What I've Been Up To

Greetings, southside bloggers!

I have been away from the blog for some time, but a fear that people were holding their breath while waiting for me to post brought me back!

I haven't done much knitting since January, but here's the scoop on what I have done:

I finished the cable scarf with icord edging only 6 months late, but it was still a very appreciated birthday gift. And, since this winter in Chicago was especially horrible, it has already been put to good use. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of it before parting with it, so you'll just have to imagine what it looks like. I trust you all have good imaginations.

When I finished the scarf, I made my first felted wool bowl. It was actually my first felted project of any kind and I have to confess that I owe my love of the felted wool bowl to HEB who has made many in her knitting career. She gave me my first over a year ago and I have put it to good use. I have actually put it to such good use that it is often overflowing and in desperate need of a companion to also hold my random assortment of things. In the picture, the bowl that HEB knit is on the left and the bowl that I knit is on the right.

For both bowls, the pattern is from One Skein. There are patterns for 2 sizes, I knit the larger of the two. It knits very fast. I knit mine at the airport and on a flight. For my bowl, the yarn is Manos, the washing machine for felting was my parents', and the tennis balls in the washing machine for felting were their dog's.

As you can see, I can probably benefit from more felted wool bowls. Who couldn't? I mean, what can't you put in a felted wool bowl? Fortunately, I have another skein of the Manos (in a different color) to make one.

Felted wool bowl aside, I most recently knit baby hats for twins (one boy, one girl). The pattern is the umbilical cord hat from Stitch 'n Bitch, and the yarn is Manos (yes, again, but this time a very soft cotton).

The umbilical cord hat is also a fast and easy knit and I hear (from people who have babies) that the hat is a great fit for newborns. Apparently finding a store-bought hat that actually fits a new baby is quite difficult. Never fear, knitted gifts for baby!

Onward, knitters!

small steps

i went through my first skein of yarn and have since been crocheting little swatches to learn different types of stitches, practice using patterns, etc... here's some of the results. the original plan was to put all these blue and orange swatches together to make some sort of thing in the Mets colors but since i don't quite have mastery over making rectangles, that plan is scratched.

the first skein of yarn scarf like thing. it's folded over, i didn't finish it off, but it's close.
here are the patterns i worked on in order of when they were made. picture is against a red lampshade if you were wondering.
this turned out to be more parallelogram than rectangle.



and then i progressed from rectangles to circles