Saturday, January 29, 2011

Quietly Knitting Along

I receive emails and see postings on Ravelry about the beautiful hats that people are working on, not to mention the lovely ones that have shown up in my mailbox.  I can't tell you how much we appreciate all the hard work that is going on right now.  But that doesn't provide much information to post on this blog, so I thought I would share what hats I've been working on.  Please feel free to comment on your current knitting or email me at hatsforsailors@gmail.com and I can share it in a future post.  I think it would be great to see some of your work and hear what your ideas are.

Of course the most important thing is knitting the hat for a sailor, but I'm also trying to accomplish two other things - knit from my stash and try new techniques.   I like knitting hats and I think they are the perfect size to try something new.

This idea happens to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Elizabeth Zimmerman's birth.  I must be the last knitter on earth not to know much about her, so I decided to Knit the Almanac.  I really enjoyed reading what she had written and I knitted the January project of an aran hat from a recently aquired addition to my stash (I don't think that counts as knitting from my stash).

I was intrigued by her knitting philosophy and have been reading a few more of her ideas.   I really liked one of them.  She kept two containers of yarn, one in light colors and one in dark colors.  She would knit a hat and randomly grab one yarn from alternating containers, so that the hat would have a dark stripe and then a light stripe.  Once a yarn had been used once, she would not use it again in the same hat.  I've decided that is what I am going to do with the leftover yarn from each hat I knit and when I have enough, I am going to try it.  Has anybody ever done this?

Sandra