Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
The dog sweater? It is done, steeks and all! I finished it last Friday. Pictures coming soon!
Meanwhile, here’s a few small items I recently made. Small projects are great distractions!
This baby hat is part of the test-knit mentioned earlier. more »
Socks, ghosts, and links, oh my!
For a while, I was working on my current SOS08 pair, Big Basin (from Six Sox Knitalong). This is the first time I’m using a wool-tencel blend more »
A new take on the old
Way back in April, I was skimming threads in the Ravelry group, Sock Knitters Anonymous, when I saw a post announcing a sock design contest by Lorna’s Laces.
After reading the rules, I remembered I had some leftover Shepherd Sock from the Slytherin socks. It seemed like a perfect project to work on during the forthcoming weekend’s trip up north. So I packed myself a “design kit” plus one extra project (you never know, right?).
You see, ever since I knit the English Crystal Design from Kinzel’s First Book of Modern Lace Knitting, I’ve thought it would be interesting to rework this motif for socks. So I decided I’d try and give form to my visualization during the long weekend.
It took a while; two challenges I struggled with were 1) not second-guessing myself (should I let the stitch pattern spiral, or not?), and 2) figuring out a nice transition between the large and small motifs. Much tinkering, knitting, tinking, re-knitting, and frogging ensued until I achieved the result and look I wanted.
This. more »
Unfocused
That pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling lately. I swatch, swatch, swatch, nothing comes out of it. I still have one more secret knitting commitment that hasn’t started yet. I haven’t allowed myself to start any new, exciting, larger-scale projects because of this, which means things around here are boring and/or unsettled. I can’t even figure out a nice, simple project that I can work on tomorrow during the pre-Harlot meetup and Harlot Event. Suggestions?
At least, I have the latest Harmony sock club (link in sidebar) yarn to show you all. more »
Veni, vidi, vici
Remember these terrible, horrible, no good, very bad socks? I was tired of them hanging around, unfinished and making this knitter all kinds of unhappy.
No more!
Have you any Panda Wool?
I thought this last-minute but thoughtful gift would be a Breeze. But disaster has befallen; I have completely run out of yarn!
Cables and skimpy yardage** turned out to be a bad match. Even though I should’ve known better, I had every faith that what I had (one skein plus a bit leftover from the baby hat and booties already knit from a second skein) would be enough. Nope. more »
Implosion
(I think we will reach 2,000 comments this week!? Remember that the lucky poster of the 2,000th comment will win a gift certificate, or if you missed the details, see the bottom of this post.)
I have been quite delinquent on showing some of the nice yarns added to my stash during the past few months. Here’s a catch-up! more »
Kitsch
Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating tomorrow!
I actually started this project several times back in late August-September. I made so many mistakes I finally frogged it and put it aside. An opportunity to try again finally came when I was in a lull between projects.
I hope I’m not causing any bad ’70s flashbacks with this color combination! I used these two colors partly because I was fairly sure the recipient would like them, and because their official names are Paprika and Thyme, quite appropriate for kitchen use.
It’s a fun pattern, simple but interesting at the same time. It’s also a bit challenging because the Gingham stitch pattern uses an odd-numbered row repeat before changing colors. I’ve done this before with other projects, but for some reason, I had a serious block with this project. I kept frogging or tinking back needlessly, or making too many errors. Things went much more smoothly after taking a break.
I made one modification to the second Grid section (the two-color section before the cast-off edge). I added in two contrast-color transition rows after the Gingham section (to prevent slipping stitches of both colors in the first row of the Grid section). I knit one row with the green, and then on the WS, *K1, S1 wyib*, and ended with K2. With these two extra rows, the borders seemed more balanced.
I couldn’t get the double-knit and crocheted handle given in the pattern to turn out properly. After ripping out several attempts, I tried a few new approaches until I finally settled on the reversible, uni-color version you see in the photos. I decreased the needle size to US 2.5 (3 mm) for a firm fabric. I liked how it looks, so I’m including the instructions here for future reference
Peach Cuties
This week, I’ve got Jury Duty. I have no idea if I will be selected to sit on a jury, but I suspect I’ll get a lot of knitting done while waiting. I’m planning to take Big Christmas Gift #1 to work on; my goal is to finish a big chunk if not the whole thing.
Meanwhile, here’s a FO report. I decided to knit up a couple of cute, little pieces for my Knitter’s Virtual Vacation Swap downstream pal, blog-free Rachell, who’s expecting a baby in November.
These are knit with Panda Wool in the Saffron colorway. I chose this color because it was light and gender-neutral but not pastel or babyish.
The pattern gives instructions for the hat to be worked flat and then seamed. I hated the thought of a seam on a baby hat, so I knit it in the round. For the most part, it worked out well, but I mis-translated the garter border for the lace edging as stockinette. It doesn’t look too bad, and I made sure to match this ‘design feature’ on the booties.
These are the first bootees I’ve knit in this style. Admittedly, I never really was a fan of these squarish baby shoes because they remind me of Frankenstein. Now that I have completed a pair, I think they’re cute as heck.
(Ugh… these pictures are blurry in places. I didn’t notice when edited them, my eyeglasses must have been dirty!)
Spiralling Surprise
I haven’t been a good blogger/commentator lately; I really appreciate all your comments on my recent posts. I haven’t had time to write up any posts for a while because Grandma was here visiting. Less computer time also means more knitting!
Quick Ravelry aside: Casey has just added an “image slurper” which is being tested now by some users. It takes the URL of a picture and resizes/crops it for use on Ravelry; the pictures show up with a ©[User] caption. I’m so excited for this option because I generally host my pictures here instead of Flickr or Picasa. Ravelry is also getting new servers this week; after the switch (and related testing), they plan to speed up the invites. Good news for those still on the waiting list!
I didn’t even blog about these socks when they were wee socks in progress because they went so quickly!
