Good Causes: January 2007 Archives

Here are two cabled hats I made out of Lion Brnad Wool-Ease for the Dulaan project. I did them both without a cable needle, something that finally made sense to me after seeing it demonstrated on Knitty Gritty.

On the right in the picture above is called Greenery. I love this hat. The cables are fun and just a little bit complex, enough that you do have to pay attention. It's snug, warm, and very pretty.

Pattern: Greenery from Lilith Parker
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Blue Mist
Needles: Size 6 Clover bamboo
Size: roughly 18 inches around

The other hat is a Cap Karma Hat. This one didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, mostly because I don't like the fold-up brim. I added the longer ribbed brim to make the ear section warmer (it gets pretty chilly in Mongolia, after all). Unfortunately I think that sort of ruined the look of the pattern. As you can see in the following picture, with the brim down, the cables make a lovely sideways zig-zag pattern, but I think with the brim up the pattern gets lost. If I do it again it'll be without the brim and possibly with the smaller needles, as I did on the Greenery Hat.

Pattern: Cap Karma Hat from Smariek Knits
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Forrest Green Heather
Needles: Size 7 Clover bamboo
Size: roughly 20 inches around

This is a scarf I made during the fall for the Red Scarf Project, a drive run by the Orphan Foundation of America to prepare Valentine care packages for orphans attending college on their own. The packages all include a hand-knit scarf.

I was looking for something to knit on the bias to prepare for a bias lace wrap I want to do (Sarcelle) and found this pattern at Maia Spins. From there I learned about the project on this blog and so I made scarf in red for the drive. January is when they're accepting the scarves so it's time to photograph and mail mine.

At six inches, the scarf is a bit wider than I would have liked. But being a new knitter and thinking that gauge doesn't matter for a scarf, I of course neglected to swatch, so it's my own fault. I meant to do one fewer pattern repeat for the length but forgot by the time I got to the end, so I believe it's just as the pattern was written, other than I few typos that I found and have emailed to the designer.

This was a great knit. It makes a very easy start to knitting on the bias and produces a lovely, warm scarf. I especially like how the subtly variegated yarn turned out. It's not overly pooled or striped, I think it just shows a depth of color.

Pattern: Bias Scarf from Maia Spins
Yarn: Two skeins of Artyarns Supermerino in color 115
Dimensions: 6" by 69"