Stella's Hat for my aunt

My aunt asked me to make her a black hat. I emailed her some patterns and she picked out "Stella's Hat". The pattern calls for chunky yarn, but I didn't want the hat to be too hot. Instead I bought regular weight yarn, but when when I cast on the hat wasn't nearly big enough. My main problem is that I only have 3 sets of double pointed needles. The recommended size needles (size 7) made the hat too small so I used the next bigger size I have (size 10). They were way too big, and thus the hat is too big too...

I tried it on a couple times while I was making it. I had a feeling it'd be too big, but I didn't know it'd be so huge.

The pattern works on a number of stitches that's a multipication of 8 - so I'll try and cast on 72 stitches (instead of 80) and see if that comes out ok. If not I'll have to go buy needles. I'm thinking size 9 would be useful.

Science and Math geek swap

I spent almost all of November knitting for a Science and Math geek swap. The way it works is, you're set up with a partner and have to make science/math related things for that person. You send out the stuff you made, and someone else sends you stuff. Since people on craftster do all sorts of things, not just knit, it's a good way to get cool stuff you wouldn't know how to make yourself.

Here's the stuff I made:

DNA scarf and hat. I used this pattern for the scarf: http://www.twosheep.com/helix/ and then I sort of stole the idea for the hat from this pattern http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter03/PATTcoronet.html But only the idea, cause the shaping came from the hats my grandma always makes.

Then I made this emission spectrum pillow (my idea, no pattern). It's got the Mercury spectrum on one side....

and the Hydrogen spectrum on the other.

The idea is, when you take hydrogen gas (for example) and you give it energy (most times in the form of electricity), you are making electrons jump from one energy level to another. When they loose that extra energy, the electron falls back to lower energy and emits electromagnetic radiation. Sometimes the radiation is in the visible spectrum (visible light and not UV, infrared, radio waves and so on...), which is what I showed in the pillow. So basically, if you give the right amount of energy to Hydrogen, you can make it emit a photon (a particle of radiation) with the a wavelength that corresponds to red light. The same for the other lines/other colors. Mercury has a lot more lines cause it's got a lot more electrons and a much bigger nucleus. That is the basic of florescent lights. Neon lights are just the same idea, but instead of Hydrogen (which actually gives really pretty pink light) or Mercury (which gives a pretty greenish/blue colored light) it is red/orange. OK, spectroscopy lesson over.

I also knit Saturn, or some other planet with rings.

And Sputnik

They've got wires inside to keep them stiff. I made up the patterns for both of them, but stole the ball pattern from here: http://tiajudy.com/yarnball.htm

The girl I swapped with got my package already. She posted pictures, you can see them here: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=209416.0;all along with photos of other stuff other people made. I didn't the stuff she made me yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Baby Blanket

About a month and a half ago I spent about a week and a half knitting this baby blanket for my dad's cousin's new (first) baby. I haven't seen her yet, but the blanket made it to my dad's cousin and her husband, and they sent back lots and lots of thank yous.

Anyway, here's the blanket:

With the flash you can see the actual colors

Without flash it looks bluish - weird. My glasses are there to show scale. They were the only thing I had on me (literally)

A close up of the edge. It was a picot bind-off with a row of k2tog yo before it. I never tried either of those, but it came out really nice.

I just really wanted to try the pattern, and when it was done it was so cute I wanted to keep it for myself. I'm thinking of making one for myself. It'll take an endless amount of yarn (that small blanket took 3 skeins of 200 grams each - and it's only about 1 meter in diameter ), but I think grandma won't mind if I slowly clean out her basement :)