I slept in until nearly 9am this morning so I had a late breakfast / early lunch. That reminded me of the Sunday Brunch hat I finished in June that hasn’t made it here yet.
Pattern: own — Garter stitch strip with built-in i-cord for brim, grafted together; picked up stitches for body and knit up Yarn: Fearless Fibers Mohair and Wool Worsted Yarn, color Sunday Brunch Needles: US size 6 Size: adult large
Despite hearing other knitters’ opinions that this is fine, I don’t think the stripes on the band work well with the color blocking on the body. However, I know that there’s someone out there who will think this is the greatest thing ever so off it goes into the craft fair box for this November.
I think I may have broken my July curse and it’s safe to write a blog post. We’ll see if I make it to the end of today’s entry without messing it up somehow. Just to be safe, today’s finished items are going to be a foray back into June.
First up, the great. I really, really like this little cardigan. It’s official name is Tain’s Welcome Cardigan, for my friend’s new little baby boy; however, it could also be called the I-had-lots-of-red-Baby-Ull-and-not-so-much-of-the-other-colors cardigan.
I based it on a cardigan I saw on a little girl in Trader Joe’s. Hers was pink with multi-color striped sleeves, some sort of fluffy polyester or nylon affair, the kind of yarn that makes it look like you’re wearing a bathmat. I filed that away in my brain and came up with this when the time was right. I knitted the sleeves first, then the red body from the bottom up, then joined it all together for the raglan decreases. I added the bottom ribbing and bands at the end and used a suspended bind-off. This is my first time using it and it was a rousing success: the bands are elastic yet hold their shape. I’ll have to remember it the next time I make a top-down hat.
Mostly-matching buttons finish the look:
Pattern: own Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull, 100% superwash wool, colors 4227 (red), 5755 (blue), 2908 (orange), 5135 (purple), 2317 (yellow) Needles: US size 2 for the body and 1 for the ribbing Size: about 9 months
Started 4/26 and finished 6/14/2010
Next on the list, the bad. This is a very bad bad bag. It has been a WIP for more than a year and I decided to concede victory to it. Don’t let this picture fool you; it’s basted within an inch of its life with black thread, mightily distorted from its actual shape so it only looks good on this exposed side, and arranged very strategically for its photo shoot:
Pattern: Small Origami Bag by Vicki Square, as published in Folk Bags Yarn: Artfibers Sherlock, 75% merino and 25% silk, color I (black); Artfibers Minstrel, 63% mohair, 17% wool, 20% nylon, color 4 (brown/black/gray) Needles: US size 3
Started 12/31/2009 (actually, August 2008 but I unraveled it then) and gave up in despair 6/26/2010
The square and i-cord were easy. Then came the two little tiny seams. I sewed those over and over until the yarn was shredded, and still the shape wouldn’t come together. Forget frogging it, this one went in the trash! The guilt over throwing away Artfibers yarn went away once the lid was shut. Take that, you bad bad bag!
And now, the lucky. Remember how I said July was cursed? The month started with a clackety-clack when the DVD drive on my computer failed on Independence Day weekend. I had torte design failure (see previous post) and hit major traffic on the way home from the visit. [The good part of that weekend was re-meeting our niece, who is nearing two years old. She took to me this time. I helped her dip her toes into the ocean, we played with the toys in the toy box and I read to her. I also got to re-meet my very active step-nephew and my brother and I played some Johnny Cash together on our guitars.] Then came so much equipment and software installation failure at work that it felt I had the Technology Death Touch. Kind of like the Vulcan Death Grip, only, you know, it makes hardware sleep.
So I decided to do laundry, something I’ve had lots of practice in and can make me feel successful. Fortunately, this hat, the Bird on a Wire hat that I’m so pleased with and spent so much time on, did not take a ride in the Dryer of Doom.
Brown side!
Blue side!
I am totally charmed by how the bird faces different directions on different sides of the hat.
Brown side!
Blue side!
OK, enough of that although I could go on. Back in January, I double-knitted it only to the top of the design, then worked the two sides separately, only to find my purl side (blue side) gauge completely off. In May I ripped it back and double-knitted it all the way up to the crown shaping and now it looks good. Here are the details:
Pattern: #15 Double Knit Hat, aka the Bird on a Wire Hat, by Elli Stubenrauch, as published in Vogue Knitting, Fall 2009 issue Yarn: Dale of Norway Baby Ull, 100% superwash wool, color 3172 (brown) and 6714 (blue) Needles: US size 1 Size: large adult
Started 1/3 and finished 6/26/2010 (it spent some time in gauge purgatory)
Back to 2 weeks ago: when I folded the laundry I thought the pile of shirts seemed small. It didn’t click until Monday morning that all my work undershirts and camisoles were gone. Someone stopped my running dryer, rifled through my things, fished out the good stuff (never fear: the beaten-up cleaning t-shirts are all still with me) and started the cycle again. How very rude.
So on Monday I was forced to shop, not my favorite activity unless it’s yarn or I am really in the mood. Hardware/software problems continued Monday and Tuesday, and when I went through the mail Tuesday evening I heard little tapping noises in the living room. I went to the kitchen to grab a nectarine and… bees! Live bees in my kitchen! Hundreds of bees hitting the kitchen and living room windows from the outside, hence the tapping noises. Want to see?
The swarm arrived Tuesday afternoon (my downstairs neighbors were in the yard when it came and took the photo shown above out their living room window) and set up shop in a hole in the wall up at my level. That’s my kitchen window in the picture. Stray bees are getting into my kitchen somehow. The only openings I see are tiny cracks around the tightly-closed window so I stuffed those with paper towels and still they get in. This is day 13 of BeeWatch 2010, with anywhere from 5 to 25 individuals in my kitchen during daylight hours. The first couple of hours after they arrive they are angrily buzzing against the window, trying to get out. So I don’t go in there until it’s been quiet for at least 20 minutes and I feel it’s safe to vacuum them up (I know, bad karma), meaning I don’t get to eat dinner until 8:30pm.
On sunny days they’re really active. I made my own Bee Movie from my living room last weekend:
The bee service finally came 2 days ago to remove the hive. They saw through the outer wall, find the queen and stick her in a hive box, then get the rest of the hive in there, and later patch up the wall. You don’t want to exterminate because bees perform a very important role and several pounds of dead bees are very stinky, but you do have to get them out because the honey and wax can do serious building damage. All this activity stirred up the bees and I had a high bee count Friday night. Rather than face the kitchen’s guests yet again, I went out to dinner. I’ve gotten very jumpy whenever a small fly or a piece of lint drifts into my field of vision. The first 10 days I was able to face them but the last two nights my courage failed me completely. My very brave next door neighbor rescued me last night.
It’s just about lunchtime and I don’t hear any buzzing so it’s safe to make a proper meal, I hope. Maybe all the extra duct tape I put around the kitchen window’s seams early this morning is doing the trick. Although when I look out the window, no one’s going in or out of the opening in the side of the house, so maybe it’s too cold or they’ve given up on finding their hive here.
Either way, I am so grateful for a bee-free kitchen that I can hardly stand it and the first pair of socks for my mom is coming along. Perhaps my July curse is broken.
Tomorrow is Stitch & Pitch (go Giants!). I always wonder what it would be called for other hobbies. For weavers: Weave & Heave, kayakers: Row & Throw, tatters: Tat & Bat, bicyclists: Ride & Slide. Ha!
Yes, I am still here. Mmm… Yarn still is, too, although I have been looking into migrating it elsewhere. Part of that process is getting into our virtual dedicated server and I got stuck on step 1 (how ridiculous) today. Now I’m waiting for an answer to my plea for help in that vendor’s forums. While I could say I am technologically competent, I work an internal help desk, meaning I answer staff members’ questions about or solve their problems with the software titles we use. And I sometimes help relatives. I am comfortable saying I am good at what I do, but I do not set up virtual dedicated servers nor do I know how to manage an existing one (any friend or family member reading this, if you know how to use a VDS, Plesk 7.5, and Linux, and have some spare time, I’d love to hear from you). The biggest part of the problem is that Mr. MmmYarn set up most of (= 95%) of our computer stuff and left behind no notes. So I slog through what I can find on the vendors’ websites or in general on the Internet and sometimes I get somewhere and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I get pretty upset over it all, with being stuck trying to figure out all the stuff Mr. MmmYarn set up, and when I get upset I go for the dark chocolate or an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or some knitting or all three, not for reading complicated and usually outdated documentation (part of my job is keeping our documentation up to date, and I’m good at that, too; hear that, vendors?) that makes it just that much harder to figure out what’s going on. Simply guessing the various user names and passwords and associated email addresses has been an adventure, although vendors who are unwilling to talk to me because I don’t have the magic combination of all three are certainly very happy to accept my credit card to keep the service going while I try to figure out what it’s for. Not that I’m bitter. But I digress.
On the knitting front, apparently I came over all stripe-y one morning a couple of months ago and kept it up since then. I didn’t even notice this pattern of behavior until I viewed my projects page on Ravelry and saw them all lined up in a technicolor row. So, let’s dive right in, shall we? Do not adjust your screen; everything here is indeed striped.
First up, a use-up-random-scraps-of-yarn scarf. I sorted my scraps into color groups:
Then I bought a skein each of bright, solid wool in rainbow colors:
And whipped up what I consider the Screaming Rainbow Scarf. This weekend is Pride; I wonder if I could have sold it on the street.
Some of the scrap yarns were fragile novelty types so I had to make twisted fringe to keep them contained. Well, I suppose I could have woven in all those ends instead of making a fringe but you know that just isn’t going to happen here at Mmm… Yarn. I like that I found one fluffy skein each in purple, red, and blue as it makes for a balanced effect. This sucker is bright!
Pattern: own: 1 to 3 strands of scrap yarn held together with the Nature Spun, cast on 260 and go Yarn: scraps held together with Brown Sheep Nature Spun Sport, 100% wool; .14sk color N46S Red Fox; .43sk each color N54S Orange You Glad, color 305S Impasse Yellow, color 112S Elf Green, color N36S China Blue, color N62S Amethyst Needles: US 8 Size: 6.75″ wide, 64″ long without fringe and 72″ long with fringe
Started 4/11 and finished 4/15/2010 (makes for a happy Tax Day)
After that came a parade of hats, starting with two opi. I like “opi” better than “opuses,” so that’s what you get: two opi. The first one is a basic hat with my usual 8-point decrease at the crown:
The second has a brim and a 4-point double decrease:
Pattern: own Yarn: 1.75 skeins Zitron Opus 1, 100% wool with aloe and jojoba, color 100 Needles: US 5 Size: adult
Started 3/24 and finished 4/14/2010
I made a couple of spiral rib hats. This one has a textured stripe only:
Pattern: own Yarn: Karabella Yarns Aurora 8, 100% superwash merino wool, color 1530 Needles: US 5
Size: adult
Started 4/16 and finished 4/18/2010
And one using up some yarns I’ve had for quite some time. Two colors always gives me good practice in holding one color in each hand. I usually hold my yarn in my left hand. In this case, I purled left and knitted right:
Pattern: own (3×3 spiral rib) Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% wool, color 7830 (salmon-y red) and 4147B (light yellow) Needles: US 5 Size: adult
Started 5/9 and finished 5/26/2010
I made a spiral stripe hat using the same technique I learned in my Rovaniemi mittens class. Each yellow-green stripe is one strand of yarn so there are no floats inside although I did end up with 24 ends to weave in:
I wove in the ends very neatly so the wearer has the option of wearing it either way out. Here’s the inside:
Pattern: own Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 85% wool, 15% mohair, color M-52 Spruce and M-135 April Green Needles: US 6 Size: adult
Started 4/19 and finished 4/25/2010
And, finally, the comparatively plain gold and orange hat:
Pattern: own Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Worsted, 85% wool, 15% mohair, color M-14 Sunburst Gold and M-110 Orange You Glad Needles: US 6 Size: adult
Started 5/5 and finished 5/8/2010
“Why, yes, I am very happy with my hat wardrobe,” says Sancho Panza, “although the light purple one did make me feel a little less manly.” Fortunately for me, he never complains and he always holds still.
I’ll stray from hats as I expect you’re tired of them and show you the last thing I’m showing today, my Sharks socks in a self-striping yarn. This yarn traveled with me on our vacation in 2008 and came back home unknitted. It finally gets to fulfill its potential:
Pattern: own Yarn: 2sk Claudia Hand Painted Yarns fingering weight, 100% merino wool, color: Sharks (as in San Jose Sharks, the hockey team) Needles: size 1 Size: my feet
Started 5/26 and finished 6/17/2010
This is my first time using Claudia yarn and I am happy to report I really liked it. It’s easy to work with (no splitting or weirdness) and feels soft and spongy. The label doesn’t say what her base is but my guess is Louet Gems.
There’s actually more, even non-hat items, but I think this is enough for one day. I do need to leave *something* for my next post, whenever I decide I have time to write it. I don’t have too much of an excuse for my long silence, although about 4 weeks ago, I picked up my guitar again after a nearly 2-year hiatus and I end up playing that in the evenings instead of playing on the computer.
Oh, and I have nothing to knit for the bus tomorrow, having spent yesterday and today actually finishing stuff. Le sigh.
It’s been a while. And the reason for that is that here at MmmYarn I have had a whole bunch of knitting failure. Go figure. All these years of experience and this is where I am, at total knitting system collapse. It’s discouraging.
All right, before I get into all that, I guess I did do one thing right in the past month. I finally brought myself to finish the little hat that Mr. MmmYarn started last May, when he asked me to teach him to knit when he was practically crawling up the walls with boredom being cooped up all the time. I had him make a garter stitch band and then work in the round up the body. Last week I finished the last 7 rounds of the body and the crown and sewed that little seam at the band.
Pattern: Mr. MmmYarn’s own Yarn: Mountain Colors Weaver’s Wool Quarters, color: Huckleberry (how very Nelson Munz) Needles: size 6 Size: infant
Started 5/5/2009 and finished 2/2/2010
Matt always did have great taste in yarn and colors and his stitches are wonderfully even. He wanted to donate this to the hospital as a chemo cap but they won’t take this where I inquired so I am going to add it to the Afghans for Afghans pile. He would be OK with that.
How bad can the rest of it be, you ask? Here is the list.
The secret fuchsia pullover project is still in progress. Yes, still. I can’t believe it, either. I wove in all sleeve and body ends and made a neckline with facing. 4 times! The first time I had the decreases and increases reversed, increasing where I should have decreased and vice versa. So rip rip rip it went and I started again. And made the same mistake a second time. Gah! So out it went and this time I got the shaping right. Only now I had too many stitches on the neck and not enough on the body and everything was weirdly askew before I even noticed the problem. Out one more time. Do you want to see what I ended up with? It looks pretty good with its solid fuchsia lining:
So I guess not a total failure, but definitely a time-suck. Now it’s in the procrastination pile because I dislike putting buttonhole stitch around buttonholes. I am hopeless. That kid is getting bigger by the minute.
The little brown and blue double knitted hat that was coming along so slowly suddenly got faster when I got out of the double knitting part. The problem is my gauge toward the end of the pattern chart, where only a couple of stitches were in the pattern and the rest were all one solid color or another, is completely off the rest of the hat. It looks ridiculous and is sitting in the pile of things that need to be ripped and re-worked. I am only going to rip it to the point of major gauge change. The rest will come out in blocking.
Next up is sock failure. The first Froot Loop sock looks pretty good here, right?
Well, way way way too small for my foot. I worked about 6 inches of cuff before a try-on and that cuff will not go up over my heel. Or really anywhere near my heel. So I’ve cast on again with more stitches so I can put a separate purl stitch between each motif but the half inch I have done looks so big that I believe it might clothe the Jolly Green Giant. While he will look smashing in robin’s egg blue socks, I do want these to be my socks. I’m going to slog along for another couple of inches and if it’s still huge, I’ll redesign it to have a purl panel on the back of the leg. Or I’ll say the heck with it and make another sock with the gull wings pattern I’ve used before. We’ll see.
Bag failure is up next. The black Origami Bag is defying all attempts at being sewn together properly. It needs two little 5″ straight seams and my seams are crookeder than the squirrelly part of Lombard Street. Perhaps I’ll try drawing lines with a ruler and tailor’s chalk and see if I can manage to follow them. Or perhaps I will throw the darn thing in the garbage chute.
Non-knitting has been busy, too. The other things that kept me from writing here are more bank stuff (closing accounts for someone who is deceased is a long-term project) and I became an iPerson. I switched over to using our Mac computer because my little Windows computer is having several aggravating-but-not-fatal hardware problems that are more pricey to fix than the computer is worth. I do have Windows XP as a VMWare instance so I can keep Sweater Wizard and some of my card games and continue to play online Scrabble with my mom. There is a learning curve with the Mac: I keep using the wrong keyboard shortcuts and doing things I don’t mean to do. I will figure it out.
Oh, one more small thing is done. I managed a tiny sock. Yep, just one. It needs a mate. Sigh.
Heeeere’s 2010. Last night I knitted, drank my kir royale, and watched some movies. One was “Blades of Glory,” the goofy ice-skating film. I noticed something I haven’t seen before: the censors are permitting a raised middle finger to be included on TV. What this says about the evolution of our society’s standards I don’t know. I found it odd.
Last night’s knitting was re-visiting an old WIP. I’ll give you the same old photo since the new knitting looks pretty much the same. Slightly narrower now, but still black seed stitch:
Today I caught up with reading my feeds in Bloglines and saw lots of folks are writing year-end or decade-end retrospectives. Instead of looking back, I give you my new year which starts out with a new-to-me bread recipe:
This is a cheddar-beer loaf as presented by Alton Brown on the “Fermentation Nation” episode of “Good Eats.” And it is very good eats, indeed:
I added the sunflower seeds because I had them, not because I was, as Alton put it, “feeling especially hippie.” Although “hippy” might be a more apt term: between the cheese, the beer, and then the sunflower seeds, this is probably not the best bread for anyone with weight loss as a personal goal.
Apologies for the over-flashed bread photos. One of my goals for my nearly 2 weeks off was to learn to use Mr. MmmYarn’s SLR camera because it can be adjusted for light settings and you get far better low-light photos with it than with the little point and shoot. I got it out, found its manual, did some learning. Then I went to take test shots and found it is without its battery. I also can’t find the charger which means the two of them are hiding somewhere together in here. Considering Mr. MmmYarn was always more neat than I am, this surprises me. Yet, here we are.
So… I am completely stuck on that project until I find all the needed hardware. This meant more knitting time. In my last post I promised you hats, and boy, can I deliver. For this we need to go back to 2009 for a while.
This first one is made with leftovers from a pair of socks I made for my mom:
Pattern: own Yarn: Austermann Step, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, color 01; held together with Wolle Rödel Baby-Merino, 100% superwash wool, color 13065 (yellow) Needles: US size 4 Size: adult
Started 12/15 and finished 12/20/2009
This next one made me hungry for chocolate and marshmallows the whole time I was making it, so I have named it the S’Mores Hat. I held a strand of JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool in brown and white throughout and used the brown and white yarns for the stripes.
Pattern: own (3×3 spiral rib) Main Yarn: JaggerSpun Cotton-Wool 3/10, 55% cotton, 45% wool, color Brindle Stripes Yarns: Madil Loden, 50% wool, 25% alpaca, 25% viscose, color 589 (darker brown) and color 588 (lighter brown); Brown Sheep Nature Spun, 100% wool, color 740S (Snow) Needles: US size 4 Size: adult
Started 12/20 and finished 12/23/2009
One of the ladies in my knitting group volunteers at a local hospital, running a knitting circle there for… uh, complete brain failure here… I think for patients and staff although it might be only for patients. Anyway, that hospital accepts donations of hats for chemo patients. Since family members are not clamoring for gift hats, and I can only sell hats I make from my own patterns, and there are tons of really cool published patterns out there that I want to try, I plan to make some hats for donation this year. I am still knitting from my stash so the first 3 are what I pulled from the stash this past week.
First up, a lovely slouchy beret, modeled by a dinner plate. I felt a little silly carrying a dinner plate down the block to the cafe with the metal tables:
Pattern: Ishbel Beret by Ysolda Teague, as published in Whimsical Little Knits Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18, 50% merino wool, 50% Tussah silk, color: Peacock, held doubled Needles: US size 2 and 4 Size: adult
Started 12/28 and finished 12/29/2009
Back in 2007 I made two soft, green chemo caps for a relative of Mr. MmmYarn’s who needed them. I had yarn left over so I made two more, pretty much identical twins to the first two:
Pattern: Knit Chemo Cap by Berroco Design Team Yarn: Berroco Chinchilla, 100% rayon, color 5567 (olive green) and color 5571 (light sage green) Needles: US size 9 Size: adult
Modifications: Used a k2p2 rib instead of k1p1 as the pattern indicated because I like the look of my k2p2 better than the usually sloppy look of my k1p1. Not that you could really tell with this yarn.
Chinchilla is not for the faint of heart: you lose one stitch and it’s really really lost. Not to mention the difficulty in keeping track of where the decreases are, although the yarn’s fuzziness certainly hides any fudging there. I hear these hats are big hit with chemo patients for indoor wear. The rayon doesn’t block the wind at all so they’re not too suitable for keeping warm outdoors.
I make most hats bottom up because my bind off usually leaves a lot to be desired: messy-looking and too tight. Since any attempts at neatness are obscured in these hats, I was able to use a sewn bind off that I find works great with Chinchilla.
And just because hats weren’t enough to keep me busy, I turned out two more pairs of potholders:
Pattern: own Stitch Pattern: single crochet Yarn: mystery yarn, assumed 100% acrylic. Definitely bulky. Hook: size I
Started 12/25 and finished 12/27/2009
Today begins a new year. I made bread, cleaned the apartment, and went for a medium-length but brisk walk before the rain started up. I read half a book, watched cartoons made before I was born (Looney Tunes and The Pink Panther) while knitting, printed out my 2010 Hooters calendar (what? what were you expecting? — really, it’s OK to click that link) and looked out the window at the gentle rainfall. It’s a good start.
2009 is sure wrapping up quickly. I don’t really want to greet 2010 without Mr. MmmYarn but the cosmos don’t exactly give a person a choice in these matters, so I put the champagne in to chill and bought a bottle of crème de cassis so I can make kir royale, my New Year’s Eve drink of choice. And the eve after and at least one more after, if not two, because there’s only so much booze I can drink in a sitting whether I’m trying to keep track of a pattern or not.
Now, Stollen, on the other hand, is something I can eat a lot of in one sitting. I did make my Stollen the other day and it turned out well. Here is half of it:
The key to its great flavor is to soak the raisins in rum for a week before baking your Stollen. My raisins soaked for a month so they were super-tasty. This year I added a bit of orange zest left over from the San Diego Sunshine bread and it added a subtle new flavor that went wonderfully with the rumminess:
Lest you think this has become an alcohol-fueled blog (sheesh, I had Glühwein in my last post, now champagne and rum in this one), I have to tell you I did get my exercise and vitamins yesterday. I trekked to two different drug stores, searching for contact lens solution to use up the last of my FSA dollars for 2009. The second (and final) one I went to was on Clement Street. The ethnic markets there always yield some interesting items. The market I went to had dragon fruit again so I picked one up as a treat:
So very tasty for my well-deserved snack after walking at least 6 miles, nearly half of it with a full backpack. And beautiful, too; the interior contrasts nicely with the exterior:
I don’t know how the Vietnamese (my fruit came from Vietnam, its little label said) eat their dragon fruits, but I use a spoon to eat the white parts out of the peel.
Today I’ve been cleaning up my filing cabinet. Did a lot of paper shredding. I also scrubbed my bathtub yet again, something I’ve been doing probably twice a week out of pure enjoyment since I made my own scrubby stuff. Last month I checked out “The Urban Homestead” from the library and while many of the suggestions I can’t implement where I live (no garden or chickens for me), I can use the natural cleansers. I followed the instructions and mixed baking soda and liquid castile soap into a paste, then added about half a teaspoon of peppermint extract from the baking shelf. My tub is minty fresh and sparkling clean when I’m done. My hands are minty and don’t have that horrible dry feel I get after using commercial cleansers. Plus the scrubbing part is far easier, requiring much less labor than I needed when using my usual generic Ajax/Comet-like stuff. I’m sold! Yes, the rest of the place is in the same mess it’s always in. I guess if I were to have a visitor I’d have to show the bathtub last or else it will show up everything else.
Anyway, you didn’t come here for culinary exotica or cleaning tips. This blog is about yarn and I have been knitting.
First up, a hat for a good friend who’s going through a rough time. She made herself one of these hats, then remarked to me in November that she had bought some black yarn to make a second one but wasn’t looking forward to slogging through 40″ of ribbing. I volunteered to be the slogger and she gave me the yarn.
I guess I don’t need to buy a hat form if the 8-pound exercise ball doesn’t mind being a model.
Pattern: Esprit Chemo Turban by Ann Cannon-Brown Yarn: 2.33 skeins Cascade Fixation, 98.3% cotton, 1.7% elastic, color 8990 Needles: size 7 Size: adult
Started 11/17 and finished 12/6/2009
It was an interesting knit because I rarely use an elasticized yarn. I started with size 9 needles and my gauge was far too small. I also didn’t like the feel of the yarn on needles that size. With too small gauge you usually go up in needle size to correct the problem. However, I know my knitting style so I went down to size 7 and found that got me bigger gauge and was more comfortable because I was no longer fighting with the yarn. Go figure. She says the hat fits her perfectly and I delivered it right in time for her to wear it to a holiday party.
Next up, the latest brown socks for my mom (must get better photo in daylight when I next visit):
Pattern: Sam by Cookie A., as published in Sock Innovation Yarn: Cascade Yarns Heritage Hand-Painted Sock Yarn, 75% merino superwash, 25% nylon, color 9931 Needles: size 1 (ugh)
Started 10/28 and finished 12/12/2009
I picked this pattern because my mom wears short shoe-like hiking boots and therefore can wear socks with a heavily-textured pattern on the cuff. Any stitch pattern up the ankle would probably be uncomfortable on someone with tall hiking boots. I hear she is the envy of her hiking friends, having seamless and custom-made socks.
Pattern modifications… maybe. I don’t really know. I worked the cuff pattern as written, then stopped reading the pattern and did my usual heel and foot.
The last item for today is the Noro scarf I had on the needles for ages, modeled by Sancho Panza:
Pattern: garter stitch with a yarn over row every 5th row Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, 70% wool, 30% nylon, color S102 Needles: size 3 Finished size: 7″ x 68″
Started 11/9 and finished 12/18/2009
Absolutely love the highlighter pink and yellow in this scarf. I am tempted to keep it; for now, it will go in the sale box and we’ll see if I fish it out of there.
When a bird is molting, its feathers can look ruffled and scruffy until the new, smooth ones come in. So, here I give you a molting Peacock Feathers shawl:
I don’t know what else to call feathers that have gone this far off course so quickly. You’ll notice the shawl is off the needles. Sigh. A few nights ago I noticed a mistake about 11 rows back on one half. I say “about 11 rows” because I’m still not sure where I went wrong but could see exactly where I went right. After nearly an hour of tinking in an attempt to locate precisely where things went awry, I gave up and frogged. I am tonight just past where I was several days ago.
The feathers that aren’t wonky are looking pretty nice:
It has again been more than a week since I posted, and so I have a few more finished projects to share. At long last, the golden October scarf:
Pattern: own (3×3 slanting rib) Yarn: Tausendschön Handgefärbte Sockenwolle, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, color: Goldener Oktober Needles: size 3 Size: 4.5″ x 59″
Started 8/27 and finished 10/2/2009
And, of course, another hat. Because it wouldn’t be a work week without a hat:
Pattern: own Yarn: Steinbach Wolle Aktiv Effect, color 63984, held together with KnitPicks Essential, color 23696 (Ash), both 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon Needles: size 4 Size: adult large
Started 10/2 and finished 10/10/2009
I forgot to share one more thing from when my houseguest was here. Fabulous housekeeper that I am, I pretty much piled everything that was lying around the living room in the bedroom, intending to not show off the bedroom. However, during the 3-minute tour of the apartment, she did peek in and saw, amongst papers to file and the Goodwill pile, the tub of scrap yarns I didn’t shove back under the bed (you know, out of sight, out of mind, and I’m trying to remember to use some of it every week). Her comment: “that’s a big stash of yarn.” Her exact word was “Vorrat,” which means stockpile or hoard. My reply: “that’s not even my stash, those are just the scraps.” Ahem. Perhaps I should have kept my big mouth shut.
Excuse me while I go play in what non-knitting guests refer to as an impressive stockpile. Until I post again, see if you can come up with a badass name for knitting needles. I refer you to one of my favorite Savage Chickens comics.
Uff, it has been a busy week. I did hold my yard sale (or, since I’m lacking a front yard, a “sidewalk out in front of the building” sale) on Saturday morning. In the rain. I checked the weather report at 7pm Friday and Saturday was still predicted to be sunny. I woke up in the night to the pitter-patter of the gigantically scary thunder of the first real storm we’ve had in years. But when my friend phoned me in the morning and said she was game if I was, we went for it. The sale was successful in that I have less Stuff and some cash for Stitches West but I wouldn’t say the payoff in terms of money for my time was worth it. I also somehow knotted up my calf muscles going up and down the stairs (I live on the 3rd floor) 40-ish times and spent Sunday and yesterday gimping along like a Frankenstein monster. Today I have recuperated to more of a cautious Beldar Conehead-like shuffle.
Being somewhat immobile has a few knitterly payoffs. Before Saturday’s sale the piles of yard sale stuff were blocking access to the big closet. This week’s project was to organize the now-accessible closet but it’s dangerous to be on the stepladder with my calves like this, so I sit and stretch my calf muscles while I have plenty of time to knit. The brown-based hat is done:
Pattern: own Yarn: leftover Opal color 124 (faux Isle) held together with about 3/5 of a skein KnitPicks Stroll color 23697 (brown), both 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon Needles: size 4 Size: Adult average to large
Started 9/6 and finished 9/11/2009
The little Brittany Jumper you saw the other day needed to be longer, so Saturday evening I ripped out the bodice. I had to use scissors to cut off the straps because I had done such a fantastic (read: neurotic) job of weaving in those little cotton ends. Added another 1.25 inches in length and re-knit the bodice and wove in the ends Sunday morning before I hobbled down to the Laundromat. The dress took to machine washing and drying just like a store-bought cotton garment, how about that? See:
Pattern: Brittany Jumper by Jil Eaton, as published in Minnowknits, Too Yarn: Tahki Cotton Classic, color 3486 (bright coral) and color 3476 (peach), 100% mercerized cotton, probably about 1.5 skeins each Buttons: JHB #21088 (Beatrix Potter Collection) Needles: size 5 Size: 18 months
Started 9/1 and finished 9/15/2009
I made several alterations to the pattern. First off, stripes instead of solid. Next, I worked one purl round before starting the lace pattern so it curls less than without that purl round. Size 18 months isn’t in the book so I calculated the middle point in inches between size 1 and 2 and made that. My gauge was 6 instead of 5 stitches to the inch so my stitch count was completely different. And the pattern for size 2 wanted 48″ around. That’s just plain huge; it would swim on me! So I brought it down to 34.5″ around which I thought was plenty for such a little kid. I knitted the bodice as published. I worked crab stitch around all bodice edges at knitting group on Monday night and tonight got right to embroidering the little tea-dyed onesie’s sleeves as soon as I walked in the door so I could get finished photos in daylight.
I really like the buttons I found and am very proud of my freehand butterfly:
Tomorrow I need to get this off in the mail. The birthday girl’s 1st birthday is tomorrow but the party isn’t until Saturday so this should get there in time for present-opening. The cotton is perfect for her as she lives in southern California where you don’t really need wool.
My potholder mystery yarn swatch hit the washer and dryer, too, and I can report it must be acrylic. It survived washing and drying with nary a change in gauge.
What I should be doing tonight is sticking more price stickers on items for my yard sale coming up this Saturday. Finally having set a date means there is actually a sense of urgency to doing something with the very large pile of stuff that has taken over our office / project room. Tonight, though, I would rather work on this hat (photo from a couple of days ago) that is using up some scrap sock yarn and a skein of the KnitPicks yarn I bought last week:
I was getting up every few rounds to price another half a box of stuff but now I got sucked into Bloglines and remembered I had more little stuff to show you here. See, if I post here, I’m not a total procrastinator tonight. Mmm… rationalizing.
My brother’s daughter turns one year old next week. This completely escaped my notice until last week so I made her a little Brittany Jumper that’s almost done. It went for a walk in the park with me over to the small waterfall:
I do wonder whether the skirt part is long enough. I trekked around for 3 hours on Sunday and again an hour yesterday looking for an off-white t-shirt for a small person, unsuccessful all the way. I finally found a white onesie that is really long compared to the dress. I made the skirt part an inch longer than the pattern dictated but the onesie sticks out the bottom quite a ways. I’ll take them both to my little knitting circle at work tomorrow for a second opinion on the length of the dress. But white… I really wanted off-white. We fiber artists never let something as basic as the wrong color get us down, right? So last night, instead of continuing to price yard sale items, I boiled up some English Breakfast Tea and dyed the onesie:
It’s now a good off-white. All the websites I looked at yesterday told me tea dyeing yields blotchy results but I don’t see blotches at all. I’ll take it out in the sunshine tomorrow to check. I plan to embroider some little lazy daisy stitches on the sleeves using the same yarn as in the dress. Thank goodness Lilli is too young to know it’s her birthday because I have a feeling this gift will be late.
And since this week’s theme was small things, I’ll show off the scarf that is my current bus knitting:
The green colors barely show up in the photo, but trust me, they’re there. All right, back to the stickers.
Edited to add: I just learned Worldwide Spin in Public day is September 19, the same day as International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Can you say YAAARRRRN?
