I saw a hat across a crowded platform, I fell in love, then it vanished, forever. This is my take on that hat. (photo will be added when I have one!)

Ingredients:

Any DK weight yarn (I'm guessing about 100g, probably less)

1 circular needle 4mm
1 set of 4mm DPNs (switch to these when decreasing the crown on circulars becomes too difficult)

Milford Hat

Cast on 100 stitches

Join to work in the round & place marker to mark beginning of round.

Round 1: *k1, p4 repeat from * to end

Round 2: *k1, p1, k2, p1 repeat from * to end.

Repeat rows 1 & 2 till hat measures 10cm.


The crown:

Round 3: *k18, K2tog, place marker, repeat from * to last 20 stitches, K18, K2tog.

Round 4: *k to 2 stiches before marker, K2tog, slip marker, repeat from * to last marker, k to 2 stitches before the end of the row, K2tog.

Repeat round 4 till you have 10 stitches remaining. Thread end of yarn through remaining stitches, gather and fasten off.

The Milford Hat on Ravelry

This cute hat is from Knitted Babes. I really like this book, it's got a mixture of knitted and sewn projects. The clothes patterns are all designed for the dolls pictured on the front so the sizeing is all over the place but I knitted this hat with slightly larger needles and yarn and it fits Grayling just fine.

Just for littlebun, a pattern for a pair of chic warm tweedy Pullip trousers!


( pattern )

Three small girls in turn sat next to me on the bus this morning and gazed at my knitting. The second one actually refused to go and sit next to her mum when a seat became available and hissed "no, I want to watch the lady doing".

Welcome to my new knitting blog!

I've decided to set up a new blog separate from pink_weasel to talk about my knitting for lots of reasons. The main reason is that I plan to put lots of my own patterns online and so it makes sense for them to be in a self contained place. Other reasons include a desire to make my knitting available without people having to wade through hours of my personal blog angst, the opportunity to create a new space for my knitting, oh, and I just liked the idea of a knitting blog, it seemed like a fun thing to have.

I know that my Grandmother taught me to knit as a child but I don't remember learning, it's just something I've always been able to do. When we were taught how to knit in the Brownies at 7, I already knew as I recall being asked to spend the evening helping other girls to learn. My Nan always had some knitting tucked down the side of her chair. She made her own fairisle cardigans and lots of bed socks. When I was 15 she knitted me a baggy lilac sweater that I wore every day for two years when I was in the sixthform. It's still in my wardrobe, a treasured posession.

Knitting has passed in and out of my life. I doubt there has been a year when I haven't picked up the needles and knitted something but over the last four years I have been studying textiles full time, learned how to use a knitting machine, learned so much more about yarn and constructing textiles and pattern reading and I suddenly discovered that I was able to actually make the things I pictured in my head. Now that I'm nolonger frustrated by being unable to realise what I've designed, knitting has become a great pleasure. I'm not claiming to be the best knitter, I'm certainly not the fastest but I am passionate about it!

As for the doll aspect, I've always loved my fashion dolls, Sindy and Barbie were constant companions when I was a child, a secret passion during my teens and early 20s and now it's become acceptable for adults to collect and play with them again. I've only kept two of my childhood dolls but I kept all the clothes and accessories and have added some new dolls to my collection, most recently a Blythe, called Grayling (you can see her in the icon and modeling in a lot of the photographs I'm going to post.) Dolls are lovely to knit for, there's something very pleasing about creating 3D shapes that mould round the body and create garments.

My patterns are not always going to be for Blythe dolls, they can always be adapted for other dolls too, upping the size of the needles, changing the yarn, if you want to knit for a larger doll experiment. if you're really stuck, let me know. I knit fairly tightly so you might find things coming out a bit small, if so try bigger needles.

I'm not always going to post patterns either. Some things are one offs or variations on a theme. I'm planning to check out other talented people's dolly patterns too and some things are not going to be dolly related at all. I'm just going to see how it goes. Thanks for reading!

I have a thing about Wonder Woman and Grayling, my Blythe, has the perfect hair for the Diana look, so here you are, photos of her knitted costume as well as Wonder Cat and an alternate universe Red Sun Wonder Woman outft!







I can't take the credit for the Wonder Cat pattern, that was from this splendid knitter (the link isn't working because I can't find the pattern but when I track it down I will credit it...)

( Pattern for shorts & bodice )