Finally! Lattice Headband!

I've been working on a new pattern for a headband with travelling cables.  There were more kinks in the pattern than anticipated (it's taken me since April to get it to work out how I wanted it to!) but I am absolutely thrilled to report that I have successfully made my first ready-to-go Lattice Headband.  Katie M. commissioned this headband back before graduation in May so hopefully she's happy with the teal & feather grey combo she picked out. :-)

Made from 100% Peruvian highland wool in Teal and Feather Grey

I'll be making more so there will soon be some available for sale in my Etsy shop for $20 + shipping.  This style headband is a little more expensive than the Swirly Headband because it uses A LOT more yarn and takes me quite a bit longer to make.

Cozy! Keep warm with a Lattice Headband!

I am planning to write this pattern up, make it into a PDF and also have it available for sale on Ravelry and possibly in my Etsy store as well.  It can be a bit time consuming... travelling cables are like that, but I think the time is well-spent.

What are travelling cables, you ask?  When you think of a cable in knitting, you probably think of something like this fisherman's sweater pictured on the right. Those cables run vertically.  They are made by taking stitches off of your needle just before you are about to knit them, holding those stitches either in front or in back of your project, knitting the next needles, and then putting the other stitches back on the needles and knitting those.  This creates a cable or a twist in the fabric.  Cables aren't particularly stretchy, but they are very warm and create interesting textures.  You can see that there are individual cables or twists in the fabric that run lengthwise along the fisherman's sweater.  The ones on the sleeve of this sweater are your basic cable that just twists every so often... [p1, k4, p1* rep 4 rows, on the fifth row, p1, slip 2 hold in front, k2, replace 2, k2, p1... repeat whole sequence]

A travelling cable, on the other hand, is a cable that does not go straight up and down the garment.  Rather than the knit stitches staying in the same place on the garment, going vertically and twisting over or under each other every so often, a travelling cable 'moves' either left or right every single row.  This means that instead of having those nice vertical columns of fancy cables, you have a cable that veers wildly to the left or to the right.  Because you have to move the stitches every single row, they take a lot more time to create a garment using them, but you can create some interesting designs.  For instance, in the Lattice Headband, I made a trellis pattern.  In the Verhi Terhi mitts (pictured on the left), you can see how the cable (it looks just like a raised ridge) goes diagonally across the mitten.

In other news, I've got some cooking updates! First: my first recipe! Check out my Baked Shrimp Scampi. It's a conglomeration of a bunch of different scampi recipes... I just picked out the parts that I liked best (butter, garlic) and left out the ones I didn't (rosemary). I made this recipe for dinner last night and I am pleased to say that there weren't any leftovers or unhappy diners.

I'm also about to try to make some freezer jam with some of the strawberries from the festival! Wish me luck!