Easy, Thick Ribbed Beanie

 Recently, I expanded the YouTube channels I watch.  I was going to crochet a simple sweater, and wow, there's a whole lot of YT channels for crochet! One I found is PassioKnit Kelsie. She was working on some beanies, and mentioned she had a free YouTube video tutorial for it. So I checked it out! I needed some mindless knitting!

It's very basic, 2 strands of worsted weight, on 8mm needles. I should be able to find that easy in my stash, right?

OMG. I have a lot of yarn, but at the same time, sometimes it feels like I have no yarn.  

I found two balls of this satiny bright pink Red Heart "Soft Essentials", as well as a large ball of an unknown pink acrylic that sort of felt like cotton. My winter coat is bright pink. I don't need another hat, though I did discover my other favourite hat, the pompom is too big in my new truck and hits the roof LOL.

The two different yarns worked well together. I thought the "Soft Essentials" might be too limp on it's own.

It weighs in at 162gr, and this time I did some before and after weighing. The light pink, I used 58gr, and the bright pink was 98gr. Mmmm, this doesn't add up to 162gr. It's possible the bright pink wasn't a full ball I guess. Well, it's only off by 6gr, perhaps the yarn tails account for most of that. It was definitely nice to knit the whole item and not have to add in more yarn anywhere. Just the cast on end and the top end.

Speaking of cast on, I did change the cast on that I used. In the video, she does a long tail cast on. I did an alternate rib cable cast on. Usually, you start with the slip knot. Pull a loop through and put on needle. Put needle between the two loops, draw through and put on, and repeat. With the alternate cable cast on, you then enter between the two last loops from the back, and draw through. Then go in from the front, and alternate. This cast on looks really nice with ribbing. 

I also added an extra row at the top, of SSK around. This makes it easier to close up the gap.

Having completely tossed around my stash, I went down to shop again. This time it's Cascade Yarns Pinwheel--a two strand yarn with one strand being a colour shifting strand. The second yarn was plain old white "Impeccable".  This time I cast on 60 sts. The pink one fits, but it feels like it's going to pop off after a bit. And my head is not big. I almost fit children's sizes.

This one feels a lot better on. Being ribbed, they are stretchy, but you don't want it to have to stretch too much. It weighs 103gr. Wow, so much less than the pink one. Maybe I should double check that light pink and do a burn test! Or check my scale? It used 54gr of the Pinwheel, and 46gr of the white. Again, that's not adding up to 103gr, but it's only 3gr off. 

It's hard to see the difference in size between the two hats. Another reason I'm thinking that pink yarn might be cotton--it doesn't stretch. Stay tuned. 

And yes, I have cast on another one!

Yarn In:  0gr

Yarn Out: 265 gr + 1338gr = 1603gr.

Balance:  1603gr more OUT than in

Costs:  $0

A Charity Hat NOT Made on the LK150

 I wanted to use up the last bit of the yarn I was gifted in the Secret Santa exchange at work.

It's a simple 1x1 rib. I don't remember how many I casted on. It's kind of child size.

Apparently I didn't weigh it. It took a couple attempts to get it long enough to use up most of the yarn. I started with 62gr and probably ended up with 10gr left. But I'm going to count all 62gr because the rest just went in the waste yarn pile for the LK150. 

For the decreases, I fudged the first row, so that all the following decrease rows (every other row until down to about 24, then every row) would have the knit stitch leaning to the right. I didn't worry about breaking the 1x1 rib when it would end up with two knit stitches.

Yarn In:  0gr

Yarn Out: 62gr + 1276gr = 1338gr

Balance:  1338gr more OUT than in

Costs:  $0

The LK150 Got Me Again

 We were having a big snowstorm on Sunday, Feb. 1. It didn't seem as bad where we were, compared to downtown Toronto, and what was expected for us. The school board said they'd let us know by 5 or 6am on Monday if schools would close. We were shocked when around dinner time on Sunday, the school board announced full closure on Monday. The week prior when we'd had a terrible storm they didn't close schools and they received so much criticism, so we think that was why they called it early. 

To celebrate, I decided to knit another hat on the LK150!

Another Anna Haferman hat!  They're super simple to make.

The mock rib is so much better than reforming the stitches (it's easy to reform stitches, but we're talking over 100 stitches, though it would be only every 4th...).

I pulled this yarn from the same bag (a thin, commercial type bag, like with the 1lb Mystery Fiber bags at the discount stores) as the last hat. That one had a Bernat "Mosaic" label on it, but this one didn't. It felt very similar, but it weighed 20gr more (total 107gr). I wanted it a bit longer, more manly slouch, but that didn't happen.

As I was sewing it up, the yarn kept breaking. That did not happen with the red one. So perhaps it wasn't Mosaic, or maybe they had changed it?

It was only a tiny bit wider. I think I kept it to the same stitch count, but tried a looser tension. 

I finally donated all these hats (there's one more post to come) yesterday. I really need to get going on red scarves, but I'm crocheting a sweater, and I have a Christmas pair of socks on the go for Lucy's boyfriend, who works outside. Except that he just injured his hand really bad and won't be working for awhile. 

Yarn In:  0gr

Yarn Out: 1169gr + 107gr = 1276gr

Balance:  1276gr more OUT than in

Costs:  $0