freaky ski mask

[fotojager.livejournal.com]

i made this the other day to try to sell at a craft show coming up. i made it up myself, no pattern, but the idea was inspired by these from the 60's. i think some pictures of myself wearing it are way creepy.











ok i've knit lots of hats and other things, so this was basically taking a hat a lil bit further. so i'm gonna write up what i did, meant for those of you who are familiar already with knitting hats (with double pointed needles or circulars).

i cast on the same number of stitches that i already knew was a good number for around a hat with the needles/yarn type i chose, a little bit loose fitting though, you don't want to use the same stitches as a hat with a tight fit. (i was using size 11 dpn's with two strands of yarn, and used 11 stitches on each needle, so 44 total, but it should work using whatever your preferred needle size may be.)

i started with ribbing for the bottom part (so that it will fit the neck better, accordion-like with the ribbing). i knit ribbing for as long as i thought the neck should be (by basically holding it up to my neck, heh), and then i switched to knitting all around when i changed colors. (actually, i kept ribbing but fatter for a little bit, but that was a mistake, i should have just switched straight to no ribs.) i changed colors for stripes whenever it seemed like a good place, and just kept going around and around, leaving big slots open for the mouth and eyes.

i just guessed on how wide the mouth and eye holes should be, and on how far apart they should be, by holding it up to my face. the mouth ended up being super wide, so i brought it in afterwards. and the eyes ended up being a bit to far away from the mouth so the bottom was kinda poking me in the eyes, very uncomfortable. so, that's why there's the weird stitching on each side of the nose, to pull the eye holes down a little.

so then back to the knitting, after the eye holes, keep going until it seems like the right time to start bringing it in, just like a hat. and you can be finished right then if everything looks good.

after the knitting part was done, i crocheted the white all around the mouth, then the blue on the sides of the mouth hole. and a little crocheted extra of the outside edges of the eyes. then some crocheted color around the bottom of the neck (two different yarns each once around). and then bringing it together under the eyes, and i was done.

here are scans of the front/top and back/bottom to see how it works a little better...



ok i can't think of anything else to say about it. i think i'll definitely be making more of these in the future, not too hard at all, totally creative with infinite variation possibilities, and fun to look at and scare people with....