Beaumont - Part 1

I got going on the Beaumont hat and knit up about maybe 3 inches of the colorwork pattern and realized that the colors were just not popping. The colors pop in the picture - so why not in mine?

After consulting with some friends at lunch today (yes, I have a knitting group at work - I know, a sure sign of sickness) I was told by the Colorwork Goddess, Carole, that the problem was:

1. my tension was waaaaay too tight, and


2. I was doing stranded knitting, which is not needed in a hat ('cause it's not going to catch on anything like a mitten or something like that would). Also, since I'm using a Navy blue and white combo, the whole light/dark color thing - twisted stranded knitting does not help with this.

Carole was also good enough to send me a very useful link from Knitty on Color Stranding, which I though was way cool. Thank you, Carole!

So now I've ripped out the work so far - score is currently Hat: 1 and Jen: 0. But it's only the first quarter. More news to come as it happens.

June Updates

June has gone by so fast! We've had another child graduate high school and had lots of family visits & traveling to visit other family out of the area, so I haven't had too much time to post.

I picked up some yummy Alchemy Haiku yarn (color is "Fern" - slightly variegated deep greens) as a memento of our visit to Ft Bragg and then got the Cascading Leaves Stole pattern to knit it up with. Even thought I think the designer meant it to be more of leaves, that pattern reminded me of the ocean and seaweed and other swirly water-type things. Not sure how long this will take to knit up - it's more of a challenging pattern than I've done before. The lace is knit up on both sides, not just knit or purled on the back. Yikes!

The other project I'm currently working on is Jared Flood's Beaumont hat. The pattern is pretty and the yarn is scrumptious (yes, I got the Classic Elite Fresco yarn that the pattern recommended and it feels incredible to work with), but so far my hat isn't looking as good as the picture. Maybe my tension is off? Stay tuned for more later.