Baby hat and mittens

This is the hat and pair of mittens I am making for Iris aka "the Worm" as a peace offering. The design is by Birgit Østergaard for Marianne Isager. The main color is a white Tvinni Tussah (merino wool/silk), with a sage green contrast of Tvinni (wool). Hat and mittens are lined with sage green mercerized cotton.
The hat is knitted in one piece, starting with the rib around the neck, then a stockinette piece for the head. There is a contrast stripe on top. Then, the stitches for the lining are picked up on the inside (of course with the wrong sides facing each other), and the lining knitted in stockinette to the same length as the outside. I finished both inside and outside with 3-needle bind-offs. Here is the hat seen from the side:

I'll pick up stitches in both outside and lining, and knit an edge in sage wool that will surround the face (the lower edge in the picture).

The outside is wonderfully soft, and with the lining, the whole hat is very warm and fluffy. But I have to say this is some of the most boring knitting I have ever done. It just went on and on. On 3 mm needles with this thin yarn (100 g/3.5 oz is 510 m/558 yd), the number of stitches was maybe the same as in an adult sweater. So Iris, we are more than even now!!

About the mittens in the next post.

Giant knitted bra!

Well, not quite. This is the beginning of a diagonally knitted cardigan. At least, that's the working hypothesis at this point.
I started with two identical pieces, casting on 3 stitches, and then knitting back and forth in garter stitch, increasing 2 stitches in the middle of every other row. This is of course the same as the 90 degree angle in a Zimmermann surprise jacket.
In order to make the angle less than 90 (to shape the waist slightly) I didn't actually increase on every other row, but skipped it on certain rows:














and above the point decided to be waist height, I increased four instead of two on some rows. Then, when the lower edge was long enough, I joined the pieces and continued with increase and decrease on the same row.
The yarn was bought in a greasy little stall somewhere in New Delhi. The little clerk in the little stall smelled a good sale coming when he saw me (very tall and pale according to New Delhi standard) enter. He showed me 30 different acrylic yarns. Apparently wool was the good stuff, and only came out when I was still not satisfied with what I saw (I had hoped for silk and cashmere...) but this is what I got:














two "beautiful" boxes of 200 g each, complete with stench of coal smog.