Chocokate » Ravelry http://www.chocokate.com Kate's little corner of the blogosphere Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:12:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Kitty hat http://www.chocokate.com/2010/06/kitty-hat/ http://www.chocokate.com/2010/06/kitty-hat/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 04:01:50 +0000 chocokate http://www.chocokate.com/?p=149 My very good friend Beth from San Francisco was having a baby shower and I wanted to make something cute for her little boy. San Francisco can get chilly, so I thought a hat would be perfect, but I wanted it to be unique too. I found this pattern, Top Down Bonnet With Anime Character, which is inspired by Totoro (from My Neighbor Totoro, one of my favorite kids’ movies). I really liked the style of the bonnet but decided to modify the pattern to make kitty ears instead of Totoro ears, and also leave the face off.

The pattern used a number of techniques which were new to me, including a figure eight cast-on, knitting in the round on double-pointed needles, and increasing using the M1 (make one) method. I love challenges and learning new things, so it was actually a lot of fun.

When I got done with the main bonnet, I improvised for the first time ever in order to knit the kitty ears. I had to do them three times before I was happy with the shape and placement on the bonnet. Of course, then I forgot to take any pictures of the hat on my lovely doll model after the ears were done!

Thankfully I managed to snap  a few pictures at the baby shower, and Beth really loved it…so much that she tried it on herself! (She has it on backwards though, the rounded edge is for the back of the head.) I’m really happy with how it turned out, and I can’t wait to see pictures of her little guy wearing it!

]]> http://www.chocokate.com/2010/06/kitty-hat/feed/ 0 K-Chan bag http://www.chocokate.com/2010/06/k-chan-bag/ http://www.chocokate.com/2010/06/k-chan-bag/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 03:12:18 +0000 chocokate http://www.chocokate.com/?p=136 This bag was my first time knitting in the round. The pattern is called “Kureyon-Chan” and I used the recommended yarn & circular needle. It was just about the easiest project ever! Knitting every row is so much faster than having to purl on the wrong side like you have to do when knitting a flat fabric. This was also my first time felting.
Since I have a front-loading washer I was afraid to run the bag through the whole cycle (with machine felting you’re supposed to stop every few minutes to check on the item, and obviously that’s not possible with a front loader.) So instead I used a bucket of warm soapy water with a little Woolite in it, put the bucket in the bathtub so I wouldn’t make a mess, and agitated it using a toilet plunger. I had bought the plunger especially for this purpose so it was clean! A closeup of the knitted bagIt took a lot longer to felt than I had hoped, and both arms were sore by the time I was done. I could probably have done a bit more to get rid of all the stitch definition, but I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out.


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