Young Bill

Aren't these photos just excellent? I love how forced the boys' smiles are - almost like the photographer threathened to take away their ice creams if they didn't smile for the camera.

This photo makes me a little uncomfortable though. The 'snow' looks so obviously fake, and the way it falls reminds me of dandruff. Great big balls of dandruff. No wonder he looks so uncomfortable.

But I'm a brave little girl, so I gritted my teeth and made myself a balaclava using that very pattern as a base. It's actually not so much a balaclava, more of a hood. The thing wouldn't come in very useful should I decide to rob some banks or a jewellery store.

Since I can never leave well enough alone, I ended up modding the pattern. Instead of seaming up the neckband, I decided to add a button tab by adding 10 extra stitches which were bound off before I started on the hood section. Because I LURVE buttons.

The button tab also makes it a lot easier to get the thing on and off your head without messing up your make-up.

The other modification I made to the pattern was to do the hood section in a lacy wave stitch instead of the recommended stockinette stitch. I found knitting straight stockinette terribly yawn-inducing, and since I'm going through a major lace phase right now, I'm taking this opportunity to lace up as much as I can get my filthy mitts on.

It's not quite winter now, but I'm thinking this be great to wear while cycling during the colder months. And it's such an easy pattern that I'm already itching to knit up several more - in different colourways and lace designs - in preparation for when the cold hits.. I'd also like to make the button tab a little longer. More buttons, more fun!

Powermetal Gauntlets

...are the secret name for the pair of armwarmers I just finished for Ari. Why? Because I was listening to these guys -


over and over again, while knitting the armwarmers/gauntlets. (I can't be sure, but it looks like the dude on the end has fake blood on his keytar?)

I think power metal may just be the most effective music for knitting...well, for me at least. It just makes me knit so much faster. I'm a knitting machine when Dragonforce are playing. Sweatshop owners should play them constantly to ensure higher productivity.

Oh, for those interesting in the actual knitting deets - the pattern is based on a wave stitch that I modified occasionally*.

Wave stitch goes like this: Cast on multiples of 12 plus 1
Row 1 - *k1, (k2tog) twice, (yfwd, k1) three times, yfwd, (slip 1, k1, psso) twice, rep from * to last stitch, k1

Row 2 - p

Row 3 - k

Row 4 - p

The way I did it on my armwarmers - start with an inch of 2x2 ribbing, and then *follow the whole pattern once through, then do four repeats of rows 1 and 2 alternately (cutting out rows 3 and 4 - the knit and purl rows), then do another repeat of all four rows after that.

Do that till you're at your desired length (I ended by doing 2 repeats of rows 1 -4) then cast on an extra 6 stitches and finished with an inch of garter stitch. The extra 6 stitches form a tab so you can add a button and close it.

If you like, you can do the whole thing on double-points or just omit the extra 6 stitches altogether. I did it because I like buttons. And dpns make me nervous so I knit it flat then seamed it to just under the garter stitch edge.

Oh, these ones are made to be fitted on the arm - I started with 3mm needles, did a third of the thing, then swapped to 4mm needles, did another third, then finished off the rest with 5mm needles. You can always make them on different sized needles for a bagger/tighter fit, or even just use one size of needles for the whole thing.

I might do another pair on dpns just to get over my fear of them. While listening to Dragonforce, of course. Or maybe even Manowar.

\m/