Fingerless Mittens!

Pretty much my favorite project to work up is fingerless mittens. I'm working on a pair for someone for Christmas, and they're intensely color-worked, which makes them not very relaxing to work on. And I know that I always need a relaxing project to work on, so I made one up. It's another pair of fingerless mittens - they may turn into a Christmas present - and given that I'm not working off a pattern, I'm very pleased with how they are turning out!

I'm working on size 7 needles with the same Elsebeth Lavold yarn from the Bandana Cowl in the green, and some yarn from my stash for the grey. The grey yarn is the Yarn Bee's Andes Alpaca in fog. It's an acrylic and alpaca blend. Very, very soft. I cast on 36 stitches, and knit 3 rows of garter stitch before I started the striping. The striping is patterned 3 rows green, two rows grey.

This pattern has been great for working on jog-less stripes. The photo above is actually centered on my join, and you can't really tell unless you look hard for it. In fact, the easiest way to find the join is to look at the single row of grey. That's where I made my mistake, and accidentally took out the one grey stitch instead of making it a jog-less stripe. Regardless, I'm very pleased with my stripes! They look so even! What a miracle!

I also made up the thumb bit. I was aiming for the cable cast on, but I didn't feel like finding the book I learned it in, so I just sorta made it happen. I didn't make the thumb as deep as I usually do, but I think it'll work fine! 

Thanks for reading! Good luck with your holiday knitting!

World, what?

The world makes no sense today. A shooting rampage in an elementary school? 20 students dead? 7 school administrators? And a knifing in a school in China, where although no one was killed, 22 students were injured? This is crazy, and heart-rending. My God. Enough. No more, and not again.

My thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been wounded by these events, or by any violence in the world today.

Whoops and a Bandana Cowl!

So oops! Sorry to be so out of touch - I had a car accident (not too bad, and definitely not my fault) in late October, and life just kind of got away from me! I've been knitting a fair amount since then, even if I feel like I don't really have anything to show for it. It's the time of year for Christmas presents on knitting needles, so that kinda cramps the blogging style as well.

That said, here're some photos of my most recently completed project.

I knit the Bandana Cowl from the Purl Bee Blog. I fell in love with the pattern when I first saw it on Pinterest. I've had this yarn - which is Elsebeth Lavold Baby Llama in Dark Moss - for a year and a half. I originally bought it to make some sort of hat for my brother's girlfriend, but she's now his ex-girlfriend, so that plan didn't work. Oops! It's a lovely shade of green, and very soft, so I thought it would make a good cowl. It does! I've worn this enough already in the 10 days I've had it blocked that the blocking smoothness has been worn away, and there are creases in the back from how it sits nestled on my neck!

The pattern is full of short rows, which was great, because thats a knitting skill of mine that needed work. It certainly got it :). It's not my most neatly knitted piece of work ever - I love a very even stockinette, and this doesn't exactly fit the bill! But it told me (once again) that I need to work on tension - I don't hold tension very evenly if I put a project down and pick it up again. In fact, you can tell where I took breaks. I also need to work on my casting on loosely skills. Blocking can only gain you so much length, and with the way that the edging shapes up on this one with the decreases, a looser cast on would have been a good thing!

The pattern is also very quick to work up. Although I'm not entirely sure, I think that this cowl took me five hours total. Maybe six. It was also the fastest-to-dry blocked piece I've ever knit, and it was laying flat with double thickness in places. I'm not sure why that was, but I certainly won't complain! And I love the way stockinette looks, so this pattern is pretty great for that as well. My only complaint -and it isn't much of one - is that after doing so much knitting in the round, I find purling to be more obnoxious than I used to. Poor me. 

Despite my griping, I'm very pleased with how this turned out! I think for the next one, I would bind off tighter, and cast on looser, but all in all, it worked up great, and I wear it all the time. I actually went out and bought 3 skeins of Cascade Eco Cloud to work up some Bandana Cowls for some of my friends - I'm very excited to get started on those (once I'm past Christmas!).

I already have the photo's taken for my next post, so hopefully I will have that up soon! I'm going to try to make myself blog more regularly; at the very least, I'll have to be better about working on projects!

Swatching

As mentioned in an earlier post, I hate swatching. It feels like a waste of time/yarn. Yes, I know that in practice, swatching saves me both time and yarn, but when I finally settle on a project, I want to jump into it! To knit! It's kind of a problem. I mean, for my shawl, I didn't really need to worry about it, because there were no rules beyond follow the pattern.

My newest started project is not actually started yet, because I am actually knitting a gauge swatch. It's a fair-isle pattern, which is a new thing for me. Knitting a fair-isle pattern, at any rate. I've been working on some fair-isle for a while now, but I'm making the darn things up as I go. This one, though, will be a Christmas present, and I really want them to turn out well. They're the Abigail hand-warmers from Vintage Modern Knits. I'm knitting them up in Isager 2, which is 50% alpaca and 50% wool at 50g/250m. The pattern calls for The Fibre Company Canopy Fingering, which is 50% baby alpaca, 30% merino, and 20% bamboo, at 50g/183m/200yd. I was always planning on knitting a swatch for this one, but when I remembered that meters and yards are different, it became necessary. The yarns still fall in the same weight category, but the Isager is smaller (.2g/m versus .27g/m~.3g/m) and I want to be sure I get it right. (Also oh my goodness I love Isager yarns, and especially the alpaca/wool blend. I would knit with it all day long!)

Also, in writing this, I just realized that I am most definitely not using the section of pattern recommended for swatching. I'm knitting gauge using the more complex cuff pattern (it only has one repeat!), when I could be using the hand pattern, which is a 14 st repeat. Ah well. I doubt it will really mess things up. I hope. This gauge thing is complicated!

I'm also theoretically trying out new needles for this project - they're square dpns - Kollage Yarns Square Needles. Only I've just realized that I need to call my LYS, because the package says US 1/2.25 mm, but the needles say US 1 1/2 /2.50mm. But the website says most knitters need to go up a size to get gauge, so maybe I'll be okay. And I haven't gotten to the part where I get to use them yet, anyway. That will come once I actually get around to knitting the pattern!

Slippers!

As a good Minnesotan, I have an obsession with woolen footwear. Nothing is as cozy as a pair of wool socks, unless it's wool socks inside wool slippers. Which leads me to my newest complete project. (Or almost complete, at any rate). This is also, coincidentally, my first felting project - or will be, when I get around to felting them! As I'm sure you can tell, they don't exactly fit at the moment. I'm worried that felting them will shrink them beyond wearability for me, since my feet are kind of big. Not that big - 9.5 womens - but big enough that shrinkage might be a problem. Which would be a huge bummer, since I am pretty excited about these. I'll just have to find a friend with small feet!

These are knitted in Ella Rae Sandart (I think that's the name of it at any rate) but I can't remember/find the label for the color-way. Although this one is mostly orange and pink in the top, the bottom is almost completely black, which you can see in the picture to the left. It has one lonely stripe of what is almost maroon near the heel. The other slipper has a super pretty bottom - gold and purple and green (which sound terrible listed like that!). The body of that slipper, seen below, is pretty solidly green, with some deep purple and charcoal grey striping across the top of the foot. I was pretty surprised by the way it worked up - I haven't really worked with multicolored yarn before, so I was always fascinated by what color was coming up the center of my ball! I'm now very curious about how the yarn was dyed (or spun). As you can tell from the slippers, which are knit from one ball and the tiniest bit of a second, the ball was split more or less into uneven thirds. One third is almost completely charcoal grey. Another third is maroon and golden, which heads into purple. From the purple, it heads into green and grey-purple. I guess I expected the color to vary more rapidly, or something. I wasn't expecting that crazy yarn that makes psuedo-fair-isle or anything, but it was a surprise. Which is okay! Because I love the colors in this colorway, and of these slippers.

Even though they don't really match, I'm pleased with how they turned out so far. I feel way more confident about short rows, which I'd only done once before, and the instructions in this book were So. Much. Better. (Even if I misread the instructions and had to pull out somewhere between 6 and 8 rows - a Very Painful Process). And next time, I might actually try knitting a swatch. I find swatch knitting to be incredibly obnoxious despite knowing how important it is. But knitting a swatch would have been good for making sure that the slippers would fit once felted. Oh well. Live and learn. I'm sure I have cousins or friends with small enough feet. Though who knows? I hear felting is magic, so maybe they'll felt and only shrink width-wise, which is all I'd need.

The pattern is from Knitting 24/7 - I think it's called hobbit slippers, but as I can't find the book at the moment, I'm not sure. I knit on 7's, both dpn and circular.

Blocked!

Yesterday, it was 93 degrees. Today? 65 and grey and rainy. It feels like knitting weather finally, and I couldn't be more pleased! Here I come, to spend more than I ought to at the yarn store!

In progress! Apprx2 balls of yarn

So this is a photo of my newly finished shawl when it was about half way through. Maybe not even that far. I picked up the pattern and the shawl after our house caught on fire in November of 2011. I was without knitting supplies (and a kitchen, and a house), so I took a day trip to small-town Minnesota (Stillwater!) and visited the LYS, which is pretty darn great. It's called Darn Knit Anyway, and the women who work there were unbelievably friendly to this still very shell-shocked young woman who couldn't really figure anything out. I knew that I wanted a long term project, and one that had an easily memorizable pattern repeat, so that it could be soothing rather than frustrating. I pulled up a Brooklyn Tweed baby blanket pattern, and decided that the best thing to do would be to completely alter the yarn weight and needle size, and make myself a shawl. The pattern is called Wool Leaves, and it's also a stunning baby blankey! I pulled three balls of Rowan Felted Tweed off the shelves and somehow thought that would be enough (I ended up buying two more!)

Pre blocking

And then I sat down and started knitting. This was a comprehensive project. It took me nearly a year to complete, though if I had sat down and really worked at it, I could have done it in a month ish. It's been my constant travelling companion - traveled to Portland, OR, and Chicago, IL, plus all over town. I was beginning to despair of ever finishing it. I kept saying, "by the end of this month," and the end of the month would come, and no dice. Finally, I told myself that I couldn't start any new projects, OR buy new yarn before I finished it. I managed to hold myself to one of those goals - though the project I started has been in the design phase since HP7-1 came out, so it only sort of counts. (Right?) Two nights ago I very carefully started the blocking process, and was briefly horrified by how wide it got. I had originally intended to block it so it was still a little bumpy, but that somehow fell by the wayside. Instead, I have the monstrosity below - those are full size beach towels it's drying on!

Blocking!

Although I still have to weave in my ends, I'm super pleased with it! I think it'll drape nicely - it's currently a little stiff from drying, but its sitting crumpled on my bed, which should solve that problem nicely. I suppose I can't call it done yet - the ends have to be woven in, but I feel like it's done.

And having the shawl finished feels like the end of a very rough year. I started this shawl in the aftermath of a house fire - however flippant I may be about it, it was terrifying and we were very, very lucky. I knitted it while we lived in a hotel, and then in a rental. I knitted it when my granmom was not doing well. I knitted it when we put our cat down. I knitted it through the death of a friend's child. And I finished it almost exactly a week after my grandpa died. There were a lot of good things that happened - another friend had her second baby, several friends got married, I got a job - but this shawl has weathered storms already. I think it'll keep me warmer because of it. 

Casting on

So my sister got tired of listening to me bemoan my lack of social life. "Start blogging," she said. "It's how I made community." I'm not really sure how she created her community, but I'll give it a go.

This blog will be focused on knitting. And the out-of-doors. And life in general. But mostly knitting, because it's what I do, when I'm not working.

Current projects: double layered hand-warmers. They're mostly in jamieson shetland spindrift with a few other varieties thrown in (I think one -lost the label - is fingering weight cascade). I'm knitting them in stripes, with a simple fair-isle between stripes. I cast on using waste yarn, and will be using Frog Tree alpaca sport to knit the inner warmer. I'm going to try out kitchner (is that what it's called?) stitch to bind the two together at the top. These were inspired by the super-awesome hand warmers Hermione wore in the first HP 7 movie, but they have taken on a life of their own, which I'm totally okay with. They're knit on 3's, which feels like slow going, but I'm enjoying it, and my color joins are getting much neater the further I get!

Lace shawl: needs gentle blocking and ends woven in. I really should get on that.

Mittens: I think I want to try felting these - they might go shorter than I want, but they don't fit at the moment anyway, so no big loss if they don't work.

Anyway, sorry for no pictures. Have a lovely evening!