I Swear I'm Still Making Things

Here are the results of the Hat-a-thon:

California Marathon (43)

• Meanicequeen (1/1)

• neecy25 (23/?)

• MinnieMay9 (4/4)

• janetknitwitch (2/3)

• asimplelife (7/4)

• mere2012 (6/6)

  I wonder if it was neecy25's first time because I didn't see anywhere where they mentioned how many hats they planned to make.  They did end up with an impressive amount and could almost have done a whole marathon all on their own.

Pattern: Lucky Bamboo Hat by me - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver Metallic in Silver - Needle: US 8

  It is hard to see the sparkles in the yarn in the picture, but you can really see them in person.  I didn't even know that Red Heart made a sparkle yarn in their Super Saver line.  A lot of the people who saw me working on it said that they didn't know about it either.  For the hat I tried a new way to do the cast on.  I worked a crochet cast on, but to get the Vs to show, I worked two plain knit rounds.  That way the natural curl of the fabric would pop the bottom up.

Pattern: Baby Octopus by Jade Gauthier-Boutin - Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver in Grey - Hook: 6mm

  I did all the same changes I did to the other baby octopus pattern.  This time I used one of the bead techniques I saw on Donna Wolfe's video How to Crochet with Beads Using 3 Easy and Quick Methods Tutorial on YouTube.  It was so easy and I don't know why I didn't think of doing it that way myself.

purl-wise on the left, knit-wise on the right

  I was messing around with Kitchener stitch and wondered what it would look like if you did the same direction for all of the stitches.  If you have never done Kitchener before, it is where you weave the yarn in and out of the stitches and graft two pieces together to make it look like one continuous piece.  It works really well for the toes on socks and the end of mittens.

Pattern: Woven Lattice Hat by me - Style: B - Yarn: TLC Cara Mia in 2251 Lime - Needles: US 8

  I was tempted to make a post about this yarn in my Is It The Best/Worst series.  I was really enjoying working with it, though I didn't get enough to make the two usual hats I do for that series.  I went to look at what yarn it was and was saddened when I saw it was by TLC.  Red Heart dropped their TLC line of yarns over 9 years ago.  If you happen to have this yarn in your stash, it is pretty nice to work with.

Yearly Yarn Tracker:
Yarn In: 24 (0)
Yarn Out: 36 (0)

Total: -12