Nov 24, 2014

Stranded

I'm taking a page from my friend Michelle who is letting her gift knitting this year just happen.  I love that concept ~ you know, simply free to be inspired by whatever comes my way. I haven't made any solid plans for knitting gifts this season; rather, my thoughts about casting on presents for knitworthy loved ones hinges on feeling excited and letting the finished object tell me who it should go to.  Yes, I believe that my knitted objects sometimes tell me such things.

So, over the weekend, I came across the most adorable motif of a reindeer's head and as I've always wanted to try my hand at stranded knitting, I grabbed my circular needles and two balls of worsted weight yarn, and dove right in.


I posted my work-in-progress on Instagram and got the nicest feedback (thanks Gail, LibbyBonnieKelly, and my sister Esther! Kelly asked if I was hooked, and I can't even describe how utterly obsessed I am now that I've conquered a technique that I've been thinking about for so long. You see, I've always been an English knitter although I've secretly wished to master continental knitting, too.  So, when I decided to give this hat design a try, I put the main color yarn on my right side and the contrasting color on my left and voila, I became an ambidextrous wiz!


Needless to say, my Saturday afternoon was completely eye-opening and I reveled in my new-found skill.  In fact, I seriously couldn't put my needles down and finished my hat in a record two hours (thanks to this podcast).


You probably can't tell but this hat is child-size being blocked on my hubby's adult-size head!  Now, I'm in search of a little person to gift this to....

10 comments:

  1. Great job! I still have not tried stranded knitting....and I just started following you on Instagram.

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  2. Wait a minute - did you put a wet hat on your husband?!?

    I'm amazed that you just sat down and started knitting Continental right away! That's awesome!! Now you have a whole new range of patterns at your disposal!

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  3. It looks great! Stranded knitting is so fun. You've opened up a whole new can of worms!

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  4. Totally darling!! And I like your present philosophy as well :)

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  5. Yay for an awesome knit and a new technique! I think it's adorable you blocked a kid's hat on your husband's head. There are no small heads in my household, even the small person seems to have large noggin.

    I like the lack of obligation in you gift knitting. It really gives you a chance to push your creativity and your FUN times!

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  6. Love! Working stranded knitting isn't really that scary once you get started, especially in the round.

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  7. Stranded knitting is really addictive, isn't it? I love how you just dived right in. The hat turned out great. I am knitting a trio of these Poor Rudolph Hats by Chrisknits for myself, the hubby & the little guy. Really a fun free pattern. The reindeer motif is the cutest around.

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  8. Another stranded knitting lover here, although I don't seem to do much of it these days. But you've got me thinking as I do have a lot of little yarn samples from my natural dyeing endeavours. The hat looks lovely, such fun!

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