Calliope

Here's Calliope, a simple hat pattern with endless styling and embellishing possibilities.

(click any image to enlarge)

She begins with a tie casing and continues entirely in garter stitch--all worked flat. Garter stitch creates a lovely fabric with both drape and stretch--especially when worked in Fresco. This yarn has enough twist to add spring and stretch to the stitches while maintaining the perfect amount of drape (not to mention it is delightfully soft and warm). 

My days working at the yarn store gave me a special appreciation for beginner friendly patterns that look elegant and appealing. Calliope has two options for the tie casing for both beginner and intermediate knitters. The stitches and skills required are:

• Casting on
• Knitting and purling (flat)
• Decreasing (k2tog)
• Seaming (both vertical and horizontally, with garter stitch)

The intermediate version includes instructions with a  Provisional Cast On, which omits the horizontal seam.

This pattern includes two letter sized pages with multiple photos (on both pages), list of abbreviations and detailed instructions that are in the same clean, professional layout as my freebies.

To celebrate my first for-sale pattern, I'm offering Calliope at a discounted $2 until Tuesday, November 23. On Tuesday the price will increase to $3 at noon (eastern time). For the discount, use promo code "calliope3" during checkout.

Fair isle, a hat and a day of football

It's that magic time of year again. Along with football season, my holiday knitting is in full swing and keeps me busy on Sunday afternoons. It is also the time of year that boyfriend begins to imagine his new winter hat and starts offering to design the charts if I'll do the knitting. Last time we ended up with the Marching Bears Hat, a fun but demanding chart without any repeats.

This year I agreed to knit another 'boyfriend original' with a few conditions: floats no longer than 5 stitches, and repeats no longer than 20 stitches. His conditions were pretty simple: it has to fit just right and it has to be a solid and a self striper. 

After my halloween rally hat, the solid had to be Fresco. The striper is Silk Garden Sock and both yarns are in colors that are just right. His chart is remarkably easy to follow and (almost) sticks to my conditions. 

It makes me excited to see what next year's boyfriend hat will be...

Just like ~200,000 other people, boyfriend and I decided it would be a fun idea to go to Washington D.C. for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. We decided to do the (in)sane thing and take an overnight train to DC, rally away, then take an overnight train back to Boston.

I actually slept quite well on the train. At least, as well as one can expect to sleep on a train that stops in every metro area between Boston and DC. We got in around 7am Saturday morning and made our way to the national mall (not hard to do when all of Union Station is migrating to the same place).

Here's us with our just-woke-up faces and Congress behind us. (notice the rally hat?)

We weren't the first there, but we were first enough that we were able to stand really close to the stage. 

Having nothing to sit on for the remaining five hours between us and Jon Stewart, we debated the pros and cons of standing in the same spot for five hours vs. touring a city that I'd never seen before. We decided to see a little scenery and risk losing sight of the stage for the show.

Did you know it's almost two miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial? By the time we made that round trip it was nearly rally time. We made a quick stop at the WWII memorial to represent:

Boyfriend's actually thumbs upping his Grateful Dead hat, he just doesn't know it ;).

Then made our way back to the edge of the crowd, now two projection screens back from the stage. It was almost rally time, but I got in a little sock knitting anyway.

When it began, there was laughing.

And plenty of sanity with Stewart. The stage is actually just to the right of that dude's hat. Not terribly far away, but far enough that we couldn't see anything happening. 

When all was said and done, everyone seemed genuinely pleased, ready to pee, and very hungry. It took a couple hours for us to get anywhere, which happened to be the Museum of Natural History. It took even longer for us to find a place to eat that wasn't booked through the night.

Then we made our way back to Union Station and got back on the overnight train.

Success.