Some of you may remember the hat I made for Isaac last Thanksgiving. He was about six weeks old, and was still in the nicu. I may have been slightly unhinged at that point, because I knit him this ridiculous turkey hat.

This year, I have improved upon the turkey hat, and I’m sharing the pattern. turkey hat pattern pdf

Apologies for the lack of photos; I’ll get a photo session together in the next few days, but don’t want to miss getting the pattern out in time for Thanksgiving!

The pattern is sized for a 12 month old. You can size it up or down by changing the size of the hat; just use an even number of stitches and adjust the decreases after row 5 to match the number of stitches you have, adding or deleting rows to work down to 12 stitches. If you go smaller, I would still keep at least 16 stitches as the base for the legs, to maintain structural integrity, and maybe not do as many even rows at 36 stitches (rows 6-15). There are many natural variations in the turkey world, so whatever you come up with will be fabulous.

Last year’s hat was done in Red Heart Soft acrylic yarn (because the idea came to me at around 8:00 p.m., which meant Michaels); this year I used Cascade 220 wool, with Wool-Ease for the bones because I wanted a brighter white than you usually get with wool. I’m intrigued by the idea of doing a felted version of this; if anyone wants to give it a go, I’d love to see the results!

Last year’s hat:

While I’m at home, I’m mostly working on Swamp Thing, another franken-project I’m slapping together from various half-formed ideas. It’s a hooded sweater for Isaac, in the tradition of the Monster Hoodie. In fact, it’s the same pattern. I was given some Koigu yarn which reminded me of the Creature From the Black Lagoon or Godzilla or some other monster (in my world, that’s a good thing), so I’m working it double-stranded in the Welted Chevron pattern from Barbara Walker’s stitch book. The pattern is coming out very defined and scale-y. I’m planning to run some scales up the back after it’s all put together.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is a metric buttload of Malabrigo, to be turned into various things, and some other projects are whooshing around my brain as well.

Here’s a quick overview of what I have in the works at the moment.

I’m doing socks for Dennis; they’re in Claudia’s Handpainted wool. I’m making it up as I go along; the foot is sort-of like the Phallic Sock, but not exactly since I did the sole in plain stockinette. I just finished turning the heel; I love garter stitch toes and heels, because I am FREAKING LAZY and you don’t have to deal with the wraps if you’re using garter.

I’m calling this one the Festaroo Sock, since my intention was to finish them in time for Dennis’ music festival season. Yeah, not so much, since Bonnaroo is long over. Maybe he can take them to the one he’s covering in October. Anyway, I think I found a cool cable pattern to run up the back of the sock, so I’m excited about starting the leg.

This is kind of a sporadic project, since I mostly knit it away from home. Socks are so portable, and this one has the added bonus that knitting it in public lets people wonder if I’m making a penis cozy. I’ve knit a lot of it in the pumping room at work while extracting milk. Ok, it’s a storage closet and there’s a little sign to put on the door when you’re using it. There’s a picture of a cow on the sign. Of course there is.

What, you don’t see a jacket here? I finished a quickish project, a Baby Surprise Jacket for Isaac.

Shown here in raw form; this really is the whole jacket.

Yarn is hand-dyed/hand-spun by Franquemont-Fibers, worked on size 7 needles.

Pattern version by FoxyKnits, with help from Knit-Wiki.

Here it’s folded properly and the random yarn ends are tucked inside. Still need to sew seams, weave in ends, and buy buttons!

I’m feeling a bit bleh creatively right now; I’m hoping to find some time soon to sew or work on the nursery or…something. I don’t know, I’m just not doing anything very cool lately and it’s starting to get to me. That said, here are the socks I knit for my dad for father’s day, which were kind of nifty. The yarn is Trekking XXL wool/nylon with Louet solid black wool heel/toe/cuff. Beaded rib pattern over five stitches on size 1 needles for everything but the sole, which is stockinette on 0s. I used a toe-up pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks.

Seriously.

The sock is the first one for the Rockin’ Socks Club 2007. Rita thought the colors of the yarn looked like me, so she gave me the kit. I did the first one on dpns, and I’m doing the second on two circulars. I think I’ll be doing circulars going forward. Although I’m an Addi Turbo devotee, I couldn’t really justify buying four sets of tiny Addis before I knew if I’d even like doing socks on them, so I tried the knitpicks ones. I really like them! They have a very soft cord, which may or may not prove to be as durable as the Addi cord, and the needles and the join are very smooth. So yay!

I knit most of this shawl while Isaac was in the NICU, and we wrapped it around him at his baptism.

It’s Rowan Kid Silk Haze, and the pattern was from the Fall issue of Interweave Knits.