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Friday, January 02, 2009

First FO of the year!

Since it seems everyone and their dog has a slouchy beret (OK - I may be exaggerating on the dog berets. But given that there are cat sweater patterns out there, it's not too much of a stretch to imagine someone has knit their dog a beret to match their doggie sweater) I used the multi-lot iona yarn to knit a One Day Beret - for my purposes, it is christened The Bandwagon Beret. The pattern is top down, and works for any gauge; so if you are both afraid of running out of yarn and too lazy impatient to knit a swatch, this is the perfect beret pattern.

On New Year's eve we were boring and vegged out in front of the TV decided to spend some quality time together. I cast on for the beret at the start of the Canada-US hockey game, and had gotten almost to the point of doing the ribbing by the time we were ready to go to bed. I decided to try it on to see how it was looking:
First Bandwagon Beret Monkey

Isn't it funny how you often don't notice stripey pooling as you are knitting, even when it is blindingly obvious if you look at the project in its entirety? Even the monkey perched on my head doesn't distract you from the stripes (I guess this would be a Bellini Beret).

Since the nice people at Colinette had so kindly separated my skein of yarn into 2 parts, on New Year's day I frogged it, and re-knit it alternating the 2 yarns:

Bandwagon Beret ribbing
Even though I went down a needle size, my ribbing is pretty loose. Sadly, I suffer from "the first purl stitch after a knit stitch is loose" syndrome; 1x1 ribbing is probably a bad idea because of this.


Bandwagon Beret side
It looks like the ribbing is stretched out, but the beret really just slips on as is. I even did a simple crochet purl-wise cast off to try and tighten things up.


Bandwagon Beret

Since I would hate for it to blow off in a strong wind, I think I'm going to rip the ribbing back and re-knit it in 2x2 ribbing with an even smaller needle. If worst comes to worst, I'll knit some elastic into the ribbing.

The sordid details are: 5 mm needle (4.5 for the ribbing). I knit the top until it was 9 inches diameter(16 stitches between markers), did 2.5 inches of straight stockinette, and 1.5 inches of ribbing(12 stitches between markers). I had 11g of leftover yarn, so it used about 130m.



Now if only I could keep up this pace of one FO per day - I could finally make a dent in my stash!

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Comments on "First FO of the year!"

 

Blogger Yarn Devil said ... (Fri Jan 02, 10:20:00 PM EST) : 

Your beret looks good! What would you do with a dent in your stash? OOH wait.. then you could go yarn shopping......

 

Blogger Maggie said ... (Fri Jan 02, 10:27:00 PM EST) : 

Happy new year, Lisa!

Alternating from the two halves of the skein turned out lovely. The beret is very cute!

 

Blogger Tammy said ... (Fri Jan 02, 11:21:00 PM EST) : 

It's really cute on you. Happy New Year. We were boring, oh no that's spending quality time together, too. :)

 

Blogger Trillian42 said ... (Sat Jan 03, 08:55:00 AM EST) : 

Hey, if you really want 1x1 ribbing, try knitting combination - it tightens up the purl stitch juuuuuuust a smidge and makes ribbing ridiculously even.

It looks really cute, though - I like that color a lot, although I'd definitely be annoyed with the dyelot issues if I were you. Someone else ran into that with their yarn, too.

 

Blogger Bezzie said ... (Sat Jan 03, 09:03:00 AM EST) : 

Um, you realize there's a monkey on your head? ;-)

You pull that beret off well! I'm jealous!

 

Blogger turtlegirl76 said ... (Sat Jan 03, 09:15:00 AM EST) : 

What a different alternating rows made! The beret looks great.

I have the same issue with ribbing. I had to drop from a US8 to a US5 for the 1x1 ribbing on my sweater to make it nice and tight and neat.

 

Blogger Wendy said ... (Sat Jan 03, 09:29:00 AM EST) : 

Happy New Year!

Love the beret! I'm planning on knitting one myself with my new purple stash - I'll be sure to ask you for some tips!

 

Blogger Batty said ... (Sat Jan 03, 06:58:00 PM EST) : 

Whoa, you're fast! And those colors look amazing on you.

 

Blogger Kathy Kathy Kathy said ... (Tue Jan 06, 12:54:00 AM EST) : 

I have the same issue with the ribbing on a beret that isn't even complete yet. I'm going to take it off and reknit it (again) also. It's too bad mine isn't top down--harder to undo the beginning than the end. I will try Trillian's advice if I can remember it when the time comes.

 

Blogger Oh Baby! said ... (Thu Jan 08, 09:36:00 PM EST) : 

groovy! i'm diggin it. happy new year! hope to see u sportin yer bandwagon real soon. xo

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (Sun Feb 22, 09:10:00 PM EST) : 

I've seen a dog wearing a beret - today in fact. But I have been to so many knitting blogs in the past eight hours that I can't remember where it was.

About your ribbing being too loose - a solution to my ribbing (of a sweater neck) being too loose was to knit through the back loops. And maybe to purl the back loop as well?
(I haven't tried it yet.)

Happy knitting anyway,
Janey
janeyknitting AT yahoo DOT ca

 

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