My new hat pattern is almost out! (Edit: it IS out and you can find it here on ravelry!!!)
It's a reversible hat with a dual personality disorder!

The colour of Little Hyde is showing through the eyelets of the lace - and if you choose a bright colour for the contrasting lining of the hat (one that's different from your hair colour works best), then your Mrs. Jekyll will have some coloured spots that shine through her lace!!!

The best part in this hat (in my humble opinion of course) is that both hats share the same brim, that is made in one layer only. Most reversible hats have this bulky brim because they have the lining start from the very edge of the hat! This results in having too much fabric around the face - a look which is fine with bulky hats, but I didn't want this for the feminine little lace beret I had in mind.

So I thought about a way to make the ribbing with one layer only and to incorporate the lining stitches when finishing the brim of the hat - with a seamless construction of course!

And of course I just had to make the tubular cast-on for this hat... again... !
This time with the contrast colour for the first rounds, to visually "connect" Mrs. Jeckyll and Little Hyde!

Since I tried this cast-on method I just can't go back to any other... especially when working fine yarn and especially for hats and mittens (where you notice the cast-on much more and where you just need to have some stretch in it). If you don't know this technique I strongly suggest you'd check it out: here is a great video link from Ysolda Teague)

Finally the double layer of the hat has also a practical reason (besides being fun when we try to emulate our own dual personalities)! It gives added warmth, since a hat in light fingering yarn (Holst supersoft in this case) wouldn't be very useful for winter - especially in fine lace!

The pattern for the hat will be available starting the 26th of October 2013. 
For today only my friends from my knit-group here in Athens will get the pattern as an early christmas present... since I won't be here for the next couple of meetings!

So here I am...
Writing my first post on this new and shiny host of mine and hoping that everything will go smoothly with this transition!
I am still in the progress of migrating stuff (maybe I wont bring everything over here.. I am still experimenting and quite stupid actually from all these tutorials I saw about building your own site/blog)!

I don't know why exactly I wanted to change platforms..  I guess that I really needed a new clean start and to change some stuff that I couldn't get at my old host... ...nothing spectacular!

There were quite enough things missing at my "old place"- and that bugged me.... And I hate it when cyber-stuff bugs me! As if all the other nuisances that annoy me in a day-to-day basis aren't enough!

So.... here we go and hopefully you guys are going to like this new blog/site!!!

Anyway... the old blog is not going to be shut down or anything - just put to sleep...
And I'll try to put a selection of blog posts from my old site to this new site. They will show up just underneath this one - in true chronological order. 
Like this you can find some old stuff here (I will keep adding posts from my old blog in the next few days, since it all needs quite a long time because it is all done manually,...)

Let's hope that this new place will be welcoming for my little blog!!!
:)

I finished the hat!!! You remember, my first project using my brand new gorgeous indy-yarn?

I really like how it came out, even with its slightly unconventional shape… the fabric is quite dense because of the weave-pattern (which makes it very warm thankfully) and this allows the hat to take on different forms: so it can be worn either as a béret style hat (when pushed down at the back)….

….or - my personal favorite - in a more hipster style (when just crunched a little bit at the top)! 
Pardon my slightly crazy eye in this pic… I don’t know what was *that* shocking… :)

I did the ribbing with a slipped stitch detail and with diagonal shaping to keep it less bulky at the neck (since I always look like an idiot with either bulky & scrunched ribbing in my neck area or the wider part of the hat starting too high up)!
I think that the biased shape gives also a nice “turbanesque” touch to the whole hat (and keeps the top of the hat slightly lower & near the nape… a good thing when you wear a tall hat and you don’t really dig the smurf-look).

The weave stitch seems to be a little complicated at first, but one gets into the rhythm soon enough…
…but the best thing is: it perfectly hides the jog when knitting in the round!!!!

I have always admired the luxurious looking yarns from independent indy dyers on ravelry… they seem to be the holy grail for knitters: lovely shades of ecological colours dyed by hand on natural premium quality fibres!

Well, it’s one thing to admire and long for some nice squishy yarn in sumptuous saturated colours and another to feel it, touch it, have it, work with it and finally wear it! 
The first three of these wishes were granted to me today:

Yes… I ordered the first (of many I am absolutely sure) batch of genuine indy yarn, by Polo&Co in France, made exclusively out of french wool that is washed, carded and spun on the spot.
The wool is from sheep breeds of central France and even the sheep there all have very elegant names: Black Velay, the Blanche du Massif Central, the Bizet!

This is the Masgot (in worsted weight) and the Masgot Fine (in fingering weight). It is 100% natural wool without any dye: rustic and beautiful original sheep colour!!!

But I had to order some coloured yarn too of course (since I rarely succeed in making one coloured projects) and the point was to get hand-dyed colours anyway….

This colour is hard to describe… it is purple and pink with some almost blue strands. Rustique fine is also 100% wool in fingering weight.

I plan to use this gorgeous mustard colour in a jumper (paired with the natural grey sheep colour) for my next big project: Alpaga is sportweight 80% Alpaca and 20% wool and incredibly soft….

All colours are made out of natural dye that is environment-friendly and biodegradable! They are produced by a small family business and sold via Etsy (you can find the shop here). I don’t know about you, but I always prefer small businesses over big companies… it somehow feels better to give my money to a “real” person like you and me (and the quality is usually much better, since they love what they do and there is no mass production involved).
And another great thing (that shall not be overlooked) is the price: One can find yarns from 5,50 Euros up to 18 Euros in this little Etsy-shop!

All in all I am very excited about this new purchase of mine (and my initiation into indy-yarn) and I will keep you posted about the projects that will emerge out of it…. very soon hopefully!!!!