About Amanda

I knit, design, and drink coffee. I teach knitting classes.
I also homeschool my 5 kids, read lots of books, and occasionally tidy up when it becomes absolutely necessary. I'm also a proud member of the Ottawa Knitting Guild.

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Here are my most recent posts

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Amigurumi Knits by Hansi Singh

First of all, I have to say, “Kraken!” How could I resist a book with a pattern to make a giant squid? (My giant squid is here, if you want to see it.) Not to mention the hermit crabs (Seriously! How did she figure out the math for that three-dimensional, stuffed spiral that makes up the shell? I am in awe.), the earthworms, the unconventional veggies (eggplant, anyone?), and the Loch Ness Monster. This book is a treasure trove of weird, little-boy-obsession patterns. Which works well for me, because I have four of them.

Now, as to the specifics: there’s the standard how-to section, with instructions on grafting, picking up stitches, and short rows, all of which are heavily featured in her patterns. The short-row shaping, especially, is extensive. There are tips on stuffing your toys and finishing them up, too. One thing I liked was that many things had minimal sewing required; most appendages are knitted on by picking up stitches. (Except for those darn hermit crab legs. They, of which there are many, all had to be sewed carefully inside the shell opening, hiding the stuffing and not mangling their directionality as I went. Ick.)

Another plus: many incomprehensible written instructions were made clear by pictures illustrating what she meant. Some things just can’t be expressed adequately in words, and I’m very glad I didn’t have to try to read the designer’s mind. Having said that, there were a couple spots where I looked for the pictures and didn’t find them. That, after knitting up the other, really well documented patterns, was really disappointing. So I guessed as best I could, and things worked out well. (But if I hadn’t started off with the Kraken, I don’t think I would have fared as well.)

My current love of the book, after having knit up the Kraken, two Hermit Crabs, and two Loch Ness Monsters, is about 4 out of 5 stars. I will never again knit another hermit crab as long as I live, if I can help it. But the Loch Ness Monster was a comparatively simple knit, and if you add some crinkly plastic gift wrap into the flippers to make them crackle, they can make a great and …unique… baby gift. My son has requested a giant-sized squid to use as a pillow, but I’m hoping he’ll forget that request.

After having so much fun with all the short rows (I’m not kidding) and finally understanding what they’re for and how they work, I’ve found that my knitting in general has gotten a lot better. This book was one more step on my way to becoming a really great knitter.

Oh, one last thought before I go: don’t be afraid to stuff! My poor little menagerie has gotten a little floppy since I made it. Poor Orangey, especially, can barely even hold his head up, poor dear. (Yes, my kids are extraordinary namers. I believe the formula is “pick its defining characteristic, then add a -y to the end of it.”)

Let me know what you thought of the book. Have you made any of the other patterns?

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Hand-Painted Preemie Hat

I love buying hand-painted yarn, but then I’m inevitably disappointed when I knit it up. The gorgeous, vibrant colours suddenly pool or stripe in weird ways that make the ugliest little hats. But when I use a textural stitch, like seed stitch, suddenly the yarn regains its charm and the hat becomes delightful!

You can see how the stitches break up the lines of colour and give it an almost tweedy effect.

Top view

I’ve worked out the top decreases in the seed stitch pattern to keep the effect going right up to the top. I’ve tried decreasing in seed stitch a couple different ways over the years, but this pattern uses my favourite. I hope you like it, too.

The pattern for these little hats includes sizes from micropreemie up to a full-term newborn. You’ll need size 2 US needles for working in the round. I prefer using two circs, but any technique will do.

You can grab the free download here:
download now

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UnBaby Blanket

When I saw the blanket my sister was making, I knew I had to have one. The diagonal stripes, the vibrant colours, the texture — they all conspired to hijack my knitting plans, and I happily let them.

Her simple design has been a hit, and not just with me. I am excited to present the recipe here so you, too, can make your own one-of-a-kind, easy-yet-interesting-to-knit unbaby blanket. I call it “unbaby” because there is no way these colours would ever end up in the baby yarn section, and there is a distinct possibility that you, like me, will want one in your own size, too.

One of the blanket’s best features, besides its bold stripes, is that it is reversible but not identical on both sides. Don’t ask me which side I prefer because I have been trying to decide that very thing since I began knitting it, and I still can’t make up my mind. Is it the clean lines and bumpy softness of the “right” side, or the varied textures and visual extras on the “wrong” side? You know what? Forget right and wrong — I think I should just name them something else that implies how great each side is. How about Ruby and Clementine? (I’ll never be able to use those names for children, anyway, so they might as well go to a good home.)

Here are some things you need to know about the pattern:

You’ll need at least four balls of 5 oz/140g medium worsted weight yarn. (I say “at least” in case you want an adult-sized one. In that case, get two in each colour… at least.) We used Red Heart Soft Touch for ours (which I know is a variation on my usual Knit Picks preference, but it was available, washable, and pretty darn soft to boot). Steph chose the dark brown, navy blue, aqua blue, and bright green as her colours, and I loved them and copied her. If that’s not to your taste, I’d simply recommend two dark colours and two vibrant colours in your mix.

Needle size was 9 US for me and 8 US for Steph, and they both worked well. The point is to have a nice, relaxed stitch for a soft fabric.

The pattern is written for beginners and includes tips on some techniques which you may or may not have already come across. I want your blanket to be beautiful, so I told you everything I did to make mine great.


And now, without further ado, here is the link where you can grab it for FREE:

download now

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How to Knit a Hat

You have yarn. You have needles. You have cold ears on a blustery day. (Or you’re having a bad hair day. It happens to the best of us.)

How do you make a hat out of thin air, without a pattern? How do you move from knitter to designer? How do you become the master of your hat destiny?

That’s easy. Let me explain.

First, you cast on. (Simple, right?) There are two ways to figure out how many stitches to cast on. The first one is very mathematical and by-the-book, and the second one might make you laugh — but hey! It worked for me for years, and it’s very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, which can really come in handy sometimes. Right?

So, method one: Knit up a gauge swatch. If you’ll be knitting your hat in the round, you knit your gauge swatch in the round. If you want to knit your hat back and forth on straight needles, knit up your gauge swatch in the same manner. Once you know how many stitches per inch that particular yarn works up to on those particular needles, you simply measure the head you’re knitting for. If it’s 20 inches around, and your gauge is 5 stitches per inch, then that’s 20 X 5, which is 100 stitches. Easy peasy. To recap, multiply your head circumference by your stitches per inch gauge, and you have the number of stitches to cast on to fit that head with that yarn.

Now, the second method. (Don’t laugh!) I seriously used to just cast on my stitches, using either the long-tail method or the knitted-on method, then hold them up to my head to see if it looked about right. The only catch is, you have to know how that cast-on method will change once it’s been knitted for a few rows. I found that the long-tail method would give me a fairly accurate reading if I [somewhat] evenly spread the stitches out on the needle in a way that was not too stretched or too crowded. But with the knitted-on method, I had to stretch the stitches as far apart from each other as possible to see how long they’d be once knitted up. Then, I’d hold the needle up to my head and swing it around from a beginning point at the back, pivoting it around my head to see if half the stitches would reach to the centre of my forehead.

Yes, I really did that.

The next step, once you have about enough stitches on your needles, is to make sure they’re divisible by either 9, 10, or 11. If they’re not, fake it. Either drop a stitch or two off, or add a stitch or two on. You’re planning ahead right now for when you get to the decreases at the crown. (p.s. For adults, multiples of 10 or 11 are best, and babies’ or preemies’ hats are probably better with 9 or even 8. Kids are in between, so pick whatever you want.)

Once you have your cast-on number in a happy place, you’re ready to choose the edge. If you want a rolled edge, just start knitting in stocking stitch (knit the right-side rows, purl the wrong-side rows if you’re knitting flat, and just knit every row if you’re knitting in the round). If you want it stretchy, try some ribbing. (Just make sure the ribbing you choose divides evenly into your stitch count. One-by-one ribbing will work on any even number, and two-by-two will work on any even number which you can then divide a second time evenly, like 60 or 80.) If you want it a little loose, garter stitch will work. Or, you could just start into a lace repeat that goes with the number of stitches you cast on. Really, there are no limits.

You work in that edging until you’ve had enough, then you switch to something else if you so desire. Maybe you want ribbing for two inches, then stockinette for the rest of the hat. Or maybe you’d like a hat that’s ribbed right up to the top. Maybe you want to plan on your hat being really long so you can fold the bottom up, or maybe you’d prefer a hat that ends above your ears. It’s so completely up to you now! You don’t need no stinkin’ pattern anymore.

The only other thing you’ll need to do is decrease at the crown. Basically, when you’re about 2 inches away from the top of your head, start to decrease. Try the hat on to see if you’re there, or just eyeball it. If you’re making a baby-sized hat, you probably won’t even need 2 inches to decrease. My subconscious rule of thumb, which I’m just now realizing to myself for the first time in order to communicate “how I do this,” is to knit about 3/4 of the hat length, then use the final 1/4 for the decreasing. Knit stitches are such amazing, naturally proportioned things. Now matter what yarn I’m using, or what stitch count, or what size needles, that ratio seems to just work. Try it out. (And for goodness’ sake, tell me if I’m wrong! But I bet if I am, it’s just by a little bit.)

Here’s another tip: if it looks too short and fat, it probably is. Think about it. We are people who are constantly looking either in the mirror at our own heads or at other peoples’ heads. You know what a head should look like. If you think the hat doesn’t look like a head shape, you’re probably right. If you think it looks about normal, you’re also probably right.

Now, to the specifics of decreasing. Remember when you made sure your cast-on number was divisible by either 9, 10, or 11? Here’s where you take advantage of that. Let’s say you’ve chosen multiples of 11 (which are quite fool-proof, if you ask me). You’re going to *knit 9, k2tog* all the way around your hat. That’s right. If you’ve cast on 99 stitches (which is a perfectly normal adult-size number using worsted-weight yarn and size 6 or 7 US needles), you’ll repeat that decrease section 9 times because 99 divided by 11 is 9. Multiples of ten mean a *k8, k2tog* around strategy, and multiples of nine mean — you guessed it! — *k7, k2tog* around.

Do your decrease rounds every other round so they’re not all squashed together. (Unless, of course, you want to try something different and decrease really quickly in the last inch of your hat. Hey, you could call it a “design element.”) Every subsequent decrease round, you will, of course, be knitting fewer stitches between each k2tog. One fewer stitch per repeat, in fact. (Picture “k8, k2tog; k7, k2tog; k6, k2tog; k5, k2tog…” and so on, down to “k2tog” all around.) Once you’ve decreased down to your last *k2tog* around, don’t knit another round. Just stop, cut your yarn, thread the end through the rest of your stitches, and draw it tight. Wow. You just made up a hat. All by yourself.

(If your hat was knit in the round, you’re done. If you knit it flat, then add one more step: sew the seam. I use a flat stitch to sew my seams shut. Your best bet is to have a good knitting reference book around with a couple options in it so you can pick and choose which one will look best with the stitch pattern you’ve chosen.)

Now, since we’re being creative and rebellious by making up our own darn hats, feel free to fiddle with the decreases, too. Why not try ssk and have the decrease lean the other way? Or why not decrease in whatever pattern you’ve chosen? When I make a hat that’s ribbed right up to the top, I do my best to keep the flow of the ribs going for as long as I can. I still take about 2 inches to get the decreases done, but I might space them out in different ways. Really, yarn is pretty forgiving stuff. And if it’s not, then I’m the boss! I can just rip the stupid stuff out and do it over again. Who does this hat think it is, anyway?

Right. So, my late-night tantrums aside, I hope you’re starting to get the picture here. Hats are the perfect project on which to try out your designing skills. (Well, except for scarves. I mean, they don’t even have decreases, for goodness’ sake!) And once you get comfortable with the basic structure of a hat, you can start to really push the limits with stitch patterns and other random embellishments.

And now that you know all my secrets, I’ve probably put myself out of business before I’ve even really begun. But I am deciding not to care because knitting is just so darned awesome, and everyone should love it as much as I do.

So there.

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Kindle Cover, Sock-Yarn Blankie Style

I bought this gorgeous Regia Hand-Dye Effect yarn recently because I love the colours. There’s a shade of blue in there that I could just stare at for hours. I had no pattern in mind when I bought it (which is rare lately; I usually talk myself out of impulse buys by requiring a game plan before I spend money). I just wanted to be able to look at it.

Since its purpose in life was to make my eyes happy, I decided it needed to be knit into something that would play up its colour changes and be constantly where I could look at it. Solution: my new Kindle! I carry it almost everywhere, and it’s just a given that a knitter’s electronics have a multitude of hand-knit sweaters and cozies, so I decided to make Kindle cover number two with this pretty new yarn. (The first cover is a plain, white, wool aran; and even though I love it, it’s white. Blue wins out over white in my world every day.)

Enter: the Sock Yarn Blankie. I’ve been slowly knitting up a real blankie since last summer, and it’s super fun. I’ve also never done entrelac, so continuing with the mitered squares instead of learning a new skill during my last, gooey-brained trimester seemed like a good idea to me. Could I adapt the blankie pattern into a pocket shape or not? It turns out I could, and it was ridiculously easy.

Here’s how you do it:

First, I made two mitered squares. Since the sock yarn blankie casts on 31 stitches, that’s what I did. It turns out that that makes overly large squares, and I now have to sew the sides of my cover to tighten it so the Kindle won’t slide out, but oh well. I have another half ball of the pretty yarn left, so I’ll knit up a second cover with smaller squares to make the fit more snug.

But if you want to get started already making your own cover, this is what you do: using fingering-weight yarn and size 1 US (2.25 mm) needles (I used a circ and treated it like a straight), cast on a reasonable number of stitches that can be divided by two (30 divided by 2 is 15) plus one (hence, 31). Knit a test square to see what size it comes out for you. The measurement you’re aiming for, corner to corner, is slightly less than half the width of your Kindle. I say slightly less because my two 31-st squares were each half, but then when I joined them with other squares, the width expanded to be 1/4″ too wide on either side. Yikes! So even a little more than “slightly” would be good, since the cover will work best if it’s a little snug; then it won’t be randomly slipping off and leaving your poor Kindle naked and at the mercy of whatever else might be in your bag at the time.

But I digress. The formula for making a square is to cast on your even number plus 1, then work in garter stitch, decreasing the centre three stitches of each right-side row with a cdd (sl2 as if to knit, k1, psso). Use an edge stitch to keep your edges neat and easy for picking up stitches later. (The edge stitch is, simply, slipping the first stitch of every row purlwise, with yarn in front, and knitting the last stitch of every row.) Keep decreasing in this manner until you have three stitches left. On the right-side row (the decrease row), to decrease the last three stitches into one, sl1 as if to purl (with yarn in front), sl1 as if to knit (with yarn in back), k1, psso. Cut yarn and pull through.

(For the sake of this formula, I’m going to pretend that we’re all working with 31-stitch squares. Substitute your own numbers once you’ve knit up your gauge square.)

Once you have two independent squares, you’re going to join them together by picking up and knitting a new square between them:

Joining the first two squares by picking up stitches for a new square

Pick up and knit 15 sts along the top left side of the right-hand square, CO 1, pick up and knit 15 sts along the top right side of the left-hand square. 31 sts are on your needle. (You’ll notice that the edge stitch has made a neat little line of stitches along the edge, and there are 15 of them; I pick up both sides of the stitch, the whole “v.”) *Make sure to always pick up and knit your stitches with the right side facing you.*

Knit one row, then commence with the centre double decreases once you’re on the right side again, and decrease as for the first squares.

Now you have three squares, all attached together. Rotate them so the new square is pointing down:

The cast-on edges are now along the top and ready to be picked up.

Now, you’re going to pick up and knit a new square, just like you did already, but along the two cast-on edges of the first two squares. The only difference is that instead of casting on 1 st between the two squares, you’re going to pick up one stitch from the point of the already-made third square.

Next, it’s time to make the bottom corners. This is pretty cool. You’re going to rotate your work again, so the outer edge of one of your first two squares if pointing up. You’re not going to join two squares together this time, but instead pick up 15 stitches from the [now] top right of the square, one stitch from the point, and 15 more stitches from the top left of the square:

Turning the corner

Do the same thing on the opposite corner. Now your shaping is done, and it’s just joining more squares from here on out until your Kindle cover is the right height.

(If you want your cover to open at the side instead of the top, you can see how easy it would be to create a base of three squares instead of two, thereby making your cover wider to fit from top to bottom.)

Next, I built on my base with more squares, picking up 15 sts from the right, one from the top of the square below, and 15 more from the left for each one:

Then, I decided it might look nice with a bigger, focal square, so I built the sides two squares high to leave room for a big one in the middle:

To make the big square, I picked up and knit 30 sts down the right, one in the middle, and 30 up the left. Then I worked my decreases as for the smaller squares, but obviously with more of them. Ta-da! A big square:

Because I liked it so much with the big square, I did the same thing on both sides. You could easily leave the big squares out and just have small squares all over, or put just one big square, or have your big square wrap around the side instead of being centred on the front.

My big squares brought me to the height I wanted for the Kindle cover, so I decided not to make it any taller. I filled in the sides with small squares (one on each side):

Picked up and knit 31 stitches for each small square

I didn’t want to leave the top looking jagged, so I figured I’d knit half-size squares (aka triangles, haha! Remember? Third-trimester mushy brain?) to fill in the gaps.

The way to make the triangles to straighten up the top edges is like this: Pick up and knit 31 sts just like you would for a square. Then, on the wrong side (very first row), do your edge stitch (slip the first stitch as if to purl), k2tog, knit across to the last three stitches, k2tog, k1. Work the right sides as you would for a regular mitered square, decreasing the centre 3 stitches each time with a cdd. Work like this, decreasing at both ends of every wrong side row and in the centre of every right side row, until there are only 3 stitches left (after a right-side row). The next wrong side, sl1 as if to purl, k2tog, psso. Cut your yarn and draw the tail through.

There you have it! A pocket made of mitered squares with which to cover your Kindle. You can, if you like, pick up and knit a border around the top. Ribbing, more garter stitch, even some button holes or handles would look really cute. The choice is yours! And I’d love to see what you come up with. 🙂

Here’s mine:

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Leafalicious Hat Pattern

Here it is, in all its glory:

Leafalicious Hat

Knit in bulky-weight yarn (shown here in hand-spun, hand-dyed yarn that a friend sent me — isn’t she nice?) with size 9 US (5.5mm) circular needles, the Leafalicious hat is knit in the round from the top down. You’ll use interesting stitches like Judy’s Magic Cast On, LRinc, kfb, seed stitch, and a lace repeat. But with the bulky yarn, it still ends up being a fairly quick knit.

I had a blast watching the colours move in zig zags through the Leafalicious stitch pattern, and I can only imagine how cool this would look in a fall colourway to really imitate the changing of the seasons. If you knit one up, be sure to send me a picture or post it on Ravelry where I can see it! 🙂

You’ll need two size 9 US circular needles, stitch markers, and one skein of a fabulous bulky yarn. The pattern is available for $5 as a Ravelry download, or by clicking the link below. Watch for the matching Leafalicious Mitten/Fingerless Mitten Pattern, which is almost ready for publication.

Happy knitting!

Leafalicious on my kitchen table
Leafalicious -- back & top view
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Leafalicious Hat and Mittens… A Preview

Leafalicious Hat

Leafalicious -- back & top view

Leafalicious on my kitchen table

Leafalicious Mittens are also in the works!

I’ve just submitted these patterns to Knit Picks as proposals, so if they like them, I’ll be knitting them up in a nice fall Knit Picks yarn and hopefully be getting them published. If they don’t like them… Well, then I’ll just have to publish the pattern myself. Either way, I’m really happy with how the hat turned out, and I’ll even be wearing it myself this winter! (I find it hard to find a hat that doesn’t look slightly silly with my glasses, but this one is holding its own. It’s not forming the dreaded “glasses corners” where the arms and the hat meet. Success!)

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Shades of Things to Come…

Currently in the works, we have… Leafalicious!

Expect a hat, some woolly mittens, and cute little baby sweaters to be appearing in the next couple months — all in this awesome, textural theme.

Also, I’ve been mulling over hats. Fall is coming you know, and it makes me want to knit warm things for my kids. I know how to pick a yarn and some needles and just make a hat from thin air. Do you? Well, you will soon!

(I’ve been knitting with Knit Picks City Tweed DK in Poseidon lately; it’s not too obvious, is it? I just discovered that they’ve replaced Poseidon with Jacquard, though… not that I’m complaining — Jacquard looks like an even more perfect shade of my favourite colour! But I realized I’d better not get too carried away with Poseidon anymore, since I won’t be able to get more.)

(p.s. City Tweed is Lovely with a capital “L” to work with. It’s soft in my hands, makes a beautiful, drapey fabric, and is sure to be warm and cozy once the weather turns crisp. Yay!)

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Knotty Baby Hat

This little cutie is available as a Ravelry download for $3 CAD.   Update:  It is now available as a Knit Picks IDP pattern download for only $1.99!  (But you can still get it through the Ravelry link, too.)

It is knit up using a provisional cast on, a hem turn, and stocking stitch.  There is nice, simple  shaping to form the knot appendages, and a little grafting right at the end for finishing.

Yarn:  fingering weight sock yarn, about 120 yards of it.

Needles:  US size 1 (2.25) circulars or dpn’s.  (It’s knit in the round.  I use two circs for the smaller circumference.)

I had a hat similar to this one for my oldest son, but it was made out of cotton fabric.  I’ve since given the hat away, and wanted something similar for my new baby girl this fall, so I came up with this design.  There’s just something so adorable about a baby hat with ear-like things on the top.  I can’t wait to see how it’ll look on her.  (Expect photos to be posted once she’s born!)

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Zimmermania: I finally get it!

Why is it that I sometimes need someone else’s permission to be confident?  There it is: the truth about me.  I constantly need to either  talk myself into being confident, or let someone else do it for me.  It doesn’t come naturally.  Thank God it can come by outside means!

I am currently reading Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac, and now I know what all the fuss is about when it comes to EZ.  It seems like every knitting forum online eventually mentions EZ’s technique for this, or EZ’s pattern for that.  Well, this EZ book was the cheapest one on Knit Picks, and it contained the pattern for a sweater that I wanted to knit for the upcoming baby girl, so I bought it.  I splurged all of $7.50, and I think it’s the best knitting money I’ve ever spent.  (Well, except for maybe that grey merino that is now my favourite cardigan; but I guess that’s a fish, and the book is a fishing rod, to borrow from that old metaphor.  You get my point.  I hope.)

Said EZ sweater: February baby sweater on two needles (but I did the sleeves in the round because I hate seams.)

Listen to this:  “Don’t place unlimited credence in us knitting-instruction-writers, or believe everything in print to be infallible.  We do our best, but it may easily be that your best is better than ours.  Don’t hesitate to improve on us” (p.102).  Isn’t that wonderful?  Elizabeth Zimmermann herself, the guru of modern knitting, thinks I can do better.  Thinks you can do better.

I admit, this particular book isn’t for beginning knitters.  EZ assumes that the reader knows a lot about the basics of knitting, and if I had read it ten years ago, I would have been lost.  But, as a baby “unventor” trying to figure things out and make some of my own really great patterns, it’s the perfect book for me.

Here are, for your entertainment and encouragement, some things I have learned while designing:

There is nothing new under the knitting sun.  I might come up with some pretty new sweater, but it’s just a combination of basic sweater techniques and basic stitch patterns that already existed.  Every baby sweater I looked up on Ravelry for inspiration convinced me of that.

Anyone can design, if they really want to.  (If they have really poor taste, their designs might look terrible, but they’ll still be designs!)  It just takes a little extra knowledge about the basic workings of things.  Oh, and knowing some tips and tricks helps, too.  For instance: do you know how to do an edge stitch so your back-and-forth work looks neat and straight at the sides?  Simply slip the first stitch as if to purl, then knit the last stitch of every row.  That’s it.  And you’ll be rewarded with a neat little chain of stitches travelling up the side of your work.  That neat little chain, if employed on heel flaps, will also make it easier and neater to pick up your stitches for the instep, especially if you twist them to avoid holes.  Now that wasn’t hard, was it?

Math.  *sigh*  Math skills are quite useful, after all, especially when getting things to be the proper size and planning out pattern spacing.  Did you know that you could change any of my preemie patterns to fit an adult simply by re-calculating the gauge?  For instance, the Tulip Hat is basically a repeated pattern of ten stitches.  Knit out a tiny one, measure it, then measure your own head.  Figure out how many more repeats of ten you need to fit yourself, then add that many to the hat.  Knit in the pattern until you’re about 2 or 2 1/2 inches from the top of your head, then start decreasing.  Ta-da!  You’ve just modified a pattern.  You’re already part designer.

I was pretty scared of gauge when I first started knitting.  I ignored it if I could, to be honest, and frankly I’m lucky that some of my knitted sweaters actually fit their intended owners.  But now I know: in designing, gauge is a big deal.  It makes everything easier.  For instance, if I want a sweater with a 40-inch chest, and my gauge swatch tells me that my yarn knits up at 5 sts/inch, I simply multiply 5 by 40 to find out how many stitches I’ll need in that 40 inches:  200.  Now, wasn’t that easy?

EZ mentions in her book that a hat is usually about half the circumference of a sweater, so in my determination to design a sweater for the new baby girl, I decided to knit a test hat.  I had picked a couple patterns from a big pattern book I have, and I incorporated them into the hat.  Since I wanted to knit the sweater from the top down (because the lace pattern looks better upside down), I started the hat at the top, too.  I used that little hat to experiment with how to increase in seed stitch without ruining its effect.  I discovered a couple things I would not do on the sweater, and I kept going.  When I switched to the lace pattern to see how it would look with the seed stitch, I realized that the lace would pull in the seed stitch and make it pucker.  Since I don’t want the bottom of my sweater to be narrower than the top, I now know that I’ll have to increase right before switching from the seed stitch to the lace repeats.  All this from a tiny little hat! And not from a useless square of fabric!

Here's my test hat. Sweater to come!

(Amazingly, the hat turned out wearable and even cute.  I am even more encouraged to keep experimenting.  My sister even wants one in her size, since she “hates hats that hug her head too tightly and likes the bubbly look at the top of this one.”)

So, let me encourage you, as EZ has encouraged me:  go for it!  Change things, make things up, and unvent to your heart’s content.  It’s pretty awesome.

More of the hat. I'm just so pleased with my first real "unvention!"