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!