Furballs do not like BBQ ribs lol

Furballs are known to be picky eaters.  Moo moo and Tabby both had different taste buds.  Moo moo loved everything with diary product and baking good.  Tabby was more of international fusion and loved curry and chilli.  So both were not interested in BBQ ribs.

In the knitting world, ribs should be one of most knitted stitch pattern besides knit all in row (garter) and knit all in round (stockinette).  It starts as the most basic (k1, p1) and goes from there.  In this rib stitch collection, I used the rib stitch, rib lace and more, to knit up hats and fingerless gloves.  These rib lace patterns have the best of both world when knitting in one colour: great negative ease to hug the head for good fitting and lacy contruction gives the fabric a designer look

I started with Furballs' Apollo Beanie.  Naming is inspired by the helmet wear by Apollo, the sun god in Greek and Roman mythology.  This hat is constructed with three (3) stitch patterns. It is a top down hat with the simple ribs running from crown to body.  The ribs turn into travelling cables to make a visual band that change into broken ribs to form a short expanding brim to give some light blocking effect in winter when the sun is at a lower position in the sky

Besides the stitch patterns, the crown construction is also one of its stand out features.  Using short rows to shape the crown in two repeat sections making the construction pretty unorthodox.  

The second hat is Furballs' Pillar of the Pack.  When I was knitting up the swatch, it looked like Greek Cornithian column and there came my idea in its name.  It is a top down hat and the rib lace pattern runs from crown to brim. The lace rib pattern is a re-discovered pattern that I did a long scarf with long time ago.  I matched this lace rib pattern with a leave edge then, and this time with the hat, I just let the lace rib to shine on its own.  Fast knitting and a very forgiving fit

It has inherited the same concept in crown construction from Furballs' Apollo Hat and totally highlighted by the rib lace pattern on the side where the two repeat sections meet

Furballs' Ticky Tabby Hat  蜱斑大花貓帽 is the third hat.  This is also one of the hat in the Tabby Hat collection.  This hat is again a top down hat (getting boring now?) with the body using the rib with elongated relief stitch.  It is not lacy but rather more 3D with outstanding visual.  This stitch pattern, just like the rib lace pattern, has great negative ease and good fitting.  It is easy to fall in love with 3D relief stitch rib pattern

The crown here is a flat row bias square.  Another unorthodox construction

Furballs' Hole-ly Helmet  傻貓洞洞頭盔 is the fifth and latest design so far.  This is a bottom up hat (Finally!!) using the basic double lace rib and add in the unexpected cable stitch pattern to appeal to more knitters.  It is not a basic cable hat, but not far off.  It also comes with a pair of Furballs' Hole-ly Fingerless Gloves

All cable lines converge to the centre in crown like most typical bottom up hat and make up an interesting design on top view

Hope you enjoy this collection.  Meow meow for now :)

Furballs come in ALL furcoat patterns

My two furballs have two different furcoat patterns.  Moo Moo was a black and white patchy and Tabby was a dark stripy.  They inspired me to named this series with furcoat patterns.  This series of furballs' furcoat pattern included five (5) ideas and four (4) already visualized.  They have the same characteristics of flat square / rectangular crown, and therefore there is absolute no gap / hole in the crown and more possibility for stitch pattern and colourwork designs.  Each crown is also made with a different technique to form the square.  They are also all from top down but the crown does not need to start with minimal number of stitches and work their way down with increases

Body is attached to crown using simple modular technique

This series is also different from my past creation as they are more focused on colourwork to bring out the charm of the design

The first design is Furballs' Stripy Tabby Hat 間條大花貓帽.  This is the simpliest in this series.  As long as you can knit in flat row and round, all focus will be on stranded colourwork.  I designed the simpliest (yes, again) in two (2) colours but if more colour is the taste, it should be easy and colourwork suggestion is also given in the pattern

The second design is Furballs' Patchy Tabby Hat  斑塊大花貓帽.  This one is not as simple as it looks especially not familiar with modular technique.  All the hard work is putting in make up the beautiful crown and then using the same two (2) colour in another pattern making the fading look and all ended in a not too common garter stitch brim

The third design is Furballs' Spotty Tabby Hat.  This one has a two (2) colour mitering square as crown and follow with modular technique to make up the two (2) colour work in body.  This one is knitted technically all in flat row.  It is more demanding in understanding the concept and technique, but a good challenge for those that hate knitting in round

The fourth design is Furballs' Ticky Tabby Hat.  This one is more focused on stitch pattern and therefore move away from the rest as it is only in one colour in the first design.  Later a colourwork version is made and perhaps could be available later.  The crown gives an unexpected delight when looking from the "sides" seeing the garter row fanning from a center point

I have two (2) more ideas on this series, Furballs' Swirling Tabby Hat and Furballs' Tortoise Shell Tabby hat but not right now.  It is my attempt to offer alternatives to the knitting hat community and hope everyone will enjoy it.

Happy knitting and Meow Meow for now

Furballs chewing on power cords

 

When brain is short circuited, thoughts and congnition are going down south.  Craziness is not far off. Tabby loved to chew on cords, and for some EPS reason, he would know to skip the high power one and focus on those small power cords like those that link with the speakers, etc.  Although he did not have a Afro fur cut afterward, I think it did do some demage to his brain and that was why he was a bit more escentric than his brother moo moo. 

This series started about two (2) years ago trying to make short row hat with decorative design making it an upgrade from the basic pattern.  I chose traveling cable as decorative design so as to hide the decrease / increase line in crown

Furballs' Complicated Short Circuit Hat is the first attempt.  It is a two end short row hat with the turning on both end portion of the row.  With this knid of turning, the hat is knitted from front to back (and yes you could say back to front too, it is all about prespective).  In order to make the fitting better and keep with the decorative traveling cable pattern, somehow with use a creative concept to reduce the excessive fabrics on both end of turn and floating short turn to maintain the stitch pattern.  It is definitely an "out of the box" design and creative use of existing knitting techniques, therefore it might be considered "crazy" idea, and there comes the inspiration of pattern name

Furballs' Omega Circuit Hat 循還不息 is not the next creation in the series but the second to publish.  It is a sideway short row hat that the short turns at one end only.  We keep similar traveling cable pattern to hightlight the different look when it is running sideway.  Also change of background stitch pattern is added to increase interest both in presentation and knitting.  The starting row will fmally meet the ending row and there comes Omega

Furballs' Circuit Rerun 傻貓電路重鋪 is the third in creation using the same traveling cable pattern.  This time it is a "standard" top down hat.  Cable lines radiating out from centre and expanding into traveling cable pattern and ended with designer rib.  All increase lines is well hiden in the cable lines

Furballs' Circuit Rerun Again 傻貓電路再次重鋪 is the fourth one using the reverse contruction to Furballs' Circuit Rerun.  Started from bottom up with designer rib, part of the k columns seamlessly float into the body as traveling cables.  Decreases are well hidden in cable lines and turn into simple decrease line for the last part of the crown.  These lines are all converging to the centre

Hope you enjoy this series as much as I did.  Happy knitting and meow meow until next time :)

LEMON furballs knitting LEMON hats lol

There is nothing look remotely lemony in the hats.  They are collected in Lemon Hat series is because the stitch patterns in the hats' body are from Lemon dishcloths series.  So why lemon?  It is all about the furballs.  I called them lemon furballs because they had bad habits and I sometimes threatened them with recycle and return policy from animals shelther where I adopted them lol  Yeah as if they cared.  They just gave me dirty look and moved on lol

There are at least four (4) in this series.  Three (3) made up, two (2) published and one (1) is waiting for the light bulb moment

Furballs' Lemon Twist Helmet is basically rib type of hat knitted from bottom up.  Faux and standard cables are incorporated in the knit columns of the rib.  Decreases are hidden in the cables and converge to centre using drawstring bind off.  Simple in construction with cables bringing in enough challenge to make the knitting interesting

There is also a matching cowl, Furballs' Lemon Twist Cowl.  It is a fold on itself double layer cowl making it good with breaking the wind and keep neck warm

Here is the inspirational dishcloth

Furballs' Lemon Tea Helmet 傻貓檸檬茶頭盔 is also a bottom up hat.  It starts with a designed rib pattern such that it flows seamlessly to form the lace / traveling cable to make up the leaf pattern.  The cable lines are converged to center and use drawstring bind off to close

Here is the inspirational dishcloth

Furballs' Lemon Balm Helmet 傻貓檸檬香蜂草頭盔 is the one on back burner.  It is knitted from bottom up and the pattern is a good different from the other two (2) with this pattern based more on horizontal wavy line.  Even decreases in crown and converging to center using drawstring bind off

Here is the inspiration dishcloth

Adding in another Lemon hat: Furballs' Lemon Bee Helmet 傻貓檸檬蜂頭盔.  It uses bee stitch in various combination to get the look.  Easy to knit and it has a thicker feel to the other single layer fabric.

I hope you like this series and hope to see you all soon.  MEOW MEOW for now

Furballs' Once Upon a Nite collection

Furballs' Once Upon a Nite collection used the classic fir tree stitch pattern and its variations to draw up a snowing winter night using different types of crown

The first one is Once Upon a X'mas Nite for Furballs.  It is a top down hat using short row to shape the crown. The body is knitted in rounds and ended with a ribbed brim. It is totally seamless on both RS and WS.  Ideal as a chemo hat

The second one is Once Upon a Wintery Nite for Furballs.  It has changed to a bottom up constuction.  Started with knitting in rounds all the way up from ribbed brim to stitch pattern body and ended with a simple star crown

Third one is Once Upon an Icy Nite for Furballs.  It is again constructed from bottom up and knitted in rounds all the way up.  A minimal ribbed brim and started with the body in stitch pattern.  The use of tendril make it stand out from the collection.  The crown is a CDD four (4) section mitering to the center

The fourth one is Once Upon a Snowy Nite for Furballs.  It is back to basic in the stitch pattern design and make it unique using CDD 2 (two) section mitering and three (3) needle bind off to make the decorated seam on the RS of the crown.  Suitable as chemo hat

The last one is Once Upon a Windy Nite for Furballs 2.  It uses the basic stitch pattern and seamlessly continuing into the crown shaping.  The line of decrease merges with the stitch pattern.  

Hope you enjoy the variety we offer here.  Click here for more hat design patterns and here for more tree patterns

Top down short row hat in the round

Inpiration of this collection of hat comes from Furballs' Shorties and further expanded from the conecpt from the Holiday Egg collection I was designing at the time

At this time, we have Furballs' Apollo Hat, Furballs Pillar of the Pack and Once Upon a X'mas Nite for Furballs using this particular crown construction.  This unusal way of constructing the crown will have the column of  stitches straight up without converging to a point.  This affect the look of the pattern design that have it continues from body to crown

Furballs' Apollo Hat used simple stitch pattern to focus on the crown construction and to enjoy the knitting journey.  It is knitted in looser gauge from crown to brim to give it a mild flare out brim to block off the low sunset light in winter

Furballs' Pillar of the Pack is made with thicker rib and adding in lace to make the knitting more interesting.  The rib lace pattern make up a shape that look like the classical cornithian column (and yes I was watching too many archaeological documentary lol)

Once Upon a X'mas Nite for Furballs make use of basic fir tree stitch pattern and adding in picot stitch as snow effect for winter.  The crown is in stockinette stitch and make the crown more towards oval shape.  This make the fitting is slightly different.  Click here for more tree patterns and here for the Once Upon a Nite Collection

Furballs Strike by Luck 鴻運當頭 is the latest hat using top down short row in round crown construction to make the best use of hat fabric from top to bottom to have the k&p motif without the interruption of the increase line.  For more Chinese New Year stuff, please click here

Hope you will try out this unique type of crown construction.  This might just give you a surprise in fitting.  Click here to bring you to more of my knitting hat designs

MEOW MEOW until next time

Furballs' Flying Cranes

Furballs' Flying Cranes series is a collection of one dishcloth and two beanies.  The flying crane knit patterns come in one size in dishcloth and two sizes in beanies.  The cranes are arranged to fly in an upward right and upward left direction to create a sense of movement.  In time of COVID pandemic when a lot of us are homebounded for various reasons and a feeling of helplessness, I find that the the flying crames bring us the feeling of freedom with control.

This design is originated from Holiday Tree in June (as of today, it is still pending for test knit).  The idea is sea, sky and sunny weather.  From there, I drew my inspiration form an earlier dishcloth piece, My Sprouting Catnips, and modified the stitch pattern adding the head and the tail.  The more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of Asian drawing with cranes soaring in the sky with a pine tree background.  Of course, just to sidetrack a bit, from this pattern, I also made up the Phoenix sttich pattern.  This is really the "original" I thought to use on a beanie, but considering a lot of knitters (or perhaps maybe test knitters only, I don't know) are not keened at relief stitch, I tried out with a more conservative route and here came the cranes.

You can say Furballs' Flying Cranes dishcloth is like a large swatch for the beanie but it looks so good that I decided to test knit and published the pattern.  If you are organizing a Southeast Asian theme dinner party, the dishcloth could be a nice piece of decoration and gift for the attending guests.  I can also see it as a nice gift for the expected mother in the baby shower party.

The Furball's Flying Crane Beanie comes in size M (Medium) and size S (Small).  The beanies are knitted from bottom up and made up of three (3) repeated design panels for the body and they are different in crown construction  ,The design in the panels for the two sizes are slightly different for fitting and with the crown construction different, I decided to publish them as two separate patterns.

This knit pattern is a good alternative to colourwork knitting to draw up this large bird.  It is primarily a k and p pattern so when knitting a hat and choosing a size for fitting, it is better to knit up the hat on the loose side because the wings of the bird will not pop out as much when the piece is stretch out excessively.

Happy knitting and meow meow until we meet again :D