THREE TAMS--TAM A

I had been working on a vest made with Red Heart's "Gemstone", but discovered that my second (and third) skeins had a very different colorway than my first had--same color name, different dye lots. The one I had used for the vest back had navy blue, and darker colors than the other skeins, which had no navy at all. You can kind of see the difference in this picture:


So, I had to stop work on it until I could find more yarn closer to my original (which I did find on Friday at Michaels). Anyhow, I wanted to knit something small, and remembered the tams in the new Winter issue of Knitty, which fortuitously used small amounts of ombre-type yarns. I have several orphan multicolored yarns in small amounts. I started one with size one needles for the ribbing (I have to go down 2-3 sizes to get guage) and a grey-white-green-rust kind of yarn with an off white; the ribbing seemed too tight and the white in the ombre got lost in the white of the background. I frogged it and started another using size 2 for the ribbing and size 3 for the main part and found a small ball of this multi


with an ecru-ish main color. The colors look great together:


It took about a week of obsessive knitting, but I finished it Sunday.
The hat from the side, stretched:


The top of the hat:


Since it is acrylic, not wool, I can't really block it. Here's how it looks on me as a tam:




If I pull it down like a cap, it goes down to my nose! Though I could fold the ribbing up.

BEDROOM SHAWL

Last winter I started to make an Elizabeth Zimmermann "Ribwarmer" vest (from The Knitting Workshop) with this nice grey yarn I had in my stash. I loved the way it felt--even though it's acrylic--but I ran out and couldn't find any more, not even another in a close shade. I had been doing a bit of nightly knitting before going to bed, sitting up in bed propped up with pillows, but my shoulders were chilly. So I decided to use that yarn and make a simple triangle shawl with the grey yarn--essentially a garter stitch washcloth pattern (k1, kfb, k to end) until I ran out of yarn. I got to 150 stitches across and bound off. It was nice and warm, but a teensy bit smallish.

Inspired by the way Wendy Johnson had added the lace edging to her Pinwheel Sweater, I thought I could add a lace edging to make it a bit larger while also learning how to attach lace and do more lacework. I looked through a lot of books and online, with limited luck in finding an edging that you attach as you go and that turned a sharp corner. Then I took A Gathering of Lace out again and found an edging (Shaped Triangle) that looked like it would work--though I had to adjust a bit for the much smaller number of rows (and a number that did not divide appropriately)--lots of graphing! I didn't have any other grey to even come close in color, so I first tried a very light,clay-ish shade. I got one side done--and ran out of yarn and didn't have any more.



Frog time!. Then I thought I'd try a pink (didn't like any of the colors I had) or a blue--and found this one skein of turquoise acrylic yarn, a bit fuzzy and very soft. After much ripping out at the start, I got into the rhythm--and remembered to use life lines. I finished it today--with one inch left over after binding off. I had tried putting on the top edging (with a slightly darker turquoise yarn), but didn't like the way it was coming out. It is not meant to wear in public, just at home.