Seahawks Hat, Part 1

Do you know what's great? Fair Isle Knitting. If I had known how much I love this, I'd have picked it  up years ago. 

See this? This is the beginning of a Seahawks hat, knitted in about 4 hours. There's the complexity of cabling with the color variation of intarsia without the hassle of a cable needle and bobbins.

Even using a color chart for the first time was simple - read right to left and knit the right color. Much easier than I thought possible.

The only reason this hat wasn't done in a week is because I'm missing size 7 DPN and my local yarn store was out of stock. Once those get ordered, I'm finishing this hat and making another copy.

The Stockinette Prayer Shawl

 I realized recently that I still have a ton of the one pound Carron yarn. And since I didn't want to count the rows of a baptismal blanket, I went with the standard prayer shawl. Well, not exactly standard: the body of the shawl is stockinette, not garter stitch.

The stockinette isn't curling because I added a border of garter stitch around it. Each row begins with three knit stitches, a yarn over, and three knit stitches, and ends with six knit stitches.

The edging here is far nicer and cleaner than when the shawl is knit with Homespun yarn.

Here's the pattern, knit with Carron One Pound yarn on size 8 circular needles:

Cast on 1 stitch.
Row 1: KF&B
Rows 2-5: KF&B, K to the end of the row
Rows 6-13: K3, YO, K to the end of the row
Row 14: K3, YO, P* to the last six stitches, K 6
Repeat rows 13-14 until the shawl measures about 30" long. End on a knit row.
For 4 rows: K3, YO, K* to the end of the row

Finish the shawl as in the original instructions:
Row 1: K3, (YO, K2TOG)* to the last three stitches, YO, K3
For 4 rows, KF&B, K* to the end of the row
Bind off