Fall Time Hat Knitting

Yesterday was actually the first day of Fall, which is absolutely my favourite season. I do really love summer because it's the only time that we get reasonably warm weather but watching all of the leaves changing, getting to light fall candles, wear cozy wooly layers, and make fall type foods is totally worth the brisk mornings. 

To be fair, so far this has been the warmest fall I can remember. Yesterday we actually got to 26 degrees celsius which is like a hot summer day and, while I really hope that this lovely warm first week of fall is the foreshadowing of an uncharacteristically mild winter, I also do realize that the weather is going to cool off a little bit in the near future so I've decided to knit a quick wooly project for my husband to enjoy.

He's recently mentioned that he really doesn't have a winter hat for this year, and I figured that rather than buying one, I would make him one. I went through my yarn stash and found some "Briggs and Little" worsted weight yarn to make a striped winter hat for him and I've been following Jared Flood's "Turn a Square" pattern that is actually free on Ravelry, and it's turning out really well so far! I think I'm at least as excited as he is to see how the hat turns out, but it's kind of a nice feeling that he's also excited to be getting the handmade hat once it's finished.

Broken Needle Dilemma

The weather has (sadly) been cooling off very quickly these past couple of weeks so I've been working full steam ahead on getting my Braid Hills cardigan done. Yesterday I ran into an unfortunate problem when, while working on the first shoulder, the part of the interchangeable needle that screws on the the cable needle broke off.

When it broke I just sat there staring at it, not even really sure how the cable had come away from the needle that I had in my hand. It was kind of a tricky spot for the needle to break, because I really didn't want to leave the shoulders on waste yarn until I could get a replacement needle in. So I decided to press on, seeing as these are fairly short rows anyway, so I've now finished all but the last shoulder that I'm knitting now with one needle being no longer than a cable needle.

After I finish these shoulders, however, I'm for sure going to have to wait on my new needles to start the sleeves, but at least I've got them ordered and on there way. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm working away on it again.

Working with Cables

I definitely go through phases when it comes to the different kinds of knitting that I love, for instance I went through a really long lace phase where for months I would knit nothing unless it was in a lace pattern, and made a crazy long worsted weight lace scarf. Then I went through a colorwork phase where I was literally not interested in texture at all and could only be happy if I was using two or more colours at a time.

The phase I'm currently in has probably been the longest yet, with no real foreseeable end in sight. For the past six months I have been entirely caught up in cables. I've been making cabled socks, working on my braid hills cardigan, and have been staring shamelessly at all kinds of lovely cables on pinterest. I've even been going through stitch dictionaries to pick out different cables that I really like to swatch up just to see how they look.

These were both done up in Louet 'gems' which I loved using and was really happy with the stitch definition. I loved the middle panel on the first one so much I used it again in the second swatch to see how it looked with different stitches. Playing around with these cables has got me really inspired and I'm even considering the idea of trying to make my very own cabled pullover design. Hopefully that will be in the works over the next little while.

Thanks for reading!