hope yet

after the "boat" experiment below i gave up crocheting for a week and a half. however, to take my mind off being pepper sprayed and kill some time i picked up the needle and got a pointer from one of my classmates this past wednesday. anyways, you can see that it actually came out fairly rectangular and pretty decent. i gave it to this girl at church for a blanket for barbie or whatever.
2/24 update.
and this is what i came up with this past week. the first one is a big rectangle using single crochet, the smaller rectangle is my newly learned skill of double crochet. look for the obligatory scarf to be posted next (give me a month or so).

Magical Hat of My Dreams

When I went to the sale at that knitting store in Chicago, I knew I wanted to buy some Noro yarn, and I thought I might buy something matching so I could attempt to make this hat. I fully expected to fail completely. But I was looking forward to doing something else with the yarn.


Imagine my surprise when it turned out like so. I think I might have knit this in a little over a week. Granted, there were three full days of flying and lots of sitting around time in there, but STILL. Double stranded hat!!

I would like to thank those people in the world who received my first attempts at double stranded knitting last year around this time in such good humor. Those projects (no pictures, thank goodness) really did teach me about everything that could go wrong with this kind of knitting and pattern, and apparently the lessons stuck.

Pattern from knitty.com: http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter07/PATTtam.html
Just a note: I never did stretch the hat out over a plate. Honestly, I kept expecting it to fall apart during the first couple days of its completion, and then the semester took over my life. But I like as it, quite a bit.

a boat?

ok, so i have started my experiment in crochet. the plan for the children at church is to each crochet some squares and we'd put it all together to make blankets. this is my first real attempt at making a rectangle, as you can see the two edges didn't turn out quite rectangular. should probably hold off on making that shawl next eh.

Isabella in the Ladybug Sweater

I didn't need to worry that the ladybug sweater would be too small! Here is my grandneice Isabella wearing the sweater. It should fit next winter, and maybe winter after that! (She is about 10 months old in the picture, and the sweater is size two.)

orange makes me smile, too!

According to my mom, this morning, my nephew refused to get dressed unless he could wear the orange sweater I knit him. Granted, she didn't witness this first-hand, but even if he simply expressed a mild preference, I still think it shows that he's developing good taste.

I made this sweater the summer that my nephew was born and he just grew into it this fall. There's nothing like leaving lots of room for growth. It's the Child's Placket-Neck Pullover from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I used Blue Sky Alpaca's Blue Sky Cotton, which is incredibly soft and lovely to knit with. It's also machine-washable, which was a big plus for a project for an active baby. The buttons, which are a little hard to see, are small ladybugs.

Christmas Projects

I made several Christmas scarves inspired by the yarn I bought at "Faulous Fibers" in St. Michaels, MD, and the "Feather and Fan" pattern Hannah found for me.

First I made two scarves, one skein each, with Filatura Di Crosa "Fancy" - multicolor yarn of 60% mohair and 40% acrylic. Each only took about one week - knitting on the metro during my commute and a few hours of television. I used two repetitions of the motif, with two edge stitches on each side, as the pattern suggested. The scarves are pretty short, but they fit around the neck with just enough to hang down on each side and fold across, but not enough to tie a knot. The color changes in the yarn were fun to observe, but I had no control over them. The two skeins weren't exactly alike. The lace pattern automatically makes the ends curvy.

I had bought two hanks of Blue Heron yarn - hand dyed in Easton, Maryland - 89% cotton/11% Nylon,/367Yards each, but hadn't decided what to make with it. After the success of the Fan and Feather pattern, I decided it might work for this expensive cottony yarn and decided to make a shawl for Emily, thinking the colors were kind of African, and it might work for cool nights there, or she could use it as a throw on her couch. When I was partway into it I decided it would be too short, so I added a band made with leftover cotton yarn I had (Marks & Kattens, Camomille/ 100% mercericzed cotton). I tried knitting it double to match the weight of the Blue Heron yarn, but it didn't look right. Then I bought some hairy (feathery?) yarn called Fizz/ 100% polyester, from Crystal Palace Yarns, in a marigold orange and knit it together with one strand of the Camomille. It was perfect. I knit one band on each side and a wider band at the center with the contrasting yarns. For the width, I knit four repetitions of the Feather and Fan pattern and doubled the number of edge stitches. I was really pleased with the result.



Imade one quicky scarf for a friend that only took about 3 hours. I forgot to take a picture before I wrapped it. But it was made of one skien of "Mystery" by Artful Yarns - 40% wool/25% cotton/20% acrylic/15% nylon. 98 yards. (Much thicker than the mohair I used for the other scarves) The pattern was on the label - size 9 needles - cast on 16 stitches and knit one row. Then the pattern is a three row repeat:
Row 1: K wrapping yarn twice. Row 2: K, dropping extra loop. Row 3: K. Repeat, ending with row 3 with about 18" remaining to bind off.
The dropped loops result in very long open stitches. The scarf was plenty long enough, but pretty narrow.

Finally I was inspired by all that lace work to make a hat for Emily's African roommate Glory, who is a seamstress, and is always asking Emily about her mother. Emily says she likes hats. This is the first thing I ever designed entirely by myself! I based it on a pattern for a simple round hat in stockinette stitch with a rolled edge. It called for casting on 99 stitiches. Since I was using finer yarn and smaller needles, I figured I could start with more stitches. I found a motif in a knitting design book called "fern" with a 29 stitch repeat, so I decided to use 4 repeats and cast on 116 stitches. I used more of the leftover Camomille cotton yarn. When I did the decreases for the top of the hat, I followed the natural divisions in the patterns to make it symmetrical. I should have realized that the lace motif would make the rolled edge curvy instead of straight, but it didn't occur to me. I do like the effect, though. The hat is a little small for me, but I have a big head and Emily says Glory doesn't, so I hope it will fit and she will like it. I want to make one for myself later. It only took me one week from start to finish - and it was after I went back to work after the holidays so I was only knitting on the Metro and in the evening.

I have finished my first sock with self striping yarn I received for Christmas and am working on the second, hoping to make it the same size! I discovered the second ball of yarn was wound in the opposite direction, so the colors are in reverse order.
At the same time I'm working on a sweater made of a luxurious yarn "Starlights" by Ironstone Yarns (hand dyed in New Mexico) (Mohair/wool/rayon/nylon) I'm hoping to finish while it's still cold enough to wear it this year. I've finished the back and started on the front.

I don't think I've ever knit so many items in so short a time. This blog is inspiring.
I even got up my nerve to take my knitting (Emily's shawl, and the mystery scarf) to an off-site work retreat. When my boss saw me knitting she got out hers! One of the younger male managers pondered whether he'd have to take up knitting to get ahead in our agency! He said it used to be enough to play golf with the guys, but now he might have to learn to knit.
Knitters Unite!

finally finished!

Here is the final result from my wrangles with stainless steel yarn: the kusha kusha scarf.
I actually finished it over Thanksgiving but have only recently come to terms with my disappointment enough to post about it. I used this kit, ordered directly from the Habu store in New York, with stainless steel and mohair yarns. (I think I've already mentioned how pleased I was with the service from the Habu store, but I don't think it hurts to reiterated that it was amazing. )

Here's the disappointment: this was supposed to be another gift for another recommender and I investigated it carefully before starting. Through this investigation, I discovered that people generally thought that the scarf was too short once completed. So I knit it over twenty inches longer than the pattern called for. And yet, after felting, this is how long it is:
I think that I may have felted more aggressively than most people, but the end texture looks pretty similar to what's on the Habu site. Thinking really hard about my recommender, I just didn't picture her wearing a scarf this short. I played around with the idea of lengthening it, but I'm out of the stainless steel yarn and thought that the mohair would be too delicate by itself. (Yes, I could have gotten more yarn, but I'm not going to.)

The crazy thing about this project was that it was a huge, huge pain to knit (the yarn was really frustrating to work with), but I'm reasonably sure I'd try it again. I really like the texture of the section with both yarns. As I was finishing knitting it, I even thought to myself, "Wouldn't these two yarns make a really pretty boatneck top? Felted just a little, with a tank top underneath. That wouldn't be too bad to knit." Perhaps that shows how much I like the end texture, if I could totally forget how aggravating it was to knit. (And here I thought I was a process knitter!)

PS: I almost titled this post "kusha kusha kompleted" but decided that I'd go for an alliteration that would not make EW roll her eyes.