herbivore

As with many of my FOs, this one was done and off the needles for a little while before I got around to blocking it. However, it is a gift with a deadline, so over the weekend I finally blocked Herbivore, hid the ends, and took a few pictures.



Pattern: Herbivore, by Stephen West
Yarn: Panda Wool (fingering weight bamboo/wool/nylon blend) by Crystal Palace, 2 skeins exactly. In fact, I had to tink the last row to do the bind-off early so I wouldn't run out!



I love the teal color of this yarn. You can barely tell from the pictures here that it is subtly variegated with shades of green.



It's amazing what blocking does for a pattern like this. The yarn already has very nice drape because of the bamboo content, but a good long soak before being spread out on a towel to dry did wonders for evening everything out and opening the lace portions.



The knitting took a couple of weeks, off and on, and because of all the increases on every right side row, it did feel a bit like a slog. It was worth it, though. I'm pleased with the result, and I hope the recipient is, too!

budding photographer

This afternoon I asked Daniel if he'd like to earn a dollar. Oh yes, yes! was his enthusiastic response. All he had to do was come outside in the cold and take a few pictures of me wearing my new hat. If the pictures were no good, I told him, I wouldn't ask for a refund, but I would ask him to try again.

Here is one of Daniel's practice photos while he was waiting for me to get my boots on:



As it turns out, we did not need the do-over. I think he did pretty well for a kid who's less than two weeks away from his 6th birthday, don't you?




(ETA: I soooo look like my younger brother in the picture above. Wow.)

This one is my favorite, despite the fact that the flash went off so everything is a bit washed out....but I love how you look at this picture and wonder what I'm looking at? (Answer: staring absent-mindedly at the treetop. Not as enthralling or thought-provoking as you'd think, but it's the truth. Hey, it's been a looooong week.)



And the hat? The hat. The. Hat. Was supposed to be one of those quick-knit-it-in-one-or-two-days kind of things, but it ended up, well, not that way. I think I knit this freaking thing about four times. It started out as a plain cap with a long brim that would fold over, but I only had one skein and ran out of yarn. So then I tried a couple different slouchy beret-type patterns, and they looked kind of dumb. Finally, I settled on a plain beanie with a little extra length for some slouch (to use up all the yarn but not run out too soon), and it worked, but GAH. Talk about a not-quick project! Happily, the yarn held up magnificently to all the frogging and re-knitting, and I'm pretty happy with the result, which is cute and warm and my favorite color! (Note to self: knit red things more often!)

Yarn: Some chunky alpaca hand-dyed goodness, maybe by Cascade? I lost the label long ago. I know I bought it in Kansas at The Newton Beadery, which is sadly no longer in business.
Pattern: From my noggin, for my noggin. I cast on 80 stitches on size 7 needles, then increased to 84 and switched to size 8 needles for the main part of the hat. My gauge was 4spi. I knit until I was about to run out of yarn and did a 6-point decrease rather abruptly to minimize any cone-like shape and also because I didn't want to run out of yarn again and have to frog again.

off my game

I seem to be off my game lately. Last week I hardly had any knitting time because I was in rehearsals every single night for this opera premiere. I was deep in the bowels of the orchestra pit a mere six feet away from a large, ancient furnace that was its own percussion section, so needless to say I really couldn't see or hear anything besides the conductor and the trombonist next to me, but by all accounts the show was a success, and I enjoyed working with such fine musicians. I'd nearly forgotten how much fun it is to work on new music, especially when the composer is present.

Anyway, in addition to having so little knitting time, it seems like everything I cast on gets ripped out. I started these Girdwood Mittens for Daniel twice. After the second attempt, when he still couldn't squeeze his hand into them, I realized my problem: I was misreading the sizing chart. I thought I was making a mitten 7.25 inches in circumference, when I was actually looking at the number for gauge: 7.25 stitches per inch for a 6" mitten. It's an understandable mistake to make once, but to get halfway through the same mitten twice before realizing I was simply making the wrong size? Duh. Ah well. As you can see from the picture, I hadn't picked colors with adequate contrast anyway:



Those two blues are exactly the same color as his winter coat, which would be clever and all if the color pattern showed up better. All is not lost, however. Now I know my gauge in color work with this yarn in two different needle sizes (Cascade 220 sport in 3.0mm and 3.25mm DPNs), and it turns out this size is just right for Anya. I just have to start all over in colors she likes. After, that is, I make Daniel's mittens in a proper size. I'm frustrated enough that I've put this aside for now.

Then this week I cast on a sweater in bulky yarn for Afghans for Afghans. They need lots of sweaters, and the deadline is next month. I was chugging through the body of a top-down cardigan this evening, feeling all smug that I can knit a whole sweater in just a few days, when I got to thinking "Hey, this seems a little big..." Yup. Too big. They need sweaters to fit kids age 7-16, and my sweater might have been all right for the older end of that range, but I didn't want to chance it. So I started over. The smaller size will go faster, at any rate.

This isn't the knitting I really want to do, though. What I really want to do is selfishly cast on a big comfy sweater for myself (I've got several in mind), and also try out that new mitten pattern Cloisonée, and make myself a warm, slouchy hat that actually matches my coat...must. resist. startitis.

Special Olympics Scarf Project

Have you heard of the Special Olympics Scarf Project? I hadn't until a few months ago when my friend C (the one who made me those lovely mitts in my last post) told me about it. She has a relative with Downs Syndrome, so she contributes scarves and wanted to know if some of her knitting friends would be interested, too? Sure, I said. I'm always happy to knit for a good cause, especially on behalf of someone who is so generous. She even gave me the yarn for it!

Then, if I must be completely honest, I kind of forgot about it until a couple days ago when C emailed a picture of the scarf she had made! Maybe it was a friendly hint that I needed to get started? Seeing as the deadline for Wisconsin is next week, her gentle reminder was warranted.

So, how to knit a scarf that measures 6"x at least 54" in just a couple of days? Double the yarn and add a fringe. Fringe counts in the final measurement, fortunately. Here is my scarf:



It measures exactly 54" long, including the fringe. Whew.



This project is very specific about what yarn to use: Red Heart Supersaver (RHSS) or Red Heart Soft in certain blue and red colors. As long as you use both red and blue and make the scarf the right size, they will accept any pattern you choose (though some free patterns for both knit and crochet are linked on the site). I doubled the yarn and cast on 136 stitches on a size 10 needle, and to be honest, the scarf is a little stiff. I could have easily gone up to size 11 or 13 (aside: why isn't there a size 12 needle out there? Anybody know?)

I did not particularly enjoy knitting with this yarn. I'm not a fan of acrylic in general, and RHSS is not exactly high-quality, but it's what they want, and I am satisfied with how the stripes look.

knitted gifts for me

I would be remiss if I failed to mention here the wonderful knitted gifts I received this holiday season! They came as a total surprise, though I've been knitting long enough (and giving away knitted things long enough) that it shouldn't have been such a shocker, really.

Winter has finally arrived here in Madison, Wisconsin. A little later than usual, but it's definitely here. This was the view from our (still new!) basement window around noon today:



And it's getting colder, so the squishy, warm fingerless mitts my friend C sent me from her winter home in Arizona have been a well-used accessory inside the house, where my hands are perpetually cold. Note the charming buttons on the side:



And then yesterday, these socks arrived in the mail from my mom:



They are my Christmas present, finished a little after Christmas, but the timing couldn't have been more perfect, considering the cold temps and today's snowstorm. They fit like a glove. She used Classic Elite Alpaca Sox and I don't believe my feet have ever been treated to anything so soft and warm and light. Totally worth the effort to hand wash!

always something to learn

I am not normally a big fan of shawls - they are lovely to look at and even fun to knit, but I don't have much occasion to wear them - but Stephen West's designs are quite appealing to me for some reason. They just seem more scarf-like and wearable than those big lace numbers. Because of this, Herbivore has been in my queue for quite a while, and a couple of nights ago, I finally cast on.

I thought it would be a breeze, something I could whip up and off the needles in just a couple of days. After all, it takes about as much yarn as a pair of socks, or less, and the pattern only takes up one page and, well, it just didn't look that hard.

Hubris, hubris. Easy? How wrong I was. I knit a few rows, it looked like crap, I pulled it out. I cast on again, knit a few rows, it looked like crap, I pulled it out. I cast on a third time, knit one row, figured I wasn't going to get any further without help, and gave up for the night.

Because, you see, I had figured out my problem: I never learned the proper way to do a yarnover, yo (har). I vaguely remembered reading on a blog somewhere (Glenna's, I think) that there is, in fact, a right and wrong way to execute a yarnover in knitting, but since I hadn't ever had a project where it mattered enough to notice, I never bothered to look it up. Well, it matters in this design, my friends, and I know why: it's because the holes are made between knit and purl stitches. Sometimes you knit, make a hole, then purl, sometimes you purl, make a hole, then knit, and sometimes the holes are made between knit stitches. It turns out that wrapping the yarn around the needle any old way just won't do. You have to be consistent or it looks like crap. Since I'd never learned the right way in the first place, I finally googled it, found a picture tutorial, and had it all figured out in about 3 minutes.

Sometimes I love the internet.

Here's what I've got so far:



It doesn't look like much, but it sure beats the hell out of the frustration I was experiencing before.

Next I'll show you the 3-hour hat that took me a month and five attempts. Yeesh.

warm neck, warm head

About three years ago I knit Daniel an orange hat with kitty ears for Halloween. I doubled worsted weight yarn so that I could get it done in one afternoon in time for trick-or-treating that night. The hat was too big for him then, but he eventually grew into it...and now he's grown out of it. I've made him other hats since then, but the orange kitty hat, for whatever reason, was his favorite. It's still in pretty good shape, too, after three years, all things considered, just a little fuzzy around the edges, but seeing Daniel's ears stick out the bottom before Christmas convinced me that this boy needs a new hat.

When I stumbled upon Windschief by Stephen West, I knew I had a winner. It's simple enough that a sophisticated kindergartener such as Daniel would like it, yet the tilted twisted ribbing section makes it interesting. Also, it would go fast, and after the sock knitting binge of the last few weeks, I wanted something fast.

Fast, indeed! In less than 24 hours, I completed both the hat and matching neck warmer. Daniel is pleased:



He wore his new duds on an excursion to a nearby park this afternoon, where we chanced upon the beginnings of a crude lean-to structure someone else must have started building over the holidays.



We added some sticks.




And then we went exploring, where Daniel found an old log to crawl on. Notice the lack of snow? The fact that we weren't even wearing heavy coats? Some people are happy about the mild weather we're experiencing, but I for one am ready for winter to arrive!



Pattern: Windschief, by Stephen West.
Yarn: Cascade 128 Superwash, about 1.5 skeins (leftover from a sweater I made for Stuart last year)
Mods: I used thicker yarn than the pattern called for, so I cast on fewer stitches and crossed my fingers that the gauge would work out. It did.

socks for MJ

I'm still doing a bit of catch-up with the last FOs of 2011. If you're getting sick of seeing socks on the blog, well, too bad, because I've got more to show you! The FO post for these socks has been a long time coming, actually, because I finished them at the beginning of November. I finally gave them to my sister-in-law, MJ, for Christmas, so I've kept them off the blog until now.

I took these pictures on the back deck as soon as the socks were finished two months ago, hence the pretty fall leaves. Now the leaves have been mulched into the lawn and front garden, and the deck is covered in treacherous, frozen slush. Winter is off to a slow start...

But I digress. The socks:



Pattern: Waving Lace Socks by Evelyn Clark, from Favorite Socks
Yarn: I dyed the yarn myself with Kool-Aid a couple of years ago. I don't remember where I got the bare hanks (elann.com, maybe?), but it's standard fingering weight sock yarn with a bit of nylon. I could still detect faint whiffs of "grape" flavoring as I was knitting. My brother Joe tells me that MJ is fond of purple, and this seemed just right.
My only modification was to use the eye-of-partridge heel instead of the regular slipped-stitch heel called for in the original pattern. I just prefer the look of this one, and I find the garter stitch edge makes for a cleaner gusset with no holes:



What did I accomplish in 2011 knitting-wise? 8 adult sweaters (7 for me, 1 for Stuart), 1 sweater for Anya, 6 pairs of socks, 5 hats, 2 pairs of mittens, 1 scarf, and a community blanket for Afghans for Afghans (I didn't do all the knitting on that one, but I organized the project and assembled the squares). There's a pair of socks I finished on my birthday that hasn't made it to the blog yet. I also designed a hat for Anya, which is still her current favorite. I keep resolving not to buy yarn, but it happens anyway from time to time, not in a way that is out of control, but it's enough to keep my stash from shrinking much, despite all the knitting I do!

I should make some resolutions, you know, the standard ones about knitting from stash only and starting the Christmas knitting now...but it seems to me that resolutions are made to be broken. I half-heartedly tell myself that same stuff every year, and every year at some point I buy yarn I don't need or plan half a dozen baby gifts, only to start a sweater for myself instead. And you know what? The world hasn't ended. And if it does, I don't think my knitting-related resolutions will be to blame.

So, here's to 2012, whatever it may bring.