Final headscarf of the season

No, it's not some lingerie I've been running up in my spare time, it's my latest (and probably last of the year) headscarf.
This time it has been done in crochet. Man, crochet eats up your yarn! This took 1.5 balls of Adriafil Swing which is 100% mercerised cotton.
To be honest, it's a little bit boardy because I hooked it on a 3mm hook which was maybe a little small, but I have good dense, substantial fabric now. Not the world's drapiest, but it does mould to the shape of head at least, it's not THAT firm.
I'm chuffed with this for a number of reasons. I love the yarn, I figured out how to make it all by myself and then I looked it up on the interwebs and I have been doing the increases at each end properly.
However, I have only been doing 2 turning chain at the beginning of each row when convention dictates it's 3 turning chain for British trebles. Live and learn.
Last time I posted something similar I was recommended to say "ties" for the little strings which hold it on. If you remember I couldn't work out how to spell tie-er (which sounds like tyre, nothing like tier of a wedding cake). Ties is good, but I'm still holding out a glimmer of hope one of you brainy folk can give me a variation. Happy crafting, K x

Tip of crochet headscarf

Learned to increase during the course of this project.
Chain edging; looks neater when teased into shape!

Close-up of crochet fabric

Hello sailor!

When stylist Gok Wan said the sailor look was going to be big this summer and every summer, I doubt this is what he had in mind!

This is my latest headscarf. (I know, I don't what the addiction is, I'm also hooking one at the moment.)

It's made from white, tomato and navy Patons 100% 4ply coton, which is the same stuff as the Adamas.

There's a little crochet shell border which isn't too well-seen in the pictures.

I needed it today to keep the sun from frying my hair in scorchio Galloway. xK

It's Hip Knits, Jim, but not as we know it!

Firstly thank-you for the kind comments about the Adamas headscarf.

Ok, now, a knitting-related excursion.
Last week we paid a visit to Shambellie House in New Galloway , which is hosting a temporary exhibition called Hip Knits but which has nothing to do with what we think of when we hear the expression HipKnits. They were also very liberal with the expression "Get Knitted" too, both of which I thought would stir up legal connotations, but anyway, to the exhibition.

Well, it was quite nice. Damned by faint praise? Yeah. I knew it would be a small exhibition because I had visited the museum before and new which room the temporary items are housed in, so it wasn't that. It was that the only two pieces of hand-knitting in the room were 1) a stringy very avant-garde Vivienne Westwood drapey thingy and 2) the jumper I was wearing.

Granted, it didn't spell out in the publicity blurb there would be hand-knitting, but I (wrongly) assumed so, particularly with them bandying words like Hip Knits and Get Knitted on their pamphlets and posters etc. Ah, the power of language!

So, it was virtually all machine knits, some of which were very nice, but left me feeling a bit meh. I wouldn't say, don't go to the exhibition, but I would say,"Don't travel long distances and/ or come with high expectations!"

I look some pictures, but as flash was not allowed they didn't turn out well enough to blog. Just picture a generic-looking Pringle Argyle in baby-pink and black in a size 8. Ah, the power of the mind, I'm sure you're "looking" at the exact same picture as me! x K

User-friendly version?

A user-friendly version of the comparison DH made, mentioned in last post?

Missus wummin is not unlike the girl styled on the cover of the latest Rowan, although she is facing the opposite diro.

Contessa in Profile Wearing Heid Bunnet

Ok, here are some outdoor shots of me wearing the Adamas Headscarf.
I'm loving it and may well work up to a shawl sized one in an animal fibre.
DH took these photos, reckons his handiwork is very reminiscent of the type of composition Renaissance painters did of ladies of high birth in profile over-looking the Tuscan landscape.
Perhaps this Portrait of Battista Sforza by Piero della Francesca 1466
which we saw in the Galleria delgi Uffizi in Florence during our honeymoon will give you the idea, although I think he means a genre rather than one specific picture.
Anyway, Adamas heid bunnet; enjoy. x K

Coughed up

Ok, after much deliberation I've coughed up and signed up for a Pro Account at Flickr so I can load more than 200 photos.

For the last wee while some of my photos have not been visible cos I had exceeded the 200 mark. (They pop up again when you take the plunge and pay.) I had been swithering because I don't grudge paying the £13 or so for this year, but I can't imagine I'll want to go back to a free account so it's a commitment for the foreseeable.

Anyway, you may notice that I am loading quite a lot of completed projects on Ravelry over the next while, I've not become a prolific knitting robot, it's just I've got the Flickr space to load the photos now. Some of them date back a good couple of years.

And in case you didn't know, my Flickr name is KEDkrafty. x K

Adamas lace headscarf

Can I apologise now if the spacing on this post is weird, it's jumping about like a mad thing.

Hiya, knitting up a storm during the school holidays!
Here are the specs of my latest finished object, all being well I'll have some action shots in a couple of days' time.

So this is Miriam L. Felton's Adamas shawl pattern, done to headscarf size.

This is available as a Free Ravelry pdf download
You can get this as a free pattern on Mim Knits website as well, linky .

It's a lovely clear, well-written and charted neck-down triangular shawl, stop after as many repeats as you like, no fancy maths to make the border chart work. I did three repeats of the main chart.

My only small reservation is you knew this was coming, didn't you? ;-) that at the beginning you cast on five and start your increases from there. This is fine, but it just means you have a wee small section at the beginning where you don't get the garter ridges on the back neck (or in my case with the headscarf, front head). If you have ever knitted an Evelyn A Clark shawl design you will know what I mean. You start with k2 and do tricks with mirrors so that your wee garter ridges are consistent.

I made it with Patons 100% Cotton 4ply in shade #02708, Tomato. I enjoyed working with this yarn, it's a mercerised cotton and has a nice sheen, and it feels so much finer than Rowan 4ply cotton for example, which I used to make a Previous Headscarf . He he, very link happy tonight!

I weighed it when it was finished, and it was 33g so that means I must have used in the region of 100m to make it.

If you see some strings at the top, it's not unsecured ends, it's little I-cords I've done as straps. I've tried half a dozen times to spell tie-er, the thing you tie it on with, but I can't seem to spell it, any suggestions?

ETA: I used my new Addi Lace Needles in 3.25mm size which I bought from Outback Yarns which is the knitting department in the Gem Shop, King Street, Castle Douglas.

Loving the written patten, loving the way it knitted up, loving the yarn. Happy KEDkrafty.

Purchase sufficient yarn...

...as dyelots may vary.
You said it, sister!

A couple of years ago I bought three balls of the SWTC Oasis 100% Soysilk in HK Handknit Edinburgh as I fell in love with the colour.
I thought at the time it would make a nice Clapotis. Actually I still do, but don't laugh, at the time I thought Clapotis was too hard and I couldn't get my head round the pattern. (Thanks to Ravelry I now think Clapotis is a cake walk.)

Fast forward one year and Get Knitted are having a big sale on SWTC Oasis 100% Soysilk.
I say to myself, it's not going to become a Clapotis so I'll buy some more and then I'll have enough for a summer top. Now obviously I know that there will be subtle variations in the shade due to different dyelots of the same colour NAPA VALLEY.
So I receive my 8 balls of it in cheapy looking ball bands and feel a kind of disappointment with a vague feeling that the 3 balls I have in my stash (right down at the bottom, inaccessible) are much nicer. I think my memory is playing tricks with me, and try to shake off the feeling that if I had seen this batch in a shop I'd have walked on by.

So now we're up to the present time and I'm ready to make myself a summer top. I haul out the original lot and it is a DOZEN TIMES NICER than the second batch! My lingering sense of disappointment was right. The second batch (left)goes like this PURPLE>OLIVE>PURPLE>GOLD.
The first batch goes like this PURPLE>LILAC>GOLD>WHEAT>PEPPERMINT>OLIVE. The colour transition is much more subtle in my original balls and overall lighter and fresher.
Can you see the difference in the photos?
And in the first batch the yarn is about 1/2mm thinner, which may seem nothing, but in my massive 12 stitch swatches for your delectation, version one on the right is 1 1/2 stitches narrower.
Needless to say I'll work with more than one ball at once. Boo hoo, I wish they were all like batch one on the right. I thought I was safe enough because I'd seen the yarn IRL.
Take heed of my salutory tale!
x K