I have been designing a hat. OK, I concede that is not anything new, but for this one I wanted a particular look and that required learning a new cast-on. The hat was designed for some yarn I had hand spun on a drop spindle, and I had deliberately spun the yarn to be thick, chunky weight and squishy so I wanted an overall soft and squishy look to the hat too.
A cast-on edge can sometimes look and feel a bit tight but a tubular cast-on has a natural rolled edge which fit the look I wanted for this hat. I had never worked one in the round in 2x2 rib before, and couldn't find a single online tutorial for the exact effect I wanted. A mash-up of several different ones resulted in the following. The pattern will link to this tutorial once it is ready, but meanwhile, I hope this step-by-step photo guide helps in your own hat knitting.

This tubular cast-on begins with a crochet chain provisional cast-on. For the purposes of this tutorial I am working with a 20-stitch tubular cast-on as an example. Obviously a hat for an adult will require substantially more than that! The tubular cast-on starts with only half the final number of stitches, and the remaining half will catch us up later on. Confusing, I know, but trust me, it works.
Since I want a final total of 20 stitches, I begin by casting on 10 (half of 20). To begin, use waste yarn to make a crochet chain around 6 chains longer than the number of stitches you are going to cast on.

Make sure to leave a cast-on tail about 8"/20cm long - you will need it later. Working into the bumps on the back of the chain (and not into the chain loops themselves), pick up and knit 10 stitches using the working yarn. This will become the first Right Side row.

Purl one row, then knit one row, then purl one row (or in short, work 3 more rows in stocking stitch). It will now look like this:

The next thing we need to do is remove the waste yarn and pick up the stitches from them. Carefully unpick the crochet chain, releasing the knit stitches attached to them one by one and pick them up on a second needle. If possible, try to start from the left hand side so your needles end up facing in the same direction. (If you end up with them pointing in opposite directions you will need to use another needle to help you turn the lower edge row around, as you need to end up with two lots of 10 stitches, one above and one below, like this.) Be careful with the number of stitches coming off the crochet chain. Because a crochet chain cast-on causes your first row to be half a stitch out of alignment, it is easy to accidentally pick up one too many or too few. Make sure you have the same number of stitches on each needle (In this example, that's 10 each top and bottom)

Now hold the two needles so that they are side by side, as if you were going to work a three-needle cast-off. Hold the one that was uppermost just now in front, and the lower one behind so the right side of the stitches are facing outwards.

Now hold these two needles together in your left hand and take the circular needle you are going to work the brim of your hat with in your right hand. You are going to slip all the stitches on to that new working needle, in the right order, to form the 2x2 rib.
To start, slip the first two stitches from the front needle (the one closest to you in your left hand) purl wise on to the new needle. (You can slip them together or one by one, that doesn't matter, just as long as its the first two stitches from the front needle)

Next slip the first two stitches from the back needle purl wise on to the new working needle.

Now go back to the front needle again and slip the next two stitches purl wise on to the new needle.

And then take the next two from the back needle. Because the backs of the stitches on the back needle are facing you, they have the appearance of purl stitches, even though you knitted them. This is how the 2x2 rib pattern forms.

Keep going in this way, slipping two stitches from the front needle, two from the back, two from the front, two from the back, on to your new working needle until all the stitches have been taken over on to the working needle.  

I now have all 20 stitches together on the one needle and am ready to carry on. (Of course, for a full size hat you would have far more stitches than this, which will make the next bit easier. Assuming you are using a 16-20" circular needle, the stitches would fill the cable so pretend there are more stitches on mine too)
As you can see in the photo above, the working yarn is now at the right hand end of the work, but the needle tip is at the left. It is an easy job to just slide the  stitches along the cable to the other needle tip so that they are ready to knit, and your working yarn will be at the correct place for you to carry on.

Bring the other needle tip around and start working in 2x2 rib, knit two, purl two.  The stitches will be orientated such that they already appear to form 2x2 rib so just continue in the pattern as set.

This is one way of starting a hat with a 2x2 rib using a stretchy tubular cast-on.

As you may or may not have noticed (!) I like to knit socks, shawls and scarves. Most of those use fingering weight or 4-ply weight yarn, which tends to come in either 100g or 150g skeins. I have small feet and can get a pair of socks for myself out of about 70g of typical sock yarn, less than 300 yards. Small shawls use more, but not often an entire 150g skein of Wollmeise Pure, of which I have quite a bit.
All these projects mean I have accumulated an extensive collection of partial skeins of yarns in similar weights and similar fibres but not enough to make a second project. Annoyingly they’re almost all too much to justify throwing it away, but what can you do with those odd bits and bobs?
In the past I’ve made scrappy socks, and cowls. In fact you’ll find free patterns for both of those here on my blog. This time I decided I fancied a change though.
When I was expecting my younger son, I had a similar situation with DK weight yarn oddments and I used them to make a ten-stitch blanket, using the pattern from Frankie Brown on Ravelry. Various permutations of the blanket are now available, in different shapes and designs. I decided to use my sock yarn scraps to make the Double Ten-Stitch version, with two square spirals, one inside the other.
I’m planning to add any oddments I accumulate over time until the blanket is sofa-throw size. It’s wool and wool-blends so it should be cosy but not too heavy in fingering weight.
So far it is about a foot across, so I have a way to go yet!

I've been designing some stranded colourwork recently. It's a technique I enjoy both knitting in and designing in and I often think I ought to use more. One thing that can be tricky is drawing up the design itself to minimise too many long floats of yarn on the back of the work. If I'm only using two colours in a design that's not too hard, but with three or more I need to take care to avoid odd stitches of one colour that needs carrying for the rest of the row.
I am working on a mitten design using three colours to form a geometric pattern and part of it really looks best with the corners of some diamonds in a contrast colour but that would result in an entire round with just two stitches in that contrast colour. I decided I had three choices. First was to carry the third colour right round, work those two stitches, and twist the yarn periodically on the back of the work. Possible but awkward. Second was to ignore that third colour and instead work those two stitches in one of the other two colours. Simpler but less aesthetically pleasing and not the look I wanted for that part of the design. Third was the option I chose - duplicate stitch or Swiss darning, which involves using a darning needle and a length of yarn in the colour you want to sew a stitch over the knitted one and make it appear that the stitch is knotted in a different colour.
Here is the mitten with the "offending" stitches - the blue ones at the top and bottom of the central diamond.

Think of each knitted stitch as a little V. Using the colour you want the stitch to appear, embroider two small stitches, one over each leg of the V. To begin, secure the yarn on the wrong side of the work as you would with any sort of sewing. I worked by coming through to the right side of the fabric at the top left of the left-hand stitch and going back again at the point of the V.
Here you can see the yarn coming forward again at the top of the second leg of the left-hand stitch and the needle entering at the point of the V again to complete the second leg of that stitch.

The right-hand blue stitch is duplicate stitched in the same way.
After that, weave the yarn through the back of the knitted work to re-emerge at the top of the lower pair of blue stitches. Duplicate stitch over them in the same way. In this picture, the right-hand leg of the right-hand stitch has been stitched over (still following?!) and the yarn and needle are in position to stitch over the left-hand leg of that V.

Just one more V to duplicate stitch over and then the yarn can be woven in on the wrong side of the work and the job is done.
With careful sewing, the colourwork pattern is complete. Here is the final result (and compare the duplicate stitched centre diamond with the two fully-knitted ones on either side). If you didn't know, you'd have to look very closely to spot the difference!

My latest shawl pattern was released on Ravelry this week. Lace for the Admiral is a half-Pi shawl worked top down. It starts with the main stocking stitch body, shaped on Pi shawl principles before moving on to a lace border using a traditional Shetland wave stitch. Finally a knitted-on border is added.
The name, and the shawl itself, were inspired by the multi blue yarn used for the shawl body. A Wollmeise colourway named Admiral in den Wolken, which means Admiral in the Clouds, needed something which would complement it rather than fight with it and the cream yarn in my stash just jumped out at me. The two together reminded me of lace cuffs on a Victorian blouse, and from there the design idea developed. I like semi-circular shawls. I find them easier to wear than triangles and you don't end up with that point at the bottom directing the eye to bits of you that you don't want highlighting!
You can find the pattern along with all my others in my Ravelry store at www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lace-for-the-admiral

My husband's car has a stupidly small glove compartment. For a full size family car you'd expect to get full size family storage it this one isn't even big enough to fit the owners manual. That fits into a pocket in the compartment door! Because of its compact size we've never kept anything in the glove compartment until last week when I discovered a use for it.
I'm knitting a sweater for my Dad using Aran weight yarn which comes in 200g skeins. 200g of Aran rolls into a pretty big ball, which just happens to fit (you've guessed it!) in the glove box! So my husband drove and I knitted with my massive ball of yarn safely stowed!