Monday, August 30, 2010

Abort

That was a waste of two hours. I wanted to start one of my sock blank socks-- the rainbow sock blank, with the Twists and Turns pattern from Shannon's Book "How to Knit in the Woods." I was determined to figure out knitting two socks at a time on two circulars. And that was painful. Seriously, I spent about an hour just moving cast-on stitches from one needle to another. Trying to figure out how it was supposed to work. Failing. It was very frustrating. Finally, eventually, I got everything in semi-order and knitted a whole three rows... until I realized I was working from the wrong end of the blank. I wanted to start at red and work my way down through the rainbow. Instead I started at the end. ARRG! So I ripped out the entire thing and am now sitting here annoyed. Yet I am still motivated to make the socks! So I'll try again.

Other news. Finished all the moving pieces for my laptop bag. Now all that's left is felting. I don't have a zippered pillowcase, so I have to wait till I get home to see if my mom or Nana has one I can use. And then I'll get my felting on. I'm excited! Over Shabbat a friend showed me two great bags that she had knit and felted and I was inspired to finish mine. But I don't want to keep running up and down two flights of stairs to the washer in the basement here, so I'm going to wait and maybe do it later this week. Here are all the parts:

So there's the bag, two pockets, two long shoulder straps and two attaching tabs to go on the D-rings.

And, I finished the first of the pair of socks that I am designing for the Ravelry KAL.

SNEAK PEEK!
There's a long entwining cable down the front, and two side squiggly cables, and a diamond flame motif on the back, and zig-zags between the front and back panels that travel from the leg to the toe. It's simple, but cool-looking, I think. I haven't started the second one yet.

Now I am like, all out of projects! So I need to start something. Thus the Rainbow Sock debacle. I'm not ready to start the coat or hat, and I don't feel like finishing the gloves. I could work on the scarf, but... I'll procrastinating. Need NEW!! Yay! I have SsosoOOOOoo much cool yarn to do stuff with this year. It's so exciting!!!

OK. Am going to start the rainbow sock AGAIN.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

My Dyeing Day

For the last day of our internship, we headed over to Shannon's and dyed up yarn, sock blanks, and felt scarves and it was UBER fun!! Anything involving mixing bright colors and pretty yarn equals awesome in my book.

Here is the stuff I made!!

The first three are Louet Gems Fingering Weight (sock weight).

This I made with pinks and reds and oranges and I love love love.

Shannon dyed this one with greens and jades to show us how it's done, and she gave it to me. And I love it.


I intended for this one to be more purpley but it turned out pale purple/blue. However, when you look at all the different shades it is actually really pretty.

And then we dyed a whole bunch of sock blanks. I think I talked about what sock blanks are but refresher course: Peice of undyed knitting which can then be dyed to your liking and unwound as it is knit into a very cool sock!

We dyed ten sock blanks. Shannon is writing a book for Knit Picks (maker of sock blanks) on how sock blanks work, and we are going to knit up the socks for her to photograph. So we get to keep the socks afterward. We each are making five pairs. The only thing is we have to make all the socks unmatched. One of the socks is supposed to be in plain stockinette and the other with some kind of pattern. So the colors will match but not the actual patterns. Which is a little funky.







This one is my faaavorite.

We also dyed some felt scarves:


I love the tye-dyed effect. I may give them as gifts.

Dyeing was SO fun. I love making my own colorways. I would LOOOVE to work with a dyeing company at some point!!!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

I Block Sock

I block sock.

Block, sock, block!



Sock is blocked.


Yes friends and family (OK, family), I am actually getting into blocking things. I made sockblockers. I.e., I cut foot shapes into cereal boxes, soaked the socks in hot water and wool wash, put em on the sock blockers, hung them on a hanger to get full air circulation, and left em there for a few days. They actually dripped some dye, which I guess makes sense because the color is so deeply saturated, but I wasn't expecting it. Afterward they were REALLY soft, though a little pilled.

Also am making progress on Sheli's bag:


Finished one pocket, am close to done with the other. I made a mistakey on the first. Didn't purl a row at the flap, which makes it easier to fold over. But I'm not undoing it, so whatever. We will deal. On the second pocket, I got really annoyed with carrying the colors along for the million stripies so I decided to just do a few solid blocks. It'll look cool when it's done. So after the pocket, I have to do the loong icord handles, and then felt. I'm a little worried about the felting! Since I've never done it before. I kinda wanted to do it before I left Cleveland but I don't know if it'll work. We'll see. I'm excited though... excited for it to shrink! Because it is sorta huge.


My main project lately has been my Play With Fire sock for the Ravelry KAL. It's been giving me issues. It's a fun, challenging project, but ripping out and re-knitting for swatches makes the yarn messy. So I'm going to rewind the ball before I start so the fuzzy part is at the end, so it should end up being part of the foot, and less visible than the leg. I made a cool cable chart that is supposed to suggest flames, with a thickening entwined cable (from one to three stitches and back to one) and two smaller "flames" at either side (one to two to one stitches). But now I don't know if I should make it a side panel-- which is what I originally wanted to do-- or put it on the front so that the main cable can continue smoothly down the foot. Overall that seems to be the better idea but I am sad to let go of my side-panel idea. However, the side panel would require another inside panel and I was having trouble figuring out what it should be without making it look kind of random. It'll probably be easier and look neater to do a front cable and then figure out something for the back. It will be a pretty simple sock. The only challenging part is that the cable chart is 53 rows long. It's not a hard cable at all, it's just a long repeat.

OK, so I've got to nail it down and start the sample, and it should be cool. I am SO excited to see other people knitting something I designed!!!

In other news, tomorrow is my last day of the internship. We are doing a "dyeing day" at Shannon's-- hand-dyeing our own yarn! I am totally psyched for this.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

so busy yet so unproductive

Hey all. Today (every day) I have a ton of knitting to do. But today, unlike other days, I have not worked one stitch. I did some stuff. I made up a chart for one of the cables on the Play With Fire sock I'm doing. But I still haven't done up the chart for the central cable. I need to do that, test it, and then figure out what the heck I'm doing with the whole rest of the thing.

On top of that I still need to finish the bobble feather and fan scarf for Shannon's collection that I started last week. Two weeks ago? Yikes. I haven't touched it in days.

Thursday was my last day at Fine Points. I bought QUITE a lot of yarn to get the most out of my 30% discount.


I got....

1. Noro Silk Garden in this great jade/yellow/blue colorway (bottom middle, under the purple skein and blue ball)
2. Misti Alpaca Pima Cotton and Silk Handpaint in this gorgeous multi (it's the pinkish one touching the little blue one)
3. Muench Family in cream and blue (the cream and blue ones) for baby stuff!!
4. Artful Yarns Dance in pink/purple (it is tucked under the red Malabrigo in the middle), also for baby stuff
5. Malabrigo Sock Yarn (the brown multi- YUM)
5. Malabrigo Lace (the little poison green one poking out on the right)
6. Seven skeins of Noro Iro (all of the big, bulky, multi skeins)

The other stuff is stuff I already have in my stash. The whole thing is my BEAUTIFUL GOURMET STASH!! I also have another, crappier, mostly acrylic stash that I am too humiliated to post on Ravelry, ha. But I probably will one day when I get bored enough.

A closeup of the Noro Iro:

That's going to become a coat. I don't know if it is going to be enough, but if it isn't, it shouldn't be hard to find more because I don't need any specific colorway. As you can see I kind of grabbed seven completely random ones. It is going to be psychedelic.

I'm so sleepy today that I haven't gotten any knitting done even though I really need to.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Another Happy Customer (my feet)

Finished my Karira socks, baby!!



I'm providing both top and side views.




They look pretty sweet. It just occurred to me that I should probably block them, not that I have one of those nifty sock-blocker things. Hm. Anyway... I was in a rush to finish them today finally, because I got some really cool news! I'm going to be designing the next sock in the Ravelry KAL! We just got the yarn today and it is AMAZING! But before I talk about that, I'll finish up with the sock talk.

After I got that "assignment" today, I became really focused on finishing Karira so I could move on to designing the next one. So I just sat and knit. And I was REALLY in the zone. I finished the heel, the gusset, and two whole pattern reps at work. I had the chart COMPLETELY memorized, finally-- just as I'm finishing! But it was definitely useful because having an intuitive understanding of the stitch pattern totally helped avoid mistakes. When I was checking the chart compulsively, I kept losing or gaining extra stitches, finding strange holes where there shouldn't have been, discovering other various mistakes and needing to rip out or backtrack. But since I really GOT the pattern, and barely need to look at the chart at ALL, I didn't make one mistake! For three and a half repeats! (That was the number required to knit the foot.) So that's what I would recommend, haha. Memorize the pattern. Understand the pattern. BE the pattern.

So I finished the foot, but I had some issues with the right toe. Basically the stitches were unevenly distributed across the toe and that resulted in the decrease panels being way too close in the back instead of placed exactly on the sides of the foot where they should be. I was nearly done when I just became too suspicious that something was wrong (I had thought there might have been but figured that I had followed the pattern to the letter so there couldn't be) so I had to rip out all the way down to the chart pattern, rearrange the stitches and begin the decreases all over again. But I'm glad I did. Didn't take that long. Closed the toe, weaved in ends and I am DONE! I'm so proud of myself.

Now-- the sock design that I'm doing!! Today in the studio we got the skein of yarn that Kitchen Sink Dyeworks custom dyed for our next sock in the three-part KAL corresponding to the Steig Larsson books. The first sock matched up with "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", and the second goes with "The Girl Who Played With Fire." So, the colorway is....


...Fire themed!!

I immediately fell in love with it, so Shannon suggested that I design the sock, and Sarah Jo do the third one. I'm going to do flame motifs. I have some ideas. I'm thinking either a purled flame on a knit background or the other way around in side panels, and small zigzags on the front and back of the sock. So excited!!! It definitely won't be half as complex as Karira. In fact, it will probably be the easiest/simplest of the three. But I figure it'll be a relief for people after the challenge of Karira. It was fun but not easy! I can't believe I'm done-- the socks are really really beautiful.

The only problem with knit socks is that . . . no one SEES them. And your beautiful, intricate knitwork gets sweaty and hidden. I don't know what the solution for this is. Go around without shoes, I guess.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Laptop Bag moving right along

Juuust finished the body of my laptop bag. Here it is:

I did kind of random striping, as you can see. There isn't really a striping pattern. I'm curious to see how it'll look after it's felted. I have never felted anything before. But I really hope it shrinks a lot because here it how it measures up to its future inhabitant, Sheli:


It is rather a lot bigger, so I hope it'll tighten up significantly...

I LOVE the three needle bind-off, by the way; it is so neat and tidy looking.


The whole thing came out pretty tidy, so it's kind of a shame that it will be felted and the evenness of the knitting will be lost :( I'm not the most regular knitter in the world so it's cool that this is so neat. But the felting will make it TOTALLY durable and solid-- no stretching!!

Anyway-- now, I have to do two pockets, four handle tabs, and two loooong straps. The straps I'll leave for last, I think, cause they'll be most annoying (90 rounds of icord).

It's supercute!

My KAL buddy Chaya is working feverishly on hers as well; she wants to finish it by Thursday. I think that is pretty ambitious but it's a quick knit, so it's possible. Her color scheme is also green but it's green and white. Very pretty.

Can't wait to see how it all turns out!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Right Glove

Finished the first glove in the pair! It was a very quick knit, and very easy, too. I probably could have even done it in the round, if I had size 1 dpns free. But those are still involved with my second Karira. Anyway, it fits perfectly and it is sooo soft and pretty. I have to say that I like the way stockinette shows off the colors and shimmer of the yarn much better than reverse stockinette, which is what the glove is knit it, so that's kind of annoying, but it's still very pretty. And I'm not the "reknitting" type. So now I just have to sew in ends and knit the other. Here's pics:
Not the greatest picture but I chose this one cause you can see the cables and rev st. st. pretty well, and the colorway. It's really soft and comfy. I'm excited for it to get cold enough for me to wear it!

Here's one of the pictures I took in progress. Every time I finished a finger I'd try it on. It's a really fun knit. I think it would be easy to convert the pattern to be worked in the round, which would be nice because there wouldn't be any seaming. Maybe my next pair. I just cast on for the second glove.

Haven't yet started my laptop bag, have to borrow some needles. Right now I'm working on the scarf for Shannon's collection. Which is fun, it has a scalloped edge that I like. Feather and lace. The yarn is really beautiful and fun to knit with and the colors are great, though unconventional. And I've put my socks away for the weekend.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

More Busy

Yay-- tons of projects again! For about five minutes there all I had going was the Karira socks! But nope. Now I'm back up to three active and one pending.

First-- the socks, of course. I realized something today, er. I made the heel of the left foot half as long as it should have been. Very very stupid of me. I'm annoyed. It explains why the sock lays a little weird. But it is what it is-- and it still fits, miraculously, so I'll just have to repeat the mistake on the right foot. I reached the heel today, so I'm like a third done with the second sock-- since the foot takes a while. All in all though, I've definitely done these socks a LOT faster than I thought.

Second: the gloves. So pretty. I finished the thumb:
First I made the thumb to the pattern's specifications, 2", and cut the yarn, and seamed it and everything, but it was too short. I tried to play around with it a little but it just wasn't going to work so I undid the seam and knit a few more rows, and reseamed it. But now it's a little too long. However, that's better than too short-- it barely makes a difference, so I'm okay with it. I started the first finger today. Seriously, these gloves are easy. And they are so soft. The yarn is like BUTTAH! I really can't overemphasize how soft and beautiful the silk is.

Third: I'm knitting a scarf for Shannon's fall collection, a lace pattern with bobbles. Never done bobbles before cause I'm not such a huge fan, I think they're kind of old-ladyish, but I guess they could be cool. The yarn is knit sideways, which means instead of hundreds of short rows going up, it's a few dozen very very long rows going sideways. I cast on 306 stitches. I only did five rows today so I'm not quite sure how it's going to look.

And I even have a fourth project lined up: laptop bag! I finally bought the yarn today. I had been deliberating over indigo blue/ivory, and various shades of pink, but then I realized I ALWAYS go for the same colors and I decided to branch out into an entirely new color family that I almost never use: earthy foresty tones. Here's the yarn- 7 skeins of Cascade 220:


Forest green, lime green, and brown. The brown looks kinda purpley in the picture but it's a nice deep brown. I'm excited! I really never use these colors. Plus, I got the yarn for $1.13!!! That's right! Sweet deal, huh? Each skein is something like $6.85 so the total value is almost $50... mwah ha ha! I used the gift card from the customer, and the owner gave me a discount-- so the total that I paid was a buck!! SWEEEET!

PLUS-- an amazing opportunity! The owner, Liz, asked if I would be interested in coming to help them out when they come to New York for a VogueKnitting show in January. I was like YES PLEASE! I'd get paid to go to an incredible three day knitting event. I really hope it works out because it sounds like SO much fun!! It's pretty far into the future admittedly, but hopefully Liz will contact me as the time comes. Hooray!

So, it was a good day.

And ALSO, yesterday Shannon gave Sarah Jo and I sock blanks. What is a sock blank, you ask? Well, I did not know either until yesterday! It's a piece of flat knitting, kind of like a scarf, which comes to you undyed, and then you dye it however you want, and then you knit your project from the yarn, unraveling the blank as you go! It results in really cool colorways! Shannon had a few dyed blanks so we each got one, and I'm going to use it for the Twists and Turns socks.

I (heart) knitting.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

new project gooey goodness

Since I finished the cozy and slippers, I needed a new project already. I've got my second Karira sock started, but just one knitting project at a time?! When there's so much to be done?!? Please. If I had bought yarn for the laptop bag I would have started that, but as I did not, I couldn't, so I moved on to the silk gloves, which I've been thinking about for a while. Looks like they are going to be a really quick, pleasant knit!!

I started them and about an hour later, had this:


That's the right glove, the ribbed cuff and the first repeat of the cable pattern that travels up the fingers. The right half of the work is the back of the hand, and the reverse stockinette half is the palm. The thumb gusset is between them. The pattern is REALLY not half as complicated as I thought and I think it'll be a really quick knit! I'm holding the yarn double for extra thickness and warmth. It'll be annoying to have a beautiful pair of gloves and have to wait till it gets cold to wear them!!

Need to start the laptop bag already! Must buy yarn! A very sweet woman at the yarn store where we "volunteer" one day a week, Fine Points, was so grateful to Sarah Jo and I for our knitting help that she gave us gift cards to the store. So, so nice!! So now I've got some extra money to spend on yarn! Hooray!

Monday, August 9, 2010

OMG... THREE POSTS!!

Just had to let you all know that I have finished my Feet Eaters, a little behind schedule but whatevs. Here they are:Awwww.

The second slipper (right foot) came out kinda funky because I wasn't really paying attention to the sewing. I was trying to seam and read at the same time, which isn't a great idea. Knitting and reading is fairly doable, if the pattern is simple enough, but intricate tasks like seaming many small parts together = not something you can doubletask. I sewed the head closed like three times before it looked half-way decent. The first time I sewed it folded the wrong way so the increase and decrease side seam was right in the center of the face. Smart. The second time, one side of the face was round and the other was pinched and flat. Then the teeth had their own saga, first too far, now too close, blah blah... But whatever, it's all done now, seams sewn, ends woven in (what I love about this project is you don't have to weave in the ends; you can just pull them with the tapestry needle into the big puffy part and lose the ends in the polyfill! Awesome!), eyes stitched on. (The eyes also look a little weird.) So they aren't perfect. But they are eye-catching and adorable. They would make GREAT gifts, if I actually had the patience to sit down and make a whole pile of them. All those small parts, and then all that seaming, bleh. But still, I love the idea of making them as Hanukkah presents. So easy, and sweet.

Anyway, I have finished like a whole chunk of knitting in the last few days! One of the Karira socks, the cozy, and the slippers. Phew! I would put a picture of the cozy but I don't think I should because it's going to be published, so it wouldn't be right to put a photo out there before the magazine comes out. I mean, what is a hot water bottle cozy anyway, right?? Who uses hot water bottles anymore? The British, that's who.

Two posts in a day?!

I finally finished the cozy. ::Phewwww:: I don't have much to say about it other than it's DONE. And I hope they like it over at the magazine.. It will be cool to see something I knit in a MAGAZINE.

Happy Productive Weekend

Phew!

So yesterday I knit up the cozy and it's almost finished. The only things left to do are finish the ribbing on the neck, sew up seams, weave in ends, and maybe re-bind off the "shoulder" stitches because they are done in a contrast color and it doesn't look nice.

I really am not a huge fan of this pattern. The Fair Isle is nice, but the yarn is too bulky-- one of the colors was thicker than the other and that made it bumpy and not smooth and solid. And there were just SO many issues with the writing and the chart. I made a ton of notes for the publisher, or whoever, because no one will want to knit the pattern as is-- it's way too confusing. I had to confer with Sarah Jo and Shannon a few times before I could really proceed. Once I got going it was okay though, and pretty fast. I did almost finish it yesterday. But I'm not happy with the bind-off because of the color issue, which is annoying because the last round worked before the bindoff is Yarn A and then they want you to bind off with Yarn B, which just seems like a mistake because it's a three-needle-bindoff where the bound off stitches end up on the inside, wrong side of the work, so it looks like the two sides are seamed with the contrast yarn.

I already had to modify another aspect of the design. I mentioned that one of my issues with it was the ugly increases. Well, even when I re-started the increases still looked awful so I undid it and re-knit it, instead putting solid color blocks in at the sides so the increases would be contained in them and less obvious. I think it looks a lot better. I included the edit on my notes. It required some thinking. This project was a lot more stressful than it could have been with better instructions. I'd like to re-write the pattern entirely, honestly. It definitely needs heavy editing before it can appear in a magazine.

At any rate though, despite there being about fifty billion ends to weave in, I am almost done. So-- have to figure out how to un-bind-off and re-bind-off, finish the neck, seams and ends. And then, DONE. It needs to be finished by Friday, so it shouldn't be a problem at all.

And, I finished knitting all the components of my other Feet Eater last night-- so all I have to do is stuff them with PolyFill and sew em together and I have a pair! Hooray!

So now-- my priorities are:

1. Finish Karira Sock

2. Laptop Bag

Everything else will come later- a lot of it is cold-weather stuff (gloves, hat, coat) so I can wait a bit. Of those three I'll probably start the gloves first because they are a complicated project. I'm excited though because the Claudia silk is SO RIDICULOUSLY soft and the color is so pretty that the gloves will be GORGEOUS.

So just have to buy wool for the Laptop Bag, and also the Noro.

Anyway, making lots of knitting progress, finishing lots of things, doing well!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

I am going to lose it.

I can't deal with this anymore, guys. This pattern is incomprehensible. I can't even start going into the issues that I am encountering-- and if I, a fairly experienced and talented knitter, am having this much trouble, then your average lay-knitter is going to find it completely bewildering and won't knit it, I'm telling you. The pattern is just awful!

I finally thought I had it all figured out. But no. I don't. It's just one issue after another and I can't deal with it anymore. I really just wanted to finish it today but that doesn't seem to be happening. I feel like madly snipping all the yarn up into tiny fragments.

Honestly, I'm going to lose it.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

I MADE SOCK!

My first Karira sock, done!


Yes, she is purty. It took me about . . . hmm . . . a week and a half, but I didn't work on it consistently. I had a million other projects going (still do). Let's see, there was the skirt, which I finished. The slippers, which I half-finished. And a new project, a hot water bottle cozy that I am knitting for MONEYZ. But that is giving me a LOT of trouble. Even though I'm about five inches in, I think I'm going to start over tomorrow. For a few reasons:

1. The first few rows have a few strange color kinks, due to (kfb) on color rows, thereby making the increased stitches stand out and look awful;
2. Since I had to rip out and re-knit the first repeat of the Fair Isle pattern, and I re-knit it when I was tired, it's bunchy, and not smooth enough;
3. I've been handling the yarn so much (pulling out, re-knitting, stretching, picking, etc) that it's getting kind of nobbly;
4. I am sick of it and I need a fresh start.

So tomorrow is my designated HOT WATER BOTTLE COZY KNITTING DAY. I doubt I'll be able to actually finish it, but since it's actually less complicated than I thought (the pattern is not so knitter-friendly) and has less repeats than I thought, it should go faster. I was completely bewildered by a seemingly random bind-off and cast-on right in the middle of the work, but my roommate Sarah Jo cleverly suggested that it was kind of like an overlapping slit that you slide the bottle into, like some pillowcases. Now that I have a vision of what it actually is, it'll be much easier to see what I'm making. When I knit something and I have no idea how it's going to look, I'm much more hesitant and unenthusiastic. So now that I have an idea of what the thing I'm making is supposed to look like, I think it'll be much easier. So I'm excited to re-start tomorrow. I don't think I'm going to bother ripping out what I have so far. I was provided with an excessive amount of yarn for the project, so I should be able to use two new balls without worrying about running out. And the yarn will be cleaner and not as . . . how do I describe it? I'm sure there's some special knitting word for the texture of the yarn-- it's like, wooly, and not smooth, but has got wispy edges you can pick off . . . I don't know how to describe it at all. But I am not loving the yarn. This is for a British magazine, and the whole project seems very British. Who uses a hot water bottle these days? Hello, heating pads! But, it's okay. I'm getting paid A HUNDRED DOLLARS to knit it, yes pleeze!! That's a lot of yarn dough!!

And I have quite a few new projects in mind, too. Here they are:

1. Laptop bag!! One of my bestest friends, Chaya, is going to knit it at the same time as me. We're using a pattern that Sarah Jo lent me. I looked around for yarn today at work, but I didn't find a color scheme that I loved enough to actually buy anything. Besides, I really need to finish the cozy before I start doing more pleasure knitting. But the bag is really cool. It's felted, and I've never felted anything before, so, new adventure! I think I will probably not start that for a few weeks though.

2. Twists and Turns Socks. These are in one of my boss's books, How to Knit in the Woods. They're really cool, with twists and little cables. They look like the kind of sock I would really enjoy making, because I like classic patterns with cables. I LOVE cables, but they do not seem to be "in" right now. Lace is like, the thing. And I really do not like knitting lace. Hopefully cables will come back into fashion soon.

3. Hat. I mentioned this-- with the worsted Malabrigo I bought last week, a winter hat, which I also found in How to Knit in the Woods! But this isn't a priority really.

And, of course, those silk gloves. The silk is SO soft, you would not believe it-- those gloves are going to be INCREDIBLY beautiful and soft. But I probably won't start them until fall.

And I have to finish my slippers!!! I just have not had one spare minute to work on them-- I've been trying to wrap my head around the cozy thing, and finishing my Karira sock, and I'm just busy busy busy with knitting!! I LOVE being busy with knitting!!!

Maybe I'll work on the slipper tonight, actually. Since I finished a sock and I have given up on the cozy for the night. Hooray! I wonder how long it'll take me to get up the momentum to start the second Karira sock. Sigh. Second Sock Syndrome strikes again! The sock was just a bit tricky, so it kind of stressed me out at times. Therefore I am not totally psyched to start the other. But I will soon. I have to, for the KAL. And what's the point of one sock?!!?!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Feet Eaters Con't

Here are the promised pictures!!




Cute, aren't they? Now I have to make the other one. I have about a thousand projects right now, which is soo fun and I feel busy in an AWESOME knitting way! My first Karira sock is almost finished; I'm nearly at the toe shaping. And I'm ALSO knitting something for MONEYZ! It will appear in a magazine!! Sweet huh? That looks a little complicated-- Fair Isle! It's a hot water bottle holder thingamajig. And, of course, the slippers. AND Sarah Jo lent me the pattern for her awesome laptop bag and I am totally going to make one. That, I need to get some yarn for though. I wish I could find a use for the shmillions of yards of crappy Red Heart acrylic. Yuck.

Anyway, I'm knit busy!!

FEET EATERS!!

Last week I happened to be in the studio when Shannon got a package of a few copies of Mochimochi Knitting, which is a book filled with info and patterns for knitting little toys. They're adorable. Yesterday we had an unexpected day off, so I decided to try something out. I am making the FEET EATERS, which are slippers that have a puffy face with teeth and ears and eyes. Hard to explain and you won't know what I'm talking about until I post the picture, which I haven't uploaded, but here is a progress picture:

So the pink part is clearly the sole, and the yellow is the food. The "face" part wasn't knit at the time of this picture. The slipper is almost done now-- I stayed up till two knitting feverishly. All that's left is sewing on the eyes and weaving in ends. The slipper is made up of six parts:
--sole/foot
--face
--two teeth
--two ears.
The teeth and ears are teeny. I tried using dpns, but it wasn't working-- the laddering was awful. So I switched to two circs, which is now my favorite method of working ANYTHING circularly. I never want to use dpns again.

I had to re-do the sole, because I started in size medium and it was huge, because my yarn is really bulky. The pattern calls for worsted, and the yarn I used IS worsted, technically, but it's very thick, leaning towards bulky, so it comes out quite large in knitting, especially when you hold two strands together as was instructed for the sole.

Sewing the head onto the slipper is the most annoying part. The pattern keeps talking about "mattress stitch", but I fail to see how it applies when you are sewing a circular object to a flat one. So I improvised and the sewing came out a little funky, but what do you expect from me, perfection?! We've established long ago that I am no perfectionist. I definitely belong to the "quick and dirty" school of knitting.

I should be able to finish the slippers today. Very quick project. I'm using my awful Red Heart yarn, and it's perfect for this-- washable, acrylic, impervious, very hardy. I'm thinking if they come out cute enough, I will make them as presents for Hanukkah. I think people would like them.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

I have finished my skirt!


CHECK IT OUT!!

It was about 26" OR SO before I washed it last night. After I washed it, it was 22.5". Glad I made it extra long! I would put a "before" picture up, but the skirt is completely see-through-- well, not completely, but let's just say you can tell the color of my underwear. So I'm not putting it up. But the shrinking really closed up most of the gaps and made it a nice, tight, solid fabric. It is SO pretty, guys. Today I sewed in the elastic waistband. I wish I'd made the waistband wider, because the skinnier the elastic, the less attractive the pudge bulge, but whatever- it looks fine. Weaved in all the ends, so it's ready to go! I really love it.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Moving right along!

Hey people! Last night I finished the Bell Curve Skirt, while watching Alice in Wonderland and MST3K with Sarah Jo. I only realized when I was nearly done with the star stitch hem that I had neglected to stagger the stars as the pattern said. Instead I just did k1, make star for every round, instead of make star, k1 every other round. But I didn't really consider ripping it out because just those few rounds had taken hours (probably because I was so engrossed in the movie), and it didn't look bad, so I just left it and finished it as it was. Bound off, and tonight I'm going to wash it so it will actually be WEARABLE and not leak dye all over EVERYTHING! I'm thinking about taking pictures of all the different places in my house that have blue handprints all over them, just so you can all see what I'm talking about.



Here's a picture of the skirt, but not done, because I haven't uploaded the finished picture yet. I'll do that after it's washed and I can model it for you. Sarah Jo says it's going to shrink a lot in length when I wash it, so I made it longer than the pattern called for, added some extra rounds. I'm also a teensy bit worried that the star pattern will leave see-through-able gaps, and my underwear/skin will be slightly visible, but Sarah Jo said that the shrinking will probably close most of the gappy areas, and if I just make sure to wear dark underwear it should be fine. It's a fairly heavy skirt, so I may end up wearing stockings under it anyway. But it's adorable! I love it. After washing it, all I have to do is sew in the elastic waistband, weave in ends and it's done!


My Karira sock!



Another woefully inadequate picture-- it doesn't even show one quarter of the GORGEOUSNESS of this color. It's like a beautiful jadey-seaweedy color, and the pattern and color combination definitely give it the seaweedy-feeling.

After a few requests from other people in the Ravelry KAL, and my own personal issues with the charts, I wrote out both of the charts into written instructions, which is helping me a TON. I just really dislike reading charts, and it makes it frustrating to knit, so the written instructions = awesome. I posted them on the KAL group and hopefully others will get some good use out of them too. So far I've finished two repeats of the lace pattern. One more and I'm ready to move on to the foot. :) Which is my favorite part of sock shaping by far. I did discover that I was accidentally using one size 1 circ and one size 2 or 3 circ by accident, which might be the reason why the sock is kind of loose. So I switched it out for another size 1. I don't know if it'll make much of a difference, but at least I'll feel better about it.

Yesterday at work I added some more gorgeous yarn to my stash:


It's Malabrigo Kettle-Dyed Worsted Merino. It is SO SOFT and SO PRETTY and it wasn't even very expensive. I know what I'm going to make-- a winter hat. (To match my fictitious Noro coat.) It's going to be GORGEOUS.

Did I mention my Noro coat? I got the idea to knit a thigh-length coat from either Noro Furoside or Noro Iro, which are both worsted/bulky weight ish, though Iro is heavier. I like Furoside's colorways better, but the Iro is definitely more heavy-coat material, so I've got some thinking to do. I have a vision in my head. A Stockinette Pea-coat inspired garment, kind of long, like to mid or lower thigh, with garter stitch hem and sleeve cuffs, in all different crazy colorways haphazardly thrown together, with a heavy traditional folding collar, a few large buttons, and deep pockets. I'm sorry, but it would be gorgeous. And I'm going to make it. It is also going to be very expensive, since one skein of Furoside is $18.75 and one skein of Iro is $20.25 or something like that, and I'll probably need at LEAST five or six skeins. But I don't care. I feel rich when I have beautiful yarn. It actually makes me happy to glance over at my work table and see skeins of deep, richly colored, soft yarn sitting there waiting for me. It fills me with more joy than cash does, so I don't feel a bit guilty and you can't make me!!!!!