Candy Wrapper Scarflet - a pattern for a song

Remember my amazing discovery of a fast, functional, and fun-to-wear knit that fits adults and children and can be tucked into a pencilcase-sized tiny happy purse for gifting?

And when I say fast, I mean: you can make it in an evening!


I absolutely love pieces that multitask, so you can guess how happy I am with the way this scarflet came out. The loopy lower edge makes natural buttonholes all around the border, so - with the aid of a button hidden on the underside -


you can hold it close or leave it wide open.


It's surprisingly warm for so small a piece.


And it's such a standout way to finish an outfit, or bring some glamour and sheen to basic black - a necklace that isn't cold against your skin or weird with a turtleneck.


It has to be said, though: in a looser-spun yarn like the red sample, it curls a bit.

Not so with the blue Candy Wrapper, which is 'Teal' in Vesper Mohair Merino (formerly Vesper Kid Mohair - same great yarn, new great name.) The Mohair Merino is spun just snugly enough that you have to deliberately separate the three strands. Until you do you have a balanced, round yarn over your palm.

I consider the Vesper yarn a bargain; it's $15 US for a 100g skein, super soft, gorgeously dyed, and though the scarflet pattern calls for 100 yards to allow for a gauge swatch and differences in each knitter's tension, I am pretty sure you can squeeze two Candy Wrappers out of it. I have 65 grams left from the 100 gram skein I didn't knit a swatch from.

As for colours... Vesper yarns sell out almost as quickly as they're dyed, but the shop is updated weekly, so you never have to wait long for a chance at your favourites.

If you're not mad for extra curl and you want to try another yarn in the meantime - say, something already in your stash and ready to go - choose one that's spun snugly, so it's balanced and round. Or block it really really firmly!

Candy Wrapper Scarflet

Difficulty Level:
Easy to Intermediate

Materials:
92m/100 yds Knitterly Things “Vesper Merino Mohair” (55% mohair, 45% merino wool, 129m/142 yds, 100g/3½ oz per skein) – 11 wraps per inch
1 set 5mm/US 8 straight or circular needles
1 stitch marker
1 tapestry needle
blocking pins
1 flat-style ¾”/19mm button

Pattern Cost:
$3.00 US

Buy it now

Avenue Hat and Handwarmers - two almost free patterns

Not long ago, Louise at Biscotte et Cie paid me the enormous compliment of inviting me to knit an exclusive hat design for her shop.

We all know how I feel about Biscotte yarns! Of course I leapt at the chance, and couldn't believe my luck when she offered me not only a blend of lambswool, angora, and cashmere - but also, my choice of solid, semi-solid, or striped.

This, my friends, is the Dream Project to which I have been alluding over the past month:




First off, I have to tell you that the yarn in question, Precieux, is even more spectacular than it sounds. I am an impatient knitter - I knit for product, not process - yet I ripped the hat out repeatedly 'to make it better'.

Yeah. Not at all to prolong the knitting experience! And there are about to be more colours, to make it even harder to resist.

Apart from trying out a top-down design, the better to rip back a few rows or add some if you discover on Christmas morning that the person you knit for has a longer or shorter head than anticipated (something that happened to me with two different hats last year) I'd been thinking of a particular stitch sequence I thought would be

satisfying to knit
attractive to wear
stretchy for stress-free gifting and
unisex

It came out looking even lovelier than I'd imagined, thanks to the halo and the rich colour Louise is so good at creating.

When I was finally done, I realized there was enough yarn left to make handwarmers, and spent about a week trying to talk myself out of pushing aside my other urgent projects and making them instead.



No luck.

(I ripped these out more than a few times to reknit, too.)

And I'm about to order some more Precieux for myself, because I am just not ready to let go.

So: for the price of a skein of some of the most gorgeous yarn you will ever knit with, you get, free with purchase, a pattern for a hat that is warm as all get-out yet as light as can be, and offered in four sizes from children to adult,

plus a pattern for matching handwarmers offered in both a child and adult size. And you can make even the largest hat and adult handwarmers out of just one skein.


The adult handwarmers fit a guy just as comfortably as a girl - I just knew that stitch pattern would make for good stretch!


Click here to buy yourself some Precieux and get both patterns free

Announcing: big changes and a new look!

It's been a very busy month or two here at Hugs, and it all started when I met a technical editor so delightful it took me several hours to realize I'd met a technical editor.

Here's the thing: when I started writing patterns a mere 11 months ago, I was writing them as a writer, which - coincidentally - I am. The instructions were long and ramble-y and took up more pages than they needed to. I described how I did things, rather than using standard knitting abbreviations. And the more patterns I offered here, and the more people came to get them, the more I felt I really ought to do better than that.

I needed a technical editor, and I didn't know where to find one - until suddenly, I did!

And now that she's pored over my most challenging pattern (hello, Meditation Mittens) and given me a very good checklist of how a pattern should look, I've updated everything to conform to that standard.

I've also updated my pattern format:


There are several advantages to the new look.

All the necessary materials for a pattern are listed on the left, with a fold line so you can get that information right out of the way if, like me, you sometimes fold up your instructions and tuck them into a little knitting pouch.

There is also a generous margin at the top for those who like to print onto three-hole punch paper, or simply punch post-printing, for storage in a ring binder.

Best of all I think, I've managed to fit everything onto fewer pages - in many cases, just one.

All my patterns going forward will be getting a proper technical edit before I post them to ensure they're as straightforward as possible, though of course, any remaining errors will be mine alone and not the fault of my most fabulous technical editor.

So, thank you to everybody who's dropped in over the last few months for a look at what I've been up to with my knitting, and I hope you'll all enjoy the new Hugs!

Another knitty use for the kitchen scale

I don't know about you, but I like knitting my socks simultaneously.

Being so inexperienced with sizing and fitting and heel turning and so forth, I find they travel better that way - when I get done with one mindless knitting section in a place where I can't start into something requiring attention, I can just switch to the other sock. Also: I can be sure to make both identical.

And because I have never met a cake to knit from both ends of that didn't knot itself up in the first 10 minutes, this means I have to count off the yards for two equal-length balls of yarn.

Enter the kitchen scale:


You may recognize this Midnight Sheep yarn from last week's What To Do?? sock conundrum. I still haven't quite resolved that, but I did decide it is going to be socks for somebody, and therefore should be divided.


I think I got pretty close just eyeballing it, don't you? But hey, I have a scale! I can wind one a bit smaller and do better:




HA. I may never have to measure out yarn by the yard on my grandfather's 36"wide desk again.

Technical difficulties; please stand by

Just trying to do a little surprise overhaul on the ol' website and... as happens when you do this sort of thing, marykeenanknits and all the patterns lodged there seem to be out of reach at the moment.
We're working on the problem, and will have all that patterny goodness back in no time!

* * * * * *

2:45 pm update: All is now well. Turned out it wasn't my Evil Plan, but a minor power outage at the office that houses the server on which my website resides. Whew!

A tale of two needles

Sometimes I am too smart for my own good.

On Friday, Tom delivered my KnitPicks order (yes, I do know my Canada Post Parcel Delivery Friend by name - doesn't everyone?), releasing me at last from my Addi Clicks and their not-sharp-enough points.

But I didn't have time to change to my new Harmony needles before leaving the house on Saturday, so I stuffed them into my knitting bag and switched over on the road. When I got to a series of decreases, it occurred to me that having both sets meant I could do a less inconvenient version of Magic Loop once I had too few stitches for just one circular needle:



I was feeling a little less clever about this fix when things bogged down, Saturday night, while I watched Saboteur. It took me almost the whole movie to accept that I needed actual dpns to finish my project, and then I cursed and rummaged for a while in the needle stash to piece together a too-long set of 4 metal and 2 plastic ones.

SO depressing. And how is it that with all my ridiculous numbers of needles, I don't have a proper 4mm set?

As it turns out, I do. I bought them last July; they are beautiful and I adore them and just last week I put them into the knitting bag specifically for the decreases in question. And somehow I managed to forget they even existed until I was unpacking said bag, at midnight.

I must really need more sleep.


* Sadly, I am less in love with the Harmony interchangeable set than I anticipated. I know that KnitPicks, being wonderful, will replace my defective cord without question, and I know I can tighten the tips to keep that one side from constantly unscrewing itself, and they really are more seamless and sharply-pointed than my Addi Clicks, but... the cord is just not as flexible as the Addis, and I'm spoiled. I think I might have to save up and buy a few more Addi Lace circulars in fixed-length form.

Calculating yardage (over tea and mint chocs)

Knitting with my brilliant friend Sandra yesterday was full of learnings, such as:

It's tough to top a tea/York Peppermint Patty combo, though tea/lemon cookies come close

400 or so - my estimate - knitting magazines become a striking design feature if you store them in graphic cardboard holders from IKEA (as opposed to my boring white ones)

and

You really do use kitchen scales to calculate yardage!

Here's the deal. If you have, say, 191 yards in a 50 gram ball, you will find - while marveling at the way we so freely mix metric and imperial in our knitting terminology - that it works out to about 3.8 yards per gram.

In practical terms, that means that if I pair what's left of the pink Mirasol Nuna I used for my Last Minute Lace Yoga Socks:


with what's left of the grey Biscotte & Cie Soyeuse I used for my Marlene socks (also, as it turns out, 3.8 yards per gram):


I have 69 grams and about 262 yards. That's plenty for another pair of yoga socks, something it would be handy to have set by, what with Christmas coming up and all. In fact, I could do the pair with what's left of the Soyeuse on its own! Mmmm.

Best $25 I ever spent, buying that pretty little scale. Makes me wonder how much longer I can go without a swift?