with 66 % of the votes, out of a total of 38. I am looking longingly (one last time?) at the forest green, but also looking long and hard and very meaningfully at the crimson! I like Opal’s suggestion that I could overdye it later, but let’s see. Quill, you were right that the green was being made into the BPT cabled cardigan from Knitty, but I am so bored with that project! Plus my cables were getting all puckered up at the increases and I was generally dissatisfied with it. Even if I don’t end up Ogee-ing it, it is not going to be BPT-ed any longer, alas.
Recently I got a couple of photos in my inbox, representing afterlives of my knitting adventures here. One is from the lovely Mary, who is the first one to make my Rangoli Hat! I am so excited! Thank you so much Mary for braving the pattern, and for turning out this absolutely gorgeous hat:
She didn’t block it over a plate because she likes this billowy look to it, which doesn’t give her hat hair! Mary it looks great on you! I love the flat picture of it in the sun, too.
(Now, if only the recipient of the original green piece I made would take a picture for this blog….)
The second picture is of my dear friend Madhavi, who is unfortunately braving mountains of snow and bitter cold in the northeast after years of living in friendlier climes. Many years ago in hostel she once persuaded me to design a nose-warmer for her (she hates the cold more than I do, which is something). I think I had crocheted one, but I am sure she never wore it. I wonder why, it even had strings to go over the ears! But as a mark of my sympathy for her freezing bones I sent her my Turkish balaclava hat. Here she is, totally wrapped up and surrounded by snow, but warm and smiling! Medu, stay warm!
Remember I made a balaclava hat (or a monkey cap as it is called in India) sometime last year? Mercifully, I haven’t had much occasion to wear it of late. It’s wet here, but not cold and much as I miss it, I’m glad I am not walking towards the waterfront in Jersey City braving the chilly sea wind at night. But last night I was talking to my old roommate from college who, unfortunately, is currently braving some seriously low temperatures back east. I decided to send her the monkey cap instead. It will also be an improvement on the many failed attempts at a crocheted nose-warmer we tried to design for her back then.
That made me think, a lot of people come to this blog through searches for "balaclava pattern". I knitted mine as I went along and borrowed the motif from Charlene Schurch’s Hats On! book, but before I sent it off to my friend I thought I might look at it again, dig out my notes
and write up the pattern. So here it is. Just a note of caution, though: this is not a test-knit, proof-read pattern, but one that
worked well for me in terms of the basic structure of the balaclava. I can’t provide the motif from the book, but I think this pattern would look great in plain stockinette in a variegated yarn. Do let me know if you make it, and if you encounter any problems. I am
knitting one again based on these very instructions, and I’ll put it up later on the sidebar for .pdf download.
Pattern for Balaclava Hat:
Materials: Any yarn and needle combination that gives you a gauge of 6 stitches to the inch. (I used Knitpicks Andean Silk and Elann Sierra Aran on size 3s, but my gauge is always off from that suggested on the ball band).
The hat is knit from the neck upwards.
Neck ribbing:
1) Cast on 112 stitches. Join, taking care not to twist the stitches. Knit k2,p2 ribbing for 6 inches, or the length you want the neck of the balaclava to be. The top should ideally sit snugly at the chin.
Back of the head:
2) Next round, continue in k2, p2 ribbing for 70 stitches, then cast off 42 stitches in ribbing for the face opening. You should be back to the beginning of the round.
3) Now continue to knit back and forth on these 70 stitches in stockinette. Knit back and forth for 24 rows, or 3.5 inches. End with a purl row.
4) Turn work. Cast on 42 stitches and rejoin at the other end. You should have 112 stitches in the round once again. Continue to work in stockinette in the round for 22 rows.
Decreases for the crown:
5) K11, sk2p 8 times around. 96 stitches remaining.
6) Knit next 3 rounds.
7) K9, sk2p 8 times around. 80 stitches remaining.
8) Knit next 3 rounds.
9) K7, sk2p 8 times around. 64 stitches remaining.
10) Knit next 2 rounds.
11) K5, sk2p 8 times around. 48 stitches remaining.
12) Knit one round.
13) K3, sk2p 8 times around. 32 stitches remaining.
14) Sk2p round. 16 stitches.
15) Ktog around. 8 stitches.
Draw yarn through remaining 8 stitches and pull together tightly.
Edging for the face opening:
16) From the left bottom corner, begin picking up stitches evenly around the left edge (ear flap), the top cast on edge (forehead), right edge (ear flap) and bottom cast off edge (chin). I picked up 73, but the actual number is not that important as long as you pick up evenly (skip one edge stitch for every three you pick up).
17) Knit in the round in reverse stockinette (purl) for three rows, and cast off all the stitches in purl. The edging should curl inwards nicely. Weave in all loose ends.
18) Wear the balaclava and stay warm!
I’ve been really busy with work, with hardly any time to put up more pictures, or knit and take more pictures! I have several deadlines in the coming weeks and they are really keeping me busy. But I thought I’d just put up a small update of things in progress.
First off, the Balaclava Cap finally has its edging, and it has been successfully taken on trial runs on the West side and along the Hudson, especially when walking back home late at night from the Path station. It is *incredibly* warm and totally keeps out the wind. And we’ve had some really windy days here. I look like a slightly dressy bank robber – and feel like King Arthur’s knight from time to time – but I really don’t care, because it’s an incredibly warm and comfortable garment. And I despise the winter enough to look weird to feel warm.
Next up, the cashmere vest is coming along nicely. I have done about 2/3 of the back, and it should be done sometime this week. This is perfect commute knitting. I have the TV versions of a lot of P.D. James’ mystery novels in my Netflix queue, but hardly any time to watch them. If I did, this stockinette vest would get done a lot faster. Oh well, I’m travelling to California in a few weeks for a conference, so maybe then. The yarn, Filatura Lanarota 100% cashmere, is soft, but splits more than any other I’ve worked with and the stitch definition isn’t great. So it’s going to be a plain stockinette vest, but I think it will look good when done.
What else? Here’s what I would like to finish next: It’s a pair of gloves I started making last year, but abandoned for some reason. One is done, and I only need to finish two fingers and a thumb on the second. They’re Brooks Farm Mohair-Wool blend and they’re wonderfully soft and good to work with.
Here’s my attempt at a monkey cap – ski mask – balaclava helmet. With
the Turkish motif. Actually I don’t know if this is really a Turkish
motif, but Charlene Schurch’s book said so! I really liked working with
it, it’s intuitive and you don’t even need the chart after a few rows.
I still have to weave ends in and do a small edging around the face,
but it’s going to have to wait till I return from Spain in a couple of
weeks. I’m leaving in a short while, and will try to post some updates
from various places in Andalusia….. if I can.
I really liked working on this project; it caused me so much heartburn midway, but overall, it fits wonderfully, is soft, I love the colour combinations and I almost wish it would be colder so I could wear it.
The Andean Silk is a big hit; cannot wait to use it again. The dark
purple yarn and the slightly lighter rust shade towards the top are
Elann’s Sierra Aran, which I had in my stash (yay! didn’t have to buy
more), and the gauge worked perfectly.
I sort of made up the pattern as I went along, adapting it from different online free patterns, and if anyone’s interested let me know, once I return I’ll try to write it up. I can’t post the motif chart since it’s from a book, but if you get the same gauge you can use any motif you like.
See you folks in a couple of weeks, and wish everyone a very happy new year!
Alianne mentioned in her latest post that there are negative knitting days where nothing seems to work and you keep knitting, but frogging as well. I agree totally, but also want to add that when negative knitting days combine with other kinds of negatives they make things a lot worse. I have a bad cold and throat that hurts, it’s grey, gloomy and freezing outside, the very thought of final exam bluebooks is making me shudder, I have realised that I am waaaaay behind schedule for finishing work I had planned to before I leave for Spain next week, and on top of it all, the monkey cap is not going well. More stuff is about to hit the frogpond.
So the Turkish motif isn’t working out, because the Pure Alpaca is really not at the Andean Silk’s thickness and it pulls in the fabric too much for it to work. The colours were lovely, the motif was great, but my f***ing gauge was off, and I frogged nearly 15 rows of fairisle. Then I just knit the main colour in stockinette, but now it seems that I have even less than I had anticipated. I have already cast on for the head part, but cannot decide how to proceed. Here are my choices at this stage. I can:
1) Buy some more Andean Silk, so what if I have absolutely no more space in my flat, or money.
2) Use whatever worsted yarn works after the AS runs out and be done with it, so what if it is wildly jarring, at least I will get gauge.
3) Chuck the idea of the monkey cap for this yarn and make a simple stockinette cap, so what if I made grand claims in my blog, I’ll just resolve never to foolishly start a project without checking to see if I have enough.
In the meantime, though, I have to steel myself for bluebooks. Already, some students have alarmed me by asking how they can set up their off-campus library access. Isn’t it reassuring when, two days before the final exam of the semester, your students nonchalantly ask you how to access their online reserve readings? Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.
But at least I don’t have to speak in class for the next three weeks, so my throat can recover. Any suggestions for feeling better, folks? Only remedies with alcohol in them are welcome.
This is just to confuse further those who thought this was baclava the last time… still talking knitting.
I chose a Turkish pattern for the stockinette portion of the balaclava cap. I cast off for the face opening, slipped the stitches to a larger needle and tugged the tube over my head. Nice and long. So then I decided that it would be nice to have the thickness of two-colour patterned fabric over the ears rather than stripes or plain bands of colour. What I am going to do once I run out of this Andean Silk red I don’t know; will figure something out. But for now, am excited about this beautiful pattern. I got it from a Turkish motif cap in Hats On by Charlene Schurch, which is a great book (I’ve made four caps from it so far). The other, darker red is Elann’s Pure Alpaca, which is a wee bit thinner than the Andean Silk, but not significant enough to warrant a needle change. It makes the stockinette fabric a little more snug, which is exactly what I want.
The only foreseeable problem is doing the two-colour stranding on the purl side. This is the first time I’m doing fair-isle work on back-and-forth knitting. Naturally, it occurred to me after I started. But it’s not that big a deal, and it’s only a couple of inches before I join and start in the round again for the forehead.
This is turning out to be a lot of fun indeed.
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.
