Saturday, December 20, 2008

Felted Skulls and Yeast Leavings





My younger son (a grown man, mind you) asked if I would knit and felt a gearshift knob cover to match the We Call Them Pirates Hat that I knitted for him last winter (Adrian Bazilia's wonderful free pattern: http://www.helloyarn.com/wecallthempirates.htm ). His gearshift knob is metal, and it has been consistently below zero for awhile, so his fingies are cold, I guess.


It was a very quick knit, and the cover came out pretty much perfectly. I adapted the We Call Them Pirates skull pattern to a 14 st repeat, got out some Knit Picks Palette yarn (hurrah for a large stash), size 3 needles, and CO 56 sts. I worked the lower border, 2 skull repeats, and then decreased, working vertical stripes, until there were 16 sts left. The unfelted cover was about 4 1/2" long, and 3 3/4" wide. I hand-felted it in the sink until my fingers were pruney, and it shrunk to about 3 1/2" long and 2 1/2" wide, and it slips over the metal knob snugly and perfectly. He hasn't seen it yet, and I don't know if he'll want me to trim the excess and tighten the bottom, or if the longer cover will work. I think he'll like it, and it'll be a good insulation from the cold metal. And it matches his hat (he doesn't read my blog, so he won't know I'm making fun of him. He is actually quite hard to knit for, so I'm happy to be able to make him something that he will use).
BTW- the flare at the bottom of the gear shift cover is the result of not stranding the first few rounds. I did it on purpose, so the cover would come on and off easily, but the propensity for solid color rows to shrink differently is something to remember if you want to felt Fair Isle knitted items.



And I was pretty sure you all really wanted to see the goopy sediment left after racking the Hard Lemonade to a clean carboy for the final settling. I was right. Right?

3 comments:

gayle said...

Well, of course! Who wouldn't want to see yeast leavings?!?

And that's a great gear-shift knob cover. Very clever adaptation.

I knitted a hat for my daughter and felted it. It was supposed to be a cloche style hat, with a stranded knit pattern in the middle section. The stranded part pulled a lot tighter than the unstranded in the felting process, so it has a semi-brim, a tighter section where the stranding was, then balloons out above the stranding, then is drawn in at the top by the decreases. It's odd, but she loves it. A friend of hers, upon seeing it, said "That's a lot of Hat!"

Anonymous said...

Would like to get a free down load of fingerless gloves pattern for knitting. Where the Fingers goes up to the knuckles. Like half gloves . I talk to your sister at Costco when she comes in to Costco where I work. She said to go to your blog, so I am guessing I am doing this right. How do you get free patterns for knitting?

Kathleen Taylor said...

Anonymous, I don't have any patterns for fingerless gloves that have half-fingers, but you can search the rest of my free posted patterns here by typing *Freebie* into the search engine. YOu can go through them and see which ones you like.

You can make the kind of fingerless gloves you're talking about by knitting regular gloves (I do have a freebie pattern for them), but only knitting an inch or so on each finger before binding off.

Which sister?