Wednesday, February 8, 2012

I would write a post if I could put these Cini Minis down

Sorry guys. Every day for the past three weeks I have kept thinking, today I'll write a post. Today I will, I have nothing else to do. It's raining. Today I'll write a post.

...Yet I haven't. And this one is coming dangerously close to not being written as I can't seem to get my hand out of this box of Cini Minis (I believe they are called Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the U.S.). They're just so good! And it's difficult to type with cinnamon-sugar-coated fingers. Nevertheless, I am really going to try.

OKAY! What may have seemed like nanoseconds to you (i.e. the time it took your eyes to skip down from the end of the last paragraph to the beginning of this one) was in reality a twenty-minute stretch of me maniacally stuffing Cini Minis in my mouth. Now we are ready to begin.

Lately I've been making a lot of stuff to sell. A few weeks ago I had a bunch of friends over who convinced me that people would buy my wares if I made them generally available, and one went so far as to offer to personally sell my stuff if I built up a stock.

So, over the last three weeks or so, I've been knitting a bunch of random stuff for some possible future sale-- mini sock keychains, siddur covers, iPod cases, some headbands, and recently a hat. So, not a ton of stuff, not nearly enough for a sale, but stuff takes longer to make than you'd think. I would also like to make a bunch of pairs of fingerless gloves, maybe even some socks.

So here's the stuff I've made.

Siddur Covers

This is a little knit case for an Artscroll prayerbook, which is what a lot of English speakers use. I made one for myself a while ago because I carry it around every Shabbat, and I wanted to keep it nice. I get a lot of compliments on it so I figured it might have a wider application. I made two, out of the Berroco Cotton Twist that I posted about a while ago. It took me a while to tweak the pattern back and forth, and even now I'm not 100% happy with it. If/when I make it again I'll implement a few more changes.


 iPod cases
 

Very very simple ribbed cases knit in the round with the overspun Knit Picks wool. I don't know if you can tell but they do bias a bit to the side.They're really easy and quick.


Headbands
 

I was pondering on what to do with the tons of overspun Knit Picks wool I have, and I got the idea to hold a few strands together and make a hat. I cast on 64 stitches on size... eh... I don't know. I need to keep better records of that. Maybe eights? After the first few rounds I thought it might make a cute headband instead (slash I was too lazy to make a whole hat). I held four strands together for each headband, and to embellish I knit two roses for each and curled them together with a bauble button inside, and sewed it on. They are pretty cute, I think! My friend requested a baby-sized one for a friend of hers, so I made a few minis:


I don't know if you can tell that they're much smaller.  Instead of four strands of the overspun Knit Picks, which is a little rough, I used one strand of this nice soft variegated sock yarn left over from some socks, held together with one strand of the overspun.

Mini sock keychains

I made maybe 15 or so mini socks and attached keyrings like so:


They are pretty cute. I don't know how big that market is, but they're adorable.

And I made one entrelac hat:

 I used the same bulky Schaefer that I used for my Calorimetry. It knit up pretty quickly. I usually like to stripe my entrelac-- that's really where the "wow" factor comes in, seeing how it looks all woven together-- but I didn't have two shades of the same weight that were suitable for an entrelac hat, sadly. All my general stash is in New York. I made a ribbed band, which integrated pretty seamlessly into the entrelac. I was pleased with that. I cast on double the number of stitches I needed for the entrelac, knit an inch or so in 2x2 rib, and then while I was making the squares, I simply purled 2 together instead of merely purling one until all the stitches were used up. No gaps, no tight cast-on-- it worked well. I'm working on another entrelac hat now.

So that's that, we'll see where any of that goes. I've also made some stuff for me. I finished the afghan. Here it is, in all its glory:


Yeah! From start to finish, it took me two weeks to do. Fastest afghan ever. Well, compared to my first afghan, which took about five years. It's warm, and BIG! It's a nice accent to the room.

Aaaand I've gotten pretty far on these above-the-knee socks I've been wanting to make for a while. I used a pattern for knee socks, but added a lot of length. They were the first proper toe-up socks I've ever made. The Skew socks are technically toe-up, but the construction is so unusual they don't really count. These are the traditional type. I have to say, I like the foot shaping-- so much easier without the gusset-- but I don't really like the short-heel construction. It took me a long time to get the first heel done, and it still looked messy.

The first version was neat-- just left huge gaps:


So I ripped it out and wrapped and turned and picked up wraps and it still didn't look great, but after a few more rips and tries I was done. There's a little hole that I'll just fix later when I'm weaving in ends.


Not so attractive. But I plodded on, increasing 2 stitches every 10 rounds once I reached the calf, and in just a day or so of nonstop knitting I reached the top! The sock is SUPER long. And to keep it up and over the knee, I had a flash of brilliance...


When I reached the top ribbing, I joined in a strand of elastic thread with the yarn, resulting in a delightfully clingy few inches. I wore it for a while and it didn't fall down. LOVE IT, but it'll take me a while to finish the second one... it's SOoooOOoO long!


There! Finally. I have posted.