Quarters Cap

Four quarters in a football game.  60 clock minutes, but the game can last for hours.  When your team is winning, it seems to go by in a flash.  When your team is losing, it feels like agony.  As I was looking for a knit or crochet pattern to be the final one in our Sunday with a Side of Football series, I found the Quarters Cap by Kristin Nicholas Designs.  This hat can be done in a variety of sizes, can have a striped effect, or in solid color…you guessed it…quarters!  What could be more perfect for football knitting?

The hat is worked garter stitch and flat.  In other words, not in the round.  Much like a football game, you kick off (cast on) and knit all the way to the end zone.  After your second row, you begin a series of plays (short rows), with each sequential short row creating the shaping of the crown.  Once you're at the 50 yard line (or worked half of the stitches in your row shaping the crown), you start a new quarter.  Upon completion of four quarters, your game (cap) is finished!  

As announced in our January newsletter and Latest News, during the Soothe for Spring Campaign, Halos of Hope is asking our volunteers to make adult hats, for women and men, in lighter weight yarns, so that we will be prepared send hats to a new cancer center opening this summer, and several cancer centers located in warmer weather states, requesting 30-50 hats every month.  Soothe for Spring will run January 1 through April 30, with a goal to have a minimum of 3,000 hats ready in early May.  Hats can be sent to Halos of Hope, or dropped off at one of our donation locations, at any time throughout the campaign.

During Soothe for Spring, we will continue to accept hats made from other fibers, and will accept hats for children and teens. These hats will go to the centers that need them in the remaining winter months, and kids always need help.  As those projects are finished, find the cottons, cotton-blends, bamboos, dk weights, fingering, sock weight, and baby yarns. Then knit or crochet a breath of spring, the warmth of summer, and light, cool, comfort into your caps.

The following Soothe for Spring yarn options are provided for guidance only.  Check with your LYS or yarn retailer for similar yarns that are readily available in your area.  Also, be sure to check your stash for leftover DK, sport, fingering and sock weight yarns that are soft and washable.  

Note:  Bamboo and Bamboo blend yarns do stretch with wearing, so please make hats on the smaller size.

Aunt Lydia's Bamboo 3 - 100% Bamboo from viscose
Aunt Lydia's Bamboo 10 - 100% Bamboo
Berroco Comfort - 50% Super Fine Nylon, 50% Super Fine Acrylic
Bernat Bamboo - 86% bamboo, 12% acrylic, 2% polyester
Bernat Cotton Tots - 100% Cotton
Bernat Satin - 100% Acrylic
Bernat Satin Sport -100% Acrylic
Cascade Cotton Rich DK - 65% Cotton, 35% Nylon
Cascade Fixation - 98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic
Cascade Pima Silk - 85% Peruvian Pima Cotton, 15% Silk
Cascade Pima Tencel - 50% Peruvian Pima Cotton, 50% Tencel
Cascade Ultra Pima - 100% Pima Cotton
Cascade Ultra Pima Fine - 100% Pima Cotton
Caron Simply Soft - 100% Acrylic
Hobby Lobby I Love This Cotton - 100% Cotton
Knit Picks Comfy - 75% Pima Cotton, 25% Acrylic
Knit Picks CotLin DK Yarn - 70% Tanguis Cotton, 30% Linen
Knit Picks Crayon Boucle Yarn - 100% Pima Cotton
Knit Picks Simply Cotton Sport Yarn - 100% Organic Cotton
Kollage Corntastic - DK 100% corn
Kollage Milky Whey - DK milk/soy
Kollage Creamy - Fingering milk/cotton
Kollage Riveting Sport - recycled blue jeans
Kollage Riveting Worsted - recycled blue jeans
Kollage Hope - USA cotton (only comes in natural color)
Kollage Sock-a-licious - Fingering silk/merino/nylon
Lily Sugar 'n Cream - 100% Cotton
Lion Brand Cotton - 100% Cotton
Lion Brand Cotton-Ease - 50% Cotton, 50% Acrylic
Lion Brand Microspun - 100% Acrylic Microfiber
Naturally Caron Spa - 75% acrylic & 25% bamboo
Peaches & Creme - 100% Cotton
Red Heart Sport - 100% Acrylic
Red Heart Designer Sport - 100% Acrylic
Red Heart Lustersheen - 100% Acrylic
TLC Baby - 100% acrylic (please do not use sparkle version)

Weekend Hats - the Brier Toque

I confess.  I have to cheat a little on this week's installment.  Week 6 was Christmas weekend and week 7 is New Year's weekend.  While it doesn't stop the knitting, the festivities do put a crimp in available time.  When your family is hosting the holiday buffet, cooking trumps caps - no matter how hard one protests.  

I also confess that I have only recently learned to knit socks well.  With so many beautiful colorways in sock weight yarn, I knew I was missing out.  My first sock experience wasn't the best, and it just seemed odd.  This was knitting in the round, albeit smaller yarn and smaller needles. What was so elusive?  Oh yes, turning heels and kitchener stitch.  But I have mastered both this past year. Setting socks aside, certainly there should be a way to make a beautiful hat out of sock yarn, shouldn't there?

Along comes the Interweave Books publication, Weekend Hats.  Third confession. I bought this book because I really (I mean, really) want to make the Ruche Beret by Susan Anderson.  But that will be a 2012 discussion.  While drooling over the book, I saw the Brier Toque designed by Cecily Glowik MacDonald. Ribbing and stockinette.  And sock yarn.  And a hat that could be good for men.  Be still my charitable hat heart.  

Something Special for the Holidays

In week 3, when I shared my Go-To Crochet Pattern, I mentioned a hat that I discovered at Stitches East, and said I would try to get it done for week 4.  Ah, my hooks were wrapped with the best of fiber intentions.  A few disclaimers.  I wasn't sure the pattern could be completed in a Sunday afternoon of football.  But the family and I were beginning our vacation, which gave me a little extra hook time on the plane ride.  I also knew that for at least part of week 4's Sunday afternoon, I wouldn't be crocheting at all.  You see, we had tickets to see an NFL game live!  Yes, this was going to be one week where it was Sunday Football with a side of everything else.  But that was also okay, because we'd be back in our room before the Sunday night game and the Monday night game was a snoozer.  

To my surprise, I opened my project bag on Sunday night after the live NFL game, and found I had all of the embellishing yarn, but had forgotten the main hat yarn. A desperate search through my luggage didn't help.  Now what to do?  Aw, shucks…I need to buy yarn?  Twist my arm a little harder, please.

If you follow Halos of Hope on Facebook, Twitter, or Ravelry you may have seen our post regarding the FiberStory.TV interview with Johnny Vasquez, also founder of New Stitch a Day.  If you have a few minutes, please take a listen.

As such, yours truly has been penalized for delay of game, because having focused on getting the interview done prior to taking some vacation time with family, I totally forgot to pack the yarn for the hat I had planned.  Fortunately, there are yarn stores here in the Valley of the Sun, and I should be able to post something this coming week!  And then to catch up, will try to give everyone a couple of ideas to get started with post-holiday hat stitching (if you are so inclined).

Until next week, take a listen to Johnny's interview, and thank you!

The Go-To Pattern

Admin's Note:  For the next 4 weeks, also known as the remainder of the football season, we're going to try to have Pam work on a new hat pattern idea to share with you.  As an avid football fan, she's usually knitting or crocheting something simple to keep her hands busy, but not so difficult as to distract her from the game.

This week, I had all the best intentions to make a crochet cap that I was introduced to at Stitches East in October.  I set the pattern and the yarn aside in my office at home.  I knew I would need to wind my yarn before Sunday.  Perfect Sunday afternoon of football as well.  Chicago Bears at noon, Green Bay Packers the late afternoon game.  And if I needed more time, Saints for Sunday night.

Mid-week, we had to rush our 19-year old kitty, Nike, to the veterinarian.  Yes, that's right; 19 years old.  We've known for awhile that we were on borrowed time with our old lady.  But each time we thought she would check in that ninth life, she would rebound again, enough to make us think she might see 20.  But not this time.  While her eyes were clear and she was still fairly alert, there was something wrong with her digestion.  The doctor was hopeful.  It could be an inflammation or an infection.  Let's treat it with medication and see how she does.  If that doesn't work, then it's something more serious.  And at her nonagenarian age in people years, we weren't going to put her through extensive testing or surgery.  

The remainder of the week, my yarn sat idle while we waited to see if our senescent sweetheart would turn the corner again.  By Saturday evening, we knew she would not.  On Sunday, Nike went over to the Rainbow Bridge, and we miss her.

Cascade Fixation: Cabled Capabilities

Admin's Note:  For the next 5 weeks, also known as the remainder of the football season, we're going to try to have Pam work on a new hat pattern idea to share with you.  As an avid football fan, she's usually knitting or crocheting something simple to keep her hands busy, but not so difficult as to distract her from the game.

For the record.  I do not swatch hats.  I know every designer and knit/crochet teacher out there are rolling their eyes, sighing deeply, tsk-tsking and pooh-poohing me.  Because I can find a home for most every hat that I make, and I do know the range of sizes that my gauge usually makes…I just don't swatch hats.  Sweaters, yes.  Cowls, sometimes. Mittens, yes.  Not hats.

So about a third of the way into this hat, I realized that the combination of the yarn I was using, Cascade Fixation, and my Kollage size 7 needles would result in a smaller hat.  That's okay.  Kids need hats, too.  But a word to the wise.  The Kollage folks will tell you that sometimes you need to go 'up' a size using their square needles.  They may be right.  Had I used a size 8 and not 7, this hat may have come to gauge. Listen to them when they speak...

But I digress.  This week's hat is the Cabled Chemo Cap, designed by Susie Bonnell for Cascade Yarns, in Fixation yarn.  It is a free pattern.  The Cascade folks have been very supportive of Halos of Hope this year, and were kind enough to provide a sample of Fixation for us at the Stitches East show in Hartford, CT.  The yarn is 98% cotton and 2% elastic, which means it has a lot of stretch.  As seen by the photos below, the completed hat, while comfortably fitting the child head mannequin, also stretches easily to fit a 19-20" adult/teen head.  It would just need to be a little longer, which could easily be done without going into a second skein.

Stashbusting:  Seeing Beyond the Pattern

Admin's Note:  For the next 6 weeks, also known as the remainder of the football season, we're going to try to have Pam work on a new hat pattern idea to share with you.  As an avid football fan, she's usually knitting or crocheting something simple to keep her hands busy, but not so difficult as to distract her from the game.

If you have visited with us at a fiber or knit/crochet show, you know that Halos of Hope displays sample hats and pattern ideas that we think could be good for those enduring the side-effects of hair loss.  Volunteers who tell our story will say that almost any hat pattern will work.  The key is a good, soft, preferably washable yarn.  I often comment that just because someone has lost their hair, doesn't mean they've lost their sense of style.  The hat that you'll wear with hair will likely be a style you'll want without hair, just smaller.  Cancer patients don't want to "look" different, especially the younger ones.

I had always been a worrier, fretting about this and overanalyzing that. It seemed as though I even worried about what I should be worrying about. My mind always racing, and I was never relaxed. That changed the first time I traveled with Great White Adventures to Isla Guadalupe and climbed into a shark cage. In the crystal-clear Mexican waters, I stopped worrying and thinking about what happened in the past or what might come next. The instant I slid under the surface and dropped into the cage, I became 100% present and entirely in the moment. Left somewhere in those shark-filled waters was my old, worrying self only to be replaced by what I would soon realize was my true (non-worrying) self.

The sad fact is that many people never learn to value the time they have.  Others don’t appreciate it until they are told they don’t have much time left. Ioften takes a tragedy before a person learns to be present and cherish the moment. It’s a blessing that I found that same freedom -- not through tragedy but through a connection with the present moment forged on the westernmost frontier of Mexico. I’ve been making the pilgrimage every year since.

Every day I look at our Halos of Hope journey and I think 'what next'?  Our board and close supporters say 'well…imagine [insert idea]'.  And I often reply, I can imagine pretty big things.

In the spring we imagined we could help the Valerie Fund get 200 regular hats and 200 medieval hats for Camp Happy Times.  We send them 300 regular hats and 325 crowns, jesters, princesses, dragons, unicorns, chain mail hoods - the list goes on.  Imagine - 625 hats in a few short months. The kids, we're told, were thrilled.  And yes, photos are coming!

I was ten years old when my grandma taught me how to crochet.  

I hated it.

Sure, certain things stood out that still bring me comfort, my grandma’s bright red beehive hair-do and classical music in the      background. But I didn’t understand tension, and so my fingers were wrapped tighter and tighter with every stitch.  

Did I mention that I hated it?

It became obvious to me, because of her smile, that my grandma would not flinch.  She was determined to outlast me through that grandmotherly patience.  And so we sat side by side…my fingers turning purple while my grandma kept smiling and encouraging me.  I would occasionally throw down the yarn and tell her I didn’t want to do it.  She would smile and tell me it took practice, and that we’d try again later.  The message was clear. Quitting was not an option.  How did this whole idea to teach me crochet begin anyway? My grandma seemed content enough to work on all those afghans; I was happy enough watching cartoons and playing outside.  And then…forced crochet lessons.

It was March 28th.  A posting to Ravelry, the social network for knitters and crocheters appealing to those of us who embrace charitable endeavors.  Camp Happy Times needs hats for kids, aged 5-21, cancer survivors attending their 29th summer camp.  The appeal?  These kids often arrive without basic necessities for a cool mountain climate, so could we possibly help them find 200+ caps for their kids.  But the challenge didn't end there.  They also had a medieval theme for this year's camp, and could the fiber community possibly help them with princesses and jesters and crowns and wizards?

All of us at Halos of Hope knew we could find 200+ regular hats for their campers.  We have an incredible supply of hats from volunteers across the country that come in every month.  It was March, deadline was July.  200 hats for kids in 4 months, easy to do.  It was those medieval hats.  Could we help this incredible organization create a kingdom in time?