Monday, January 2, 2012

Restocking the BT'oKT

Somewhere along the line, I thought I had an extra week before I headed out to Asheville for the Winter Retreat. Imagine my surprise when I actually looked at the calendar and counted those little boxes... It's a good thing that I got all of my workshop materials mailed last week.

One of the things I did notice in December, as I chose hats from the Big Tub 'O Knitted Things, is that I'm obviously not drawn to masculine or neutral colorways. Only one or two of the three thousand hats that I knit last year even came marginally close to being Man Colors (and yes, I know, there's no such thing... but a great many men still do not want to wear pink. It is what it is). So one of my jobs this year is to stock the Tub with some Manly Hats.
 This one comes close. It's all made from teeny little balls of leftover yarns- I used up an entire baggie of them. Woohoo!
I'm pretty sure this one doesn't qualify, but boy is it pretty. It's from some Twisted Fiber Arts bamboo yarn (I don't remember the colorway, but it doesn't matter, EVERY Twisted Fiber Arts colorway is beautiful), and I'm thrilled there was enough to knit a whole hat with the single yarn (and not just because there were no ends to tie in).

The hat I'm working on now is all Neon Pink, Yellow, and Green, so... nope... not Manly, but it's awfully pretty too. But if maybe one out of every five hats or so is sort of neutral, I should have enough for my guys come next Christmas.

2 comments:

Elizabeth D said...

Kathleen, how many stitches do you cast on for those hats? I can figure out all the rest, but just feel lazy about determining how many stitches to start wit. . . I bet it's in one of your blog posts somewhere, too. . .

Kathleen Taylor said...

I'll post the whole pattern tomorrow, but I cast on 140 sts on a 16" 2.75mm circ. 6 rows or so of 2x2 ribbing, stockinette until it's 5" (a little more, a little less, depending on who the hat is for), and then decrease. Easy peasy. That makes a snug beanie. If you use slightly heavier yarn and a 3.0mm needle, it's looser. Or you can add 10 sts.