More gifts

This is an admittedly crazy-looking creature.
It is based on the owl, Errol, in Charmed Knits, but it ended up looking a bit more like a duck, or a penguin, perhaps. I blame the beak. It was pretty fun to make, though I had to use cotton balls as the stuffing, so it's a rather lumpy bird as well. I really liked the yarn I used: blueberry Nature Spun and blue Queensland Soft Comfort Mohair. The fuzziness seemed like it made a good stuffed animal, and it also covered up mistakes! I do love fuzzy yarn for that, I readily admit.

The final gift knit from Elizabeth is this hat from One Skein Wonders) that I've been wanting to make for ages. When I realized I had some Noro yarn that was pretty close to what the pattern actually called for, I knew it was fate. The yarn I used (Noro Blossom) was actually a bit fuzzier than the yarn used in the book, so the fake cabling that came out of it is perhaps a bit more understated. But I like the columns and it was fun and not too difficult. However, there is some crazy crochet border that, as a complete novice to the other needle art, I found rather intimidating. The little that I did was pretty fun though, and I will not be so scared of the single needle work in the future! (I will note that I used perhaps a skein and a half (despite the name of the book) and even then the hat could have been longer. Also, sadly, I have no pictures of the hat! Alas.)

Fingers!

Full of lace-filled glee, I decided that my Peruvian alpaca yarn had to become lace gloves. I actually think that the decision to combine "lace" with "knitting fingers" was a good one, because holes that were created tended to be fairly purposeful.

The lace is a pretty simple pattern, Row 1: K, yo, k2tog (Knit, Yarn Over, Knit Two Together), Row 2: Knit all, repeat. I used a couple of different patterns as the base for the glove, and my sister's small hands helped to create the size. Besides the obvious confusion of separating out one tube into five to create fingers, I think the other difficulty I had with this project was figuring out when to start and how long to make each finger. As you can see from the picture, things got a little complicated.

It was fun, and I'll probably make another attempt at gloves, but probably not any time soon.

what I knit for Christmas

Not much this year, as it turns out. I'll post about a Christmas-y hostess gift that I knit, but, otherwise, I only knit two Christmas presents this year. I don't have any good pictures of the one, but here's the other: a pillow for my mother. The yarn is some lovely Rowan tweed that I think has been discontinued. (I'd been hoarding it for a long time without being able to decide what to do with it....) The flower intarsia pattern is from Kaffe Fassett's Pattern Library, which I got free with Lexis points. It was even a signed copy. (I definitely think more highly of Lexis points now.) I had a lot of fun planning and knitting this pillow. Fassett's Pattern Library is a really inspiring book: 180 beautiful color charts that you can incorporate in whatever patterns you please. I'm sure it would take some thinking to figure out how to work them into sweaters and the like, but a pillow was a great easy project since it required minimal modification of the intarsia chart. It also let me practice my intarsia technique, which is definitely still a work in progress.

Here's a shot of the back of the pillow. I did the bands surrounding the buttonholes and buttons in k3, p1 rib so that it would avoid the stockinette curling while still sort of looking like the rest of the pillow. You can definitely tell that it's rib if you look closely enough, but I think it's not bad at a distance.
(My mother didn't like the buttons that I originally used so we went out after Christmas and found these to replace them.)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you all knit for the holidays!

And now it's back to the studying. Anyone want to quiz me on the federal rules of evidence?

Lacy scarf

I made this little beauty with Boise Karabella yarn. At 50% cashmere, 50% superfine merino wool, it was a tactile pleasure to steal time away from studying to hold this yarn and make lace.

The pattern was surprisingly easy to follow once I got started on it, and because it was easily condensed into a 5 line chart, it was pretty portable as well.

One of my favorite things with new patterns is successfully learning new knitting skills. Perhaps my favorite new thing from this pattern was the ssk. A one-stitch decrease, the ssk stands for slip slip knit and simply means: slip one stitch (as if to knit), slip another (in the same manner), and then, insert the left needle into the two slipped stitches (so when the needles are crossed it looks like a normal knit insert), and then knit as usual. I really liked saying S S K as I completed this stitch, and while the k2tog remains a more direct decrease, I will look forward to using the ssk when I want a left leaning decrease.

The other fun thing with this pattern was using a stitch chart for the first time. I'd seen (and tried to create) intarsia charts before, but the knit chart was an intimidating creature. Though I wouldn't claim to have memorized all of the symbols and their meaning, I did enjoy feeling like I was interpreting a kind of hieroglyphics.

The other thing that I really learned how to do with this project was rip out rows without ripping out the entire project. Normally when I make a mistake, I just knit over it or try to fix it in the next row. However, when every increase and decrease and yarn over changes the shape of the lace, that method doesn't really work. Thankfully, the Karabella yarn wasn't too fuzzy for the ripping out to be confusing or sticky, and I managed to figure out which way the stitches should face on the needle. A demonstration follows. (Please feel free to say: "But that is not how I knit!" Clearly there are differing methods.)

Oh no! I slipped a stitch instead of knitting it! Alas! (This picture is actually a perfect example of why I think it can be ok to knit over mistakes. When you can't tell they are there...)

Let's say I have to take out a row and a couple more stitches on the next row to fix this mistake. For this scarf, I would take each stitch off and pull the yarn out of the loop and fit the old stitch onto the left needle one at a time.

Here are two possible ways that the old stitch could be placed on the left needle. All of the knitting in this mini-example was done in straight knit, so the first picture would be correct.















From another angle. Here the second picture is correct.

These pictures aren't the best, and in fact, an easier way to think about it might just be: "don't twist the stitch" but I find that when I've been staring at knitting (which, really, is just loops and twists) that words cease to describe anything useful and having a picture in my mind of what the stitch should look like is the most helpful thing.

The pattern for this scarf is found at knitty.com.

Crocheters Unite

in the new year, the children i teach at church are going to learn how to crochet. it was going to be knitting but it was decided that crochet would be easier. funny thing is that i'm going to have to teach them, so i'll post some of my feeble attempts at it up here (hijacking the knitting blog a bit). The photo is the "sample" blanket that was made to demonstrate what we would be doing, and it's displayed on my quality dorm bed. Stay tuned to see how my version turns out. laughing comments are acceptable.

gift knitting (part 2)

Here's the latest installment in gifts for my recommenders: pictures of the mittens from a hat-and-mitten set. My camera was acting wonky, so I only got a few pictures of the mittens before it decided to quit, and no pictures of the hat. But the hat is a pattern that I knit for KZ last year, so maybe I'll snap some pictures of hers at some point. The hat pattern is from Knitting Nature, one of my favorite pattern books. I made up the mitten pattern to match the hat. (If you can imagine, the hat has this same motif repeated five times, plus bobbles along the brim.) The yarn is Cascade 220 and I *think* that my recommender will really like the color. It photographed a little less bright than it actually is.

Not a hat.

My sister is modeling a head scarf (named Calorimetry) that I made with Noro Yarn that she picked out at a crazily huge Yarn Emporium type place in Minnesota. It was really fast and pretty in the end, especially with variegated yarn.

I found this pattern on knitty. I actually made one for myself that I finished the night before I came to visit Berkeley for the first time. Sadly, I left it on a bus one day and it was lost forever. I don't have pictures of that one, though I may make another someday.

The headscarf is knit on straight needles, with increases and decreases creating the shape and holes that can be used to connect the end of the head scarf with a button (though a simple knot works as well.)
Because it's fast and creates cool patterns with the yarn, it's a fun project. However, I don't recommend staying up the night before a cross-country trip finishing it, because it may end up that you sleep through your flight.