Knitting Knerd

Baby Hat #2 Completed

2008-10-10T07:49:00.001-04:00

BabyHat2-1.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

And like Baby Hat #1, it went very quickly. I learned an important lesson with this hat - one ball Sugar 'n' Cream is enough for about 1.75 baby hats. Fortunately, I had a little bit of white to finish off the crown, as you can see. I think the hat would have looked better with a white brim, rather than a white crown, but my type A does not extend so far as to rip out 3/4 of a hat so that the brim, rather than the crown, is white. However, I will probably get a second ball of all the yarn I was planning on using for baby hats. Then I would get about three baby hats in each colorway. Is that too many baby hats in a color way? Maybe I shall only give one baby hat per colorway, and keep the others for future hatless babies.

So I have finished two baby hats, albeit in the same colorway. How many hats does a baby need? The hat pattern claims that this hat will fit (with the brim turned down) for quite a while. How long do babies wear hats nowadays?

First Baby Hat is completed

2008-10-09T14:24:00.000-04:00

BabyHat1.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

I really like this pattern from Hither and Yarn. It's called the Grow With Me Baby Hat, and it turned out beautifully. And it is such a quick knit, just a couple of hours. This is Sugar 'n' Cream on size 8 DPNs. (Amazon is selling Sugar 'n' Cream?!? Fantastic!!)

As for the log cabin baby blanket, it is on break until I get some circular needles long enough to hold it. The connectors on some of my Denise cables had weakened so that the needle would pop right off the cable. I sent them in, along with an order for some of the really long cables, and they were replaced for free! They are now in the mail, on their way home to me. When they get here, work on the log cabin baby blanket will resume. I love life-time guarantees. I am rather hard on my knitting needles because I use them so much.

Technicolor Knee Socks

2008-10-08T08:42:00.000-04:00

TechnicolorKneeSocks2.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

This is my public-transportation knitting. Actually, any transportation as long as I'm not driving. They are knee socks based on the Hour Glass Sockulator. The pattern calls for toe-up, but I'm doing them top down so I can do a new type of heel. I haven't decided yet, but I think maybe I'll do a banded heel (picture & info is halfway down page).

The finished socks should have ribbing that completely covers my knees, and then plain shaped stockinette all the way down to my tippy-toes. I think they'll look awesome with pretty much any skirt. Sort of like leg-warmers, but not.

BabyHat #1

2008-10-07T08:13:00.002-04:00

BabyHat1.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

I have been invited to another baby shower for Baby Self! I am excited because I love baby showers, but I'm a little concerned about the gift. The log cabin blanket is for the second baby shower so I can show it at show and tell at Atlanta Knitting Guild. So I need a gift for the first baby shower. Now I know that I don't NEED to get two gifts, one for each shower, but I like to. Especially for first-time parents who really do need some swag.

So this is a hat for the first baby shower. The current plan is to make a bunch of baby hats and mittens for the first shower. I've heard several times that baby booties do not stay on wiggly baby feet, so I think I will avoid baby booties. Baby Self is being born around Thanksgiving, so the new mother & father will need some hats and mittens to keep their little peanut warm. Maybe baby knee socks will stay on better than booties. Or maybe I'll make a pair of booties just for form's sake.

Is it a complete faux pas to give a new mother items that must be hand washed? Because I have some lovely wool (not superwash) for these hats and mittens, but it would have to be handwashed.

Jim's first pair of Anniversary Socks are finished.

2008-10-06T14:33:00.003-04:00

finishedSocks1.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

The first 80% of this project was a lot of fun. The last 20% sucked. There are 6 repeats of the cable pattern around the ankle. Whereas on the foot, there's just 3 repeats on the top of the sock, and plain stockinette on the sole. So the cuff, even though it is significantly shorter than the foot, seems to take about three times as long. And these are toe-up socks, so the slow part is the last part to finish. So those last 45 rows were the very longest part of this project. According to this blog and Ravelry, everything but the ankle of the second sock took 3 weeks. And the ankle of the second sock (about 45 rows) took 3 weeks.

Jim is very happy to have his socks, I think. He wants something equally as complicated for his second pair of anniversary socks, but I'm trying to talk him down. Maybe the second pair of anniversary socks will coincide with Christmas. I have two baby showers (for the same darling baby) between now and the beginning of November. Add in Christmas presents, and I'm rather unsure of the second pair of anniversary socks.

Log Cabin Baby Blanket

2008-09-21T15:48:00.001-04:00

Log Cabin Baby Blanket
Originally uploaded by missizii

More progress on the Log Cabin Baby blanket. Getting lots of knitting done is easy when you're marooned on the couch in a cast. After this strip and its neighbor, the blanket will be 24 inches x 24 inches. My goal is 48 inches square, which is 11 strips on each side. Right now I'm working on my fifth strip. So I have 6 strips per side (or 24 strips) left to knit.

I have a personal goal of having this done for knitting guild in a week and a half, so I can show it off for show-and-tell. The more important goal of having it done in time for the baby shower is much easier to hit, of course. I have over a month until the baby shower. The prospective mother and father are coming over for dinner this week, along with some other friends. I wonder if I should show them the work-in-progress?

A good soul on Ravelry sold me 1.5 skeins of Willow, so I now have all the yarn I need to complete the blanket. I am so happy about this.

Lots of progress on the baby blanket!

2008-09-17T08:17:00.002-04:00

img_1628.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

My photography skills are significantly diminished by my immobility. This is the best I could do from my nest on the couch.

In one more log cabin strip, the blanket will be 16 x 16 inches. Which is pretty amazing for a few days worth of knitting.

My goal is for the baby blanket to be a minimum of 24 x 24 inches before I run out of willow yarn. The willow color is the speckly green and white bit. Blue Sky Alpacas has discontinued their green colorways for the undyed organic cotton line. I have two skeins of every color except for willow, of which I have only one skein. And since it's discontinued, I am now feverishly searching for another skein of willow. I found some in a New Zealand shop yesterday, and they were willing to ship it to the US, but the shipping alone was $25. Jim asked me to keep looking.

Oh please, oh please let this get to a decent baby blanket size before I run out of yearn.

My leg

2008-09-16T13:32:00.001-04:00

img_1626.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

is in a cast, and will be for the next two weeks. I've survived one week in the cast, and it's not super fun.

Two months ago, I fell down the stairs and badly sprained my ankle. I think the phrase "bad sprain" doesn't really do justice to the %$*@-ing ankle though. I ripped two tendons - one down the side, and one down the front. I thought I broke it because I heard a loud snap when I fell.

It's not healing. Actually, it heals, and then I think "Hooray, it's all better!" and then do something stupid like walk on it without my brace or crutches. And then I re-injure it. So to stop the cycle of slight improvement followed by reinjury, I'm in a cast. For a grand total of three weeks.

One week down, two to go. I'm working from home, and I am getting loads accomplished. And at night, I'm knitting like it's going out of style. It's easy to be productive when you're immobile.

Log Cabin Baby Blanket

2008-09-15T13:51:00.002-04:00

img_1618.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

My next knitting project is a log cabin-style baby blanket for a friend's baby shower. The expectant parents are very enviro-conscious, so the blanket is made of Blue Sky Alpaca'a Organic Cotton yarn. It comes in six shades of organic cotton, like sage green, pale tan, and camel brown. The pattern is published in Mason Dixon Knitting, one of my all time favorite knitting books.

I should have started this project sooner, the shower is in late October. Eek. But the blanket will be so beautiful when it is done.

Jim's socks nearing completion

2008-09-13T13:43:00.002-04:00

img_1615.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

The second sock has only two more repeats of the Knotty or Knice pattern. Here they are on Jim's feet. It's so nice to have the socks nearly done, I've spent nearly a month on them.

In other news, I have a cast on my leg. I sprained my ankle in July, and it hasn't healed. So I have a cast on it for three weeks. I'm not sure how this will affect blogging, but it might. I'm barely mobile and marooned on my couch - not much fun. Hopefully I'll get a ton of knitting done. I'm missing the shop hop however, which is rather disappointing.

Sex-Change: Changing that Women's Sock Pattern to a Men's Sock Pattern

2008-09-04T14:09:00.000-04:00

My husband's socks that I've been knitting up lately are a women's pattern that comes in one size - a woman's shoe size 6.5 - 8. Isn't that knice? All ladies with unusually small or large feet, kids, and men who want Knotty or Knice socks are out of luck.

It's actually not that big of a deal, if you own Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks. Measure your loved one's feet (getting that close is itself a sign of devotion). Figure out the pattern repeat. For Knotty or Knice, it's a 12 stitch repeat. Look it up in the book, and cast on.

So I actually haven't followed a sock pattern since I've gotten Charlene's sensational book. I knit all my socks toe up, always use a short row heel, and use her guidelines. That's it. One of these days I will add all the heel and toe variations in Nancy Bush's Folk Socks to my repertoire, but that day is not today.

Thanks to Alicia for this blog post idea!

What I did this weekend

2008-09-03T17:30:00.000-04:00

I photographed and uploaded my entire stash to ravelry. I read that sentence, and look at the 70 (seventy!!!) photographs of yarn in my stash, and a cold shiver runs down my spine. Ravelry is awesome, and I really did need to go through the stash, but, really. Photographing your stash and posting those pictures to Flickr, because it makes your stash page look so pretty, is a level of knitting obsession I didn't know existed until now.

If you're not a member of Ravelry, and wondering to yourself "How bad could it actually be?" Well, there is photographic evidence. (Of course there is! I photographed my entire stash, ball of yarn by ball of yarn.) It's actually screenshot evidence. At normal size, my whole stash doesn't fit into one screen, but if you make everything very, very tiny by zooming out repeatedly, you get something like this:

You see how tiny the ravelry logo is? That's how small I had to make everything to get it to fit on one page. Ouch.

The whole process ended up being very good for me and the stash, however. I ripped out probably ten projects that I would never finish because I didn't like how they were turning out, or didn't want to make them any more. It's nice only having three projects going right now, with two of them hibernating. The old and fugly projects aren't hanging over my head, they have now gone back to stash land. I found a ball of yarn I didn't know I had, and I have no idea where it came from. Maybe some of my stash has finally figured out how to reproduce. Hooray!

First Sock Nearly Completed

2008-09-01T14:00:00.003-04:00

JimsSock.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

Jim's first sock is nearly done. And once it is done, then I'll have to cast on and knit its pair. There is a knitting superstition that if a knitter doesn't cast on for the second sock in the same sitting as she casts off the first sock, the second sock will never be completed (perhaps never even started). I'm not usually superstitious, but not finishing the second sock is such a grave matter. So now, when I sit down to knit on the first sock, I make sure that there is enough time, should I finish it, to cast on for the second.

Jim doesn't want trouser socks, he likes them shortish. Jim says that trouser socks always fall down around his ankles anyways, so just leave them that length. I contend that if the socks were perfectly fitted, they would not fall down, but they are his socks, and he shall have them the way he wants. This means, most sorrowfully, there will be no lovely cabled increases up the back of the calf. I will have to make a pair of these for myself, just so I can do the increases up the back. It also means I will have one completely unused ball of sock yarn, since I am using pretty much exactly one ball per sock, and I have three balls of yarn. The third ball was to make each sock trouser sock length.

What does one do with a single ball of sock yarn? Other than grow a third foot, I mean.

Turning the Heel

2008-08-23T21:28:00.005-04:00

turned-the-heel1.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

This is where the fun starts! Now I have to plan out calf increases. I've already charted out the increases from one 4 strand cable to one 6 strand cable to two 4 strand cables. (See chart below.) The hearts in the chart are for increases. I'm not very particular about chart-craft, as long as I know what I mean.

I'm also getting low on my first ball of yarn. There are three balls of yarn for this project, and math tells us that there is a ball and a half for each sock. So once this ball is out, I'm going to have to ration the second ball to make sure that I don't use any more than half. I often wish I had one of those yardage measures, that you run the yarn through and it counts off the yards. Then you could neatly divide a skein into halves, or thirds, or whatever. But they cost fifty dollars. My love of perfect measurements wars against my thriftiness. Thriftiness wins the day, for now.

In the upper-right hand corner is a poor graphical representation of how the six-strand cable should cross. The lower-right hand corner is how I will manage the increases so that they are symmetric. The center back cable will split into two, then those two will split into two, etc. I measured Jim's calf at its widest, and I will need 10 repeats of the 12 stitch pattern at the widest section of his calf. At the ankle, I have six repeats. So I need to increase by 4 repeats, which is marked by the little '4' on the increases diagram. Also note that in the graph, all the cables and things are through the back-loops, in a continuation of the pattern.

Note: The full sock pattern appears in the Interweave Knits, Fall 2008 magazine.

Fifth Wedding Anniversary

2008-08-22T11:27:00.003-04:00

GreenSockToe-1.jpg
Originally uploaded by missizii

The traditional fifth wedding anniversary gift is something made of wood. This is an easy one - easier than, say, tin & aluminum (10th anniversary). There's lots of good ideas out there:

Coupons written on thin balsa wood
Anything made out of paper, such as books and tickets
Anything made out of rayon (manufactured from wood pulp)
Wooden art, such as carvings, crosses
New kitchen cabinets ;-)

For our fifth wedding anniversary, Jim is getting hand-knitted socks made from Crystal Palace's Panda Wool yarn. Panda Wool is a 51% bamboo, 39% wool, 10% rayon yarn. This colorway is called "Menswear." I started on them last Saturday. They're a little further on than in this picture that I took yesterday - there's now 5 little cable-y things instead of 2.

I have another colorway called "Nightshade" that I will start on when I am done with these socks. So Jim is getting two pairs of socks for his anniversary present.

Master's In Handknitting, Level 1

2006-09-11T09:41:00.000-04:00

I have finished all of the requirements for my master's in handknitting, level one. Hooray! I plan on mailing it today. I have also started a very kicky sweater published in 1961 Vogue Knitting - pictures to follow soon.

Learning Intarsia with Cotton yarn & 10 colors = Bad Idea

2006-07-14T15:14:00.000-04:00

The colorful baby-blanket is no more. After working a few more intarsia rows last night, I held it up & looked at it. And it looked like crap. Lots of little holes from uneven gauge as a result of changing yarn every 5 stitches. Note to self: when learning intarsia, use wool & a maximum of, say, 4 colors. So, like any rational grown-up, I pulled the blanket off the needles, threw it on the floor, and announced my intention of throwing the whole damn thing out. My husband, irrational creature that he is, objected to throwing away several 90% intact skeins of yarn that cost us $50. So I am making lots of chemo caps with lots of pretty stripes. Chemo caps seem like the best way to get rid of cotton yarn I don't know what to do with.

Yarn that will be used to make chemo caps:

12 skeins of 1824 cotton in various colors
3 skeins of ivory baby acrylic
and maybe 3 skeins of Cotton Classic used in the Pea Pod Baby Set

But I might make another Pea Pod Baby Set because I just found out my cousin is having a baby! Surprise! I am very irritated with even the thought of baby blankets right now (same goes for intarsia), so it looks like all the expectant mothers I know will be getting itty-bitty one-color sweaters.

But it looks like I'm going to have to make 4 billion (ok, closer to 12) chemo caps before I can do any more stash-enhancement without a husband-lecture. I am so deprived.

Pea Pod Baby Set

2006-07-13T19:03:00.000-04:00

The third time was the charm for the pea pod baby hat. This was the first thing I've ripped out twice before it was the way I liked it. And I am very, very pleased with how it turned out. The set was knit up in Tahki Cotton Classic. I think I shall probably make more of these - they're faster than baby blankets and so precious. How precious? I will let you decide.

The pattern for the Pea Pod Baby Set by Kate Gilbert can be found at Interweave Press.

On The Needles or On My Mind

2006-07-12T13:42:00.000-04:00

Projects that are actually on the needles:

Baby Blanket from Vogue "On The Go" Baby Blankets 1. Baby is due in August - I have got to get moving. Intarsia hell soon to follow.
Multicolored Cotton Sweater for which I have lost the half-completed sleeve & associated circular needle & ball of yarn. I have searched high and low. I suspect, as per usual when knitting-related articles go missing, that my husband is involved with the disappearance. And, as usual, he proclaims his innocence.
Navy blue cardigan made of beautiful blue wool my parents bought in New Zealand. I will resume work on this when we move back north. Maybe.

Projects that are on my mind:

The Pea Pod baby hat from Interweave Press's web knits that I finished last night. It is perfect except for the fact that it is pointy. As in, it looks like an elf-hat. I am seriously considering frogging this tonight & trying again. So it might be back on the needles soon.
The Knitting Guild master's program, level 1. The yarn is in the mail for this, and I am itching to get started.
The Atlanta Knitting Guild's knit along project: a felted water bottle cozy. I will add a long strap to it & make it more like a water-bottle sling. This project is on my mind the most because of the decorating options it provides. I could do blue waves in different shades of blue with water drops on the strap. Or I could do a design inspired by pottery I saw on my recent trip to Greece. Or, I could do a plain boring one and embroider a martini on it, with olives on the strap.
The three chemo caps I have to knit from the cotton classic I bought for afore-mentioned Pea Pod baby set. The yarn estimates were, for the first time in my life, accurate, and so now I have three balls of Tahki cotton classic. I can understand why yarn stores don't accept returns, but I don't have to like it.
What to do with the growing pile of one & two & one-half balls of yarn (mostly wool or wool-blend) left over from other projects. If it weren't wool blend, they could be chemo-caps (my favorite odd-ball project). And if they were black, they could be soldier's helmet liners. As if they were the same gauge & blend, I could use them together to make some interesting color-work thing. But as it is, I am stumped.
Buying flannel liner for a blanket I finished in February & hemming it & attaching it to the knitted blanket. Finding flannel in July in Atlanta can be, ahem, somewhat challenging.

The first list is actually a lie. Those are the only projects I'll admit to. There may, or may not be, a dreadfully ugly, acrylic, lacey baby cardigan hidden under my stash. But I'm not telling.

I plan to post pictures of my latest finished work soon: Interweave Press's webknits Pea Pod Baby Set.