Tag Archives: kit

Witch Hare Kit

Posted on by
Reply

A bit ago, I treated myself to a knitting kit and it arrived yesterday. It’s from Virtual Yarns and is the Witch Hare kit, for mittens and a hat. You can see it on their website, right here. Virtual Yarns is Alice Starmore and Jade Starmore’s company, featuring many patterns, books and yarns designed by Alice and Jade. There’s some wonderful eye candy on their website, so treat yourself to a few minutes of browsing.

Here are the pattern cards in the kit. They really are lovely, full colour on sturdy stock. (Apologies for the flash!)

Virtual Yarns Witch Hare kit - patterns

I like this design, especially the mittens, and I was curious about the Virtual Yarns tweeds. A kit seemed a good way to check them out.

Here are the yarns in the kit. They look scrumptious.

Virtual Yarns Witch Hare kit - yarns

And here are the patterns on Ravelry, in case you want to check out some other projects. They’re listed separately – first the mittens, then the hat.

The plan is to make the set once as the kit instructs, then possibly make the mittens again with another yarn (what yarn?) held double with KSH. The ones by the kit might get a KSH lining. We’ll see. Lovely yarn, though. I can’t wait to see how it knits up.

Chullo Hats

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s another UFO found in that stash – an unfinished chullo hat.

chullo hat knit by Deborah Cooke in Knitpicks Palette

This hat is knit of Knitpicks Palette and was a kit. Here’s the Rav page for the Andean Chullo Hat pattern, which is still available. Here it is at Knitpicks. The kit, which isn’t available any longer, came with several balls of Palette – I’m thinking maybe 8 colours. Palette is a fingering weight wool, which comes in a lot of colours.

I remember the pattern being a bit of fun, as there were numerous motifs that you could place on any of the sections and knit in any combination of the colours to make your hat your own. Have a peek at the projects on Rav to see the many variations. Of course, I had to march the llamas around the hat, though they might have shown up better if I’d knit them in the white in the kit. It’s also possible I mucked up the decreases at the crown because the circumference does diminish very quickly. (?)

This hat stalled without the tassels, partly because of the chullo hat shown below. I didn’t knit this one – I bought it at the Mountain Equipment Co-op a billion years ago (give or take). (In the 90s there were a lot of South American knits available for sale.)

South American chullo hat from the Mountain Equipment Coop

It’s knit of a yarn that seems a lot like Lopi Alafoss – but its special magic is that it’s lined with polar fleece. The mister grabs this hat whenever it’s really cold.

inside of South American chullo hat bought at the Mountain Equipment Coop

I meant to do the same with my chullo hat, but was stymied as to what shape to cut the pieces for the crown. Now I realize that the creator of this hat avoided that challenge by only lining the main part of the hat and the flaps. I’ll do that with mine.

We also have a couple of chullo hats from one of the mister’s trips to South America. He hiked the Inca Trail back in the day (to end up at Machu Picchu at dawn) and it was so cold that he bought two hats from the local knitters. Both are chullos. He wore this navy one.

South American chullo hat

He bought this second hat just because, and I’m glad he did. It’s so beautiful.

South American chullo hat

The wool is so fine, it’s almost thread. Look at the detail.

detail of South American chullo hat

Someone had a very fine set of needles! I love that the colour placement is apparently random. It’s such a lovely piece of work – and very inspiring.

And here, finally, is my own lined and finished chullo.

chullo hat knit by Deborah Cooke in Knitpicks Palette

My Escher Quilt

Posted on by
13

Last fall, I told you about a quilt kit I’d ordered. (That post is here.) The pattern is called Escher and the kit came with Kaffe Fassett fabrics to piece the top. I pieced it in December and here’s what it looks like:Escher quilt from kit pieced by Deborah Cooke

It’s much MUCH more vivid in real life.

This pattern was pretty easy to sew and the instructions were clear. I enjoyed putting it together. There was extra of every colour, so when I made a mistake in the final piecing (I cut a block that I shouldn’t have) I had enough to remake that block. The black was used for the little triangles at the center of each block: I cut up what I had left to make the widest black border possible. It’s not very wide but I like how it frames the bright colours. The top is about 62″ by 64″. I tried a couple of borders but thought they made it too busy, so it will be a bit of a small finished piece.

Mr. Math loves the finished top, but it’s a bit too wild for me. I think I might do this again, with solids or with a more restricted palette. This will be the first top that I take to be quilted on a long-arm machine, and I’m curious to see how that works out.

What do you think?