Thinking about coffee
May 10th, 2009 § 2 Comments
I dont’t drink coffee but I have a coffee-loving man and to make him happy I’ve made a bunch of knitted hats for his French cafetieres. Easy as pie and lovely gifts! Complete with a hole at the top for the coffee press and a hook to hang it in the kitchen when it’s not in use.
You will need:
Double pointed needles plus a short circular needle, size 5-6 mm
3 balls of super chunky Eskimo wool (150 grammes)
a safety pin
The instructions (fits an 8-cup cafetiere):
Cast on 72 stitches on a circular needle or on double pointed needles, join in a circle (take care not to twist!) and purl 3 rows.
Switch to knitting, and knit 50 rows in the round.
Start decreasing and if you’re using a circular needle switch to double pointed needles when necessary:
On every other row decrease 8 stitches until you have 48 stitches left (3 times)
On every row decrease 8 stitches until you have 16 stitches left (4 times)
Bind off and make an icord:
knit 3 (start of icord), bind off 5 stitches, knit 3 (move onto a safety pin to attatch to icord later), bind off 5 stitches.
Use the first 3 stitches to knit an icord – 20 rows – and graft these 3 stitches to the 3 stitches on the safety pin.
Felt your knitting:
I just dump the coffee cosy into the washer with a pair of jeans or some other piece of heavy clothing. The jeans will give the knitted wool a good beating so it gets quite dense. If it’s not dense enough, wash again.
That’s it!
My notes
The Musk Ox and the Moth
May 10th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
This scarf is knitted (not by me) in Qiviut – wool from Greenlandic musk ox – a gift my sister received from a friend of hers. It is extremely warm, soft and delicious.
Even the moths found it delicious. I hate moths!
As soon as I saw it, I asked my sister to put it in a plastic bag, close it with a knot and throw it into the deep freezer to kill off any eggs.
I didn’t want to risk carrying moths into the home of myself, my family, my cats and my wool, did I?
I am going to try to repair the damage, even if it is knitted lace. I have found a ball of qiviut wool from Sisimiut in my stash, not an excact colour and weight match but it will have to do. It’s 3ply so I am going to untwine it and use a single strand.
I don’t think I’ll be able to make invisible repairs but I hope that the end result will bring my sister good memories of the friend who knitted the scarf and the sister who repaired it.
No friendly thought to the moths, though….
