I Am a Knitwear Designer and So Can You

Yes, that was a play on the title of Stephen Colbert's book, I Am America and So Can You. Sorry I'm not sorry.

I knit a hat. It's a cozy hat, and I made it with Tanis Fiber Arts Purple Label, in case you were wondering. (You weren't.) It's yellow. It's pretty. The pattern is Mont Royal, and it's FREE (which we all like). The designer is knitshep on Ravelry.

I shamelessly stole asked nicely for this photograph from Rachael because it's the only picture of me actually wearing the hat. See? Isn't Rachael a good photographer?

I took this picture of Rachael, and she looks like she is being bathed in holy light. I choose to believe this is because she IS being bathed in holy light and not because I am a bad photographer.

The look on Rachael's face is one I see a lot. It says, "What are you doing?" And also, "You are pretty strange, but I tolerate your oddities."

After I finished the hat, I had left over yarn, and so I decided I needed fingerless mitts. I pulled out my go-to pattern, and I thought, "This is not the right gauge for this yarn. And it won't look like the hat. I want it to look like the hat. So I stretched the ribbing over my wrist a bit, cast on that number of stitches, and knit some ribbing. Then I did MATH on PURPOSE to figure out how big I could make the cable section of the pattern. I increased a bit after the ribbing instead of going up a needle size. It ended up being six stitches. Which I guess is "a bit." Whatever.

I established the cable pattern and then thought, "Hey, I need a thumb." So I did thumb increases. It was a thing.

And then it was done. And I did another one. And now I have fingerless mitts I sort of kind of designed for myself. I mean, I didn't make up the cable pattern, but these are mitts that came from my brain, so I designed them, right? I'm going to say yes.

I might be a bit proud of them. They fit the hat perfectly, which was exactly what I wanted. I might try this making up my own pattern thing again sometime.