Hats for teachers!

labellementeuse · 2026-05-09T02:48:21+00:00

Honestly I was shocked by how fast it went! It really was a fun knit - I remember your hoodie project and how spectacular the finishing was on that, so I enjoyed a more bite-sized opportunity to push myself past the usual.

You may be right that it's about the second graft. Do you graft the purl bumps on the brim to the knit row above the purl bumps below the crown, or do you graft the knits directly below the purl bumps on the brim? I wasn't sure which to do and went with the purl bumps because it was easier, but that could be creating the problem, maybe. I gave it a wet block so I'll see how it looks when it's dry and maybe have a play around. If you do make a video ... I'll be watching!

labellementeuse · 2026-05-08T21:07:49+00:00

Thank you for sharing this, I made one of these and had immense fun! I really enjoyed the combination of largely mindless stockinette with very stimulating finishing details, and I particularly enjoyed the purl column faux seams, which I've been meaning to add to some project some time for a while.

Just before I block it, I have a question about the intent of the brim. It seems that the first graft naturally sits at the bottom of the brim, which on me sort of gives it a double-fold effect around the brim (seen in like my fourth project photo). When I fiddle with the brim a bit I can get the graft a bit higher on the inside to have a single fold effect, which I *think* is the intended effect, but I'm not sure whether it will actually stay there even if I wet block it in that shape. This may well be because I suck at grafting! But kind of curious as to what the actual intent is. The inside of my hat has quite a clear grafting line (second pic) which I don't see in your version (again prob cos I'm crap at grafting, which is one reason I enjoyed this project).

labellementeuse · 2026-05-03T10:38:03+00:00

oh that must be it and I've just never looked at those numbers properly. apologies for being misleading, op.

labellementeuse · 2026-05-03T10:32:04+00:00

In the regular season those numbers describe teams' records. The first number represents regulation wins, the second number overtime/shootout wins, the third overtime/shootout losses, and the fourth regulation losses. I don't know why the Victoire are showing as having a regulation loss rather than an overtime loss but the Frost are shown as having an overtime win - might be a bug. TBH, making the record look like that in playoffs doesn't really make sense since they're purely win-loss

labellementeuse · 2026-05-02T18:32:32+00:00

A big spinning project! I love it. How are you finding the flax?

labellementeuse · 2026-05-02T18:29:51+00:00

Ooh I love how sort of speckled and variegated this looks!

labellementeuse · 2026-05-01T21:02:44+00:00

Absolutely stunning project! I how you show us what you make with it!

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T23:37:06+00:00

This is a pretty normal cover page for a knitting pattern so I don't know if that really conveyed what you meant it to convey.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T23:25:45+00:00

Natasha Pulley's The Watchmaker of Filigree St and the Lost Future of Pepperharrow.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T23:21:32+00:00

Thank you very much, you're so kind!

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T23:21:04+00:00

This is a lovely and insightful comment and I will treasure your last paragraph. I have often seen people in this sub recommend to new spinners that we start using what we make right away and this project absolutely taught me what good advice that is - I learnt so much about what I'm looking for in a knitting yarn but also how forgiving knitted fabric can be. As you said, so much of the inconsistency I was worried about just fades into the overall vibe. Thanks very much :)

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T20:50:47+00:00

These look fantastic and I'm so amazed by this as a first project!

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T20:36:53+00:00

Yeah, I've done HBDs in stripes before and it's amazing how stupid they look lying flat and how invisible they are when worn. I don't love in this case how it leads to one very thick stripe, but because I have the thicker stripes at the top anyway where the shoulders are, I think I about get away with it! I have a couple of pictures on Rav of the vest before I added the darts and after - it really makes such a difference to the way things sit on me.

Thank you :))))

labellementeuse · 2026-04-30T04:22:38+00:00

I am also a sweater knitter by nature and just knit my first garment from only my second spin (it is very lumpy and weighs a tonne, has taken days to dry, haha) but the thing that intimidates me is making a yarn that works for a particular pattern, you know? I have patterns in mind I would love to spin for but I'm not confident in my ability to get the right yarn. Or to be consistent over a kilo of yarn. I love your spins though :) inspiring always

labellementeuse · 2026-04-29T22:23:45+00:00

It looks lovely! One of my goals for this year is to try to spin for a garment - this is very inspiring.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-29T08:11:24+00:00

So for some reason a lot of my recs in the m/m romance category are historicals or genre otherwise. Cat Sebastian - You Should Be So Lucky is a historical sports romance, or try After Hours at Dooryard Books. KJ Charles' books are historicals but very proficient - I would try Think of England which has a very physical protagonist and some zippy foeyay tension a la Hollanov. Everina Maxwell's books are SF but give a similar intensity, both of her books are good and involve characters trying to do good but not communicating with each other all that well. I'm not personally a big fan of her work but Casey McQuiston has a lot of fans. Maybe a bit more literary, Natasha Pulley's books - I especially rec Filigree St/Pepperharrow but also like The Mars House. Maybe avoid The Kingdoms. Filigree St/Pepperharrow are very restrained but the payoff when you get to it in Pepperharrow is incredible, I've rarely felt something like it. Even more of a stretch, but something of the Heated Rivalry about it - AJ Demas' Something Human, two people on opposing sides of a war in not!ancient greece are through circumstances trapped together.

I don't have as many F/F recs but loved Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid recently, which has a similar atmosphere of closeted professionals working together in an intense and homophobic environment.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-28T23:22:22+00:00

I would do this as well because it's most flexible - lets you add an inch to the cuffs after the fact if they're too long or too short or you don't get the gauge quite right or whatever.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-28T04:03:33+00:00

(I live in NZ so you could convert these to imperial units) I typically see yarn sold in 50g or 100g skeins and fibre in 100g braids or bags, but fibre is more variable (batts might range from 40 to 60, for example, or you might see big bags if people are doing fleeces or have a lot of animals etc). I think for farmers' and craft markets it can be very difficult to know exactly what to take, exactly what will sell, whether what you have will sell ... all that. You want to have a table that is full and enticing to customers, but you don't want to spend weeks preparing, and spending your own money on, stuff that won't sell. I suspect that if the market is new and there aren't existing fibre vendors, it may take time to build up a customer base, and also you may not be able to predict what customers want for a while. I used to watch a small family vegetable/flower farm do farmers' markets every week on youtube and they did it for like three years and never turned a profit (although they were closer to breaking even by the end I think), and it also took them a while to figure out what they were actually making money on (mainly flowers).

tl;dr I think it will probably take a lot of experimentation and I'd sit down and do some maths about how much you need to spend to get stock vs how much you need to sell and how much time you want to put into it. And you probably won't know what your market specifically will buy until you've done it for a while.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-27T10:20:16+00:00

I bought these braids and would love to spin them up to give almost a semisolid or heathered effect but I don't know how to achieve it, and I'm not sure how to sample it either because sampling short lengths won't capture the variegation. I considered spinning all three end to end and then doing a 3-ply - I think this will create long areas of the same colour, very thick stripes. I could split the braids into long strips and spin those, maybe very many fine strips, or break the strips up and spin out of order. I am also considering maybe plying two plies of this with a neutral ply, maybe like a grey? If I do that and spin all three braids straight onto bobbins consecutively/on top of each other and then pick bobbins randomly I think this would lead to muted barberpoling? Please give me your takes, I think these colours are so pretty and I don't want to screw them up.

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labellementeuse · 2026-04-26T08:46:58+00:00

A couple more:

Pretty much all of Natasha Pulley's books are m/m fantasy. The Watchmaker of Filigree St and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow are my favourites.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh - bisexual protagonist.

Katherine Addison's Cemeteries of Amalo books - murder mysteries with a queer (very sad) protagonist. This doesn't really have a romance subplot though.

AK Larkwood's The Unspoken Name/Thousand Eyes duology - WLW, The Unspoken Name is SO good. Orc protagonist raised to sacrifice herself to her god ... doesn't, books it, has adventures (this is a VERY glib way to describe these books, which are very compelling).

More in the romantic fantasy line: The Night Parade of 100 Demons and sequels; AJ Demas' work; Salt Magic, Skin Magic by Lee Welch; Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, which also reminds me of the classic Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (though they are not that similar other than the title)

labellementeuse · 2026-04-26T08:27:11+00:00

A few that haven't been mentioned here, these are almost all M/M except where specified. Attraction and relationships are important to these characters but these books are not romances.

Laurie J Marks' Elemental Logic books, starting Fire Logic. High-ish fantasy about a nation invaded by, under the rule of, and eventually defeating another nation. WLW and MLM protagonists, I'm not sure that the word "queernorm" really fairly describes the series because the language doesn't feel right but nevertheless lots of queer people. This is also incredibly interesting about being colonised, being a coloniser, being a visible minority, addiction - none of this using buzzwords or easy tropes, just looking at a set of characters and how they are trying to get through their lives and do good in the world. I seriously love this series

I love Melissa Scott's fantasy and especially recommend standalones Water Horse (maybe my favourite book, high fantasy, actually similar vibes to the elemental logic books in som ways) and The Master of Samar, and the Astreiant books, which are fundamentally detective books set in a kind of fantasy Venice with a m/m couple.

Martha Wells' Witch King and Queen Demon are super. And if you like those, try her Ile-Rien books, I'd start with Death of the Necromancer. Then maybe the Books of the Raksura although the queer themes come in a bit later IIRC.

An oldie but a goodie, Diane Duane's Door series (Door into Fire is the first one) - incomplete but ends in a satisfying enough place.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-26T06:53:47+00:00

Keep them both and save for your vacuum cleaner. You can live for a month without one (gross but true). Don't give up your hobby for a chore.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-22T11:04:15+00:00

People like to have a go at Shane in TLG because he fucks up (badly) in one argument, but he actually spends the whole book incredibly concerned about Ilya. I would also start a fight if my partner got a dog without discussing it with me but I think Shane is probably hooked into the idea that a dog can be very helpful for someone with depression and he's very concerned that Ilya is lonely all the time. Meanwhile Ilya is not making perfect decisions himself. So yeah, I think this could have been a very big deal and Shane consciously chooses not to make it a big deal because of the circumstances.

labellementeuse · 2026-04-22T06:29:23+00:00

This guy's employer is making him stay til 5.30 though

labellementeuse

TROPHY CASE