time for a backlog FO!
Parrot Fruit!!! <– ravelry project page!
pattern: citron
yarn: handmaiden fine yarn sea silk, colorway masala
needles: size US 6 (4 mm) (is it just me or is practically everything i make on 6’s recently?)
i never would have thought of this pattern, except that knitted bliss did such a pretty version! suddenly, when one of my friends was looking for a project, i recommended citron. then my grandma presented me with a lovely skein of handmaiden seasilk and said that she would love a project made with it, this is what popped to mind!
i started this project the night i went to go see suzanne collins read (remember i mentioned how obsessed i was with her books? so good.). it’s a fairly quick knit. but with the price of this yarn i hate to waste even a scrap. which makes the bind off… interesting. i finished this up on the road to toronto, for our honeymoon. it’s a good thing it was the only knit i had in the car, because otherwise who knows how long this would have sat in the corner, ignored out of sheer frustration? i tried binding off for this at least three times, and had to keep pulling back and trying again. i ended up with: knit 2 stitches, knit those two together. knit 1 stitch, slip first stitch over second stitch. knit 1 stitch, knit the two previous stitches together. keeps it stretchy, but minimizes yarn eat-age.
(i should mention that these pics were taken at Casa Loma in Toronto!)
once in Toronto, we visited with the afore-mentioned knitted bliss and she helped me block it. we also got to go on a yarn crawl Toronto style! i was pretty good. of the four types of yarn i bought, three were Candadian made!
viola silky dk and tanis fiber arts green label aran weight are both relatively small yarn makers, and their yarns are soooooo prettiful. i also bought some berroco ultra alpaca, and some yarn that immediately got wound and i started a project with… that is languishing in the UFO’s basket…
tis the end of the year! i’ve finished two projects this week (the end of december is always so busy, knitting wise…) and along with those, i have one leftover project that still needs photographing. i’ll catch you up within the week and do my year end post at that time.
one knit that won’t get a photoshoot soon is:
my hocus pocus opus spicatum, which was gifted before it was photographed. it turned out pretty cute, too…
i got the idea from fly along (or beatka on ravelry). i love everything she makes, whether its her knits, yarns, or rovings. i think it’s her sense of color.
marhta’s shadow mitts <– ravelry project page
pattern: none! cast on 35 stitches, knit garter until i had a rectangle that stretched around the hand. then i sewed a seam up the cast-on/bind-off edge, leaving a gap for the thumb.
yarn: manos del uruguay wool classica. less than a skein. maybe half a skein?
needles: US size 6 (4 mm)
i’m not usually much for the pooling of multi colored yarns, but i like this… martha is about to embark on a challenging glove project of her own, but i thought she deserved something to keep her hands warm in the mean time!
happy boxing day! i hope everyone had a fab christmas!
sleigh rides and snowball fights <–rav project page!
pattern: bobbled tam (#31) by cathy caron from vogue knitting, holiday 2008.
yarn: malabrigo worsted in colorway pearl 36
needles: US size 6 (4 mm) from cast on to bind off.
(i’m not sure why we keep ending up with such close ups of my face?)
mods: one of the things i love the most about ravelry is getting a feel for a pattern before i even cast on. things that look amazing in the magazine/book don’t work out well for many people, and patterns whose pictures i would never look twice at end up being extremely beautiful. looking through the bobbled tams on ravelry, when this hat is knit up per the directions, the lace kind of plays second fiddle to the bobbles. so i took out a repeat of the bobble and lace in the hopes that it would open the lace up a little more.
also, many people noted how they thought the hat was too long, and cut down on the number of vertical repeats. either my height gauge is completely different, or i like hats a little longer than the average person (the latter is definitely true, the former is a definite possibility); but i did the repeats as called for, and then an extra one, decreasing as much as i could while maintaining the bones of the pattern.
this yarn is exquisite. i love the subtle neutral coloring, and it shows off the pattern beautifully, in my opinion. this is for one of my best friends, who also knits. we went yarn shopping together and she chose this. there’s a separation that happens to me that i find interesting. what i love to wear, and what i primarily wore before i was a knitter were neutrals. black, grey, off white, browns were the basis of my wardrobe. but when i started knitting, and when i started shopping for yarn, i would find myself drawn to vivid jewel tones, and neutrals would kind of disappear into the background. and it changed the way i dressed. i wore many more bright colors as a result.
recently i realized this, and i’ve kind of been making a move back towards neutrals again, because there are so many absolutely crazy beautiful yarns that don’t need any dye at all. but i was startled to realize how much yarn shopping specifically altered my tastes. have any of you noticed anything about the hobby of knitting changing the way you do other things?
happy solstice! i look forward to the winter solstice almost as much as christmas this time of year. in a very different way, though. i am incredibly excited that the days will start getting longer! i think this year daylight savings was worse than usual. i don’t remember the sun setting at 4:30 pm last year… but maybe it did? either way: bring on more daytime! we got a lovely snowfall last night, and it’s fresh and lovely out there.
in here, where my toes are freezing, and extra blankets are getting piled onto beds, there’s a wooly hat blocking:
i really like it. i can’t wait to take pictures of the finished thing.
last year around thanksgiving, i made jake a new hat (infinite aspect). i really liked how my finished product turned out and wanted to make another to see how it would look with different yarns/colors, etc.
double aspect <–rav project page!
pattern: my own (ugh, i really need to start publishing some of these)
yarns: berroco vintage in heather brown, and manos del uruguay wool classica. uncertain colorway.
needles: US 4's (3.5 mm) for the ribbing, US 6's (4 mm) for the rest.
this is craig. he has the same birthday as jake. the exact same birthday. i think this is cool. craig is many things. our friend, for sure. awesome, too. but he also plays donald in our webseries, the platoon of power squadron (also referred to as PoPS), and he is probably most commonly known as wheezy waiter.
i played around with the decreases on this version a bit, only to pull back and do them exactly the same as last time. apparently, they didn’t want to be improved. or, they are already the best they can be?
since i already plugged the show once in this entry, i may as well tell you. our new episode is going up starting on december 26th. here’s the trailer:
i’ve been reading At Home by Bill Bryson recently. i love Bryson’s writing. i’ve only read a few of his books, but i like him so much that i don’t want to read all of his work too quickly. i was in the chapter on the drawing room when i cast on for these:
and reading about Fonthill Abbey, a ridiculously excessive gothic revival home, built by the architect James Wyatt for William Thomas Beckford (who, according to Bryson, had one of the most complicated love lives i have ever heard of).
gothick spires <–ravelry project page
pattern: meida’s socks by nancy bush, from interweave knits favorite socks book.
yarn: claudia’s hand painted fingering in colorway ink*
needle: size US 2 (2.75 mm)
mods: eight pattern repeats on the leg, and only picked up 20 stitches for the gusset.
i like this pattern, and i’ve made it before. this time i really mastered the estonian cable without the assistance of a cable needle. these went really quickly due to being primarily knit on a long road trip.
*this is an accurate representation of the color of the yarn. but it’s one of those colors that looks very different in different lights.
o tanenbaum, o tanenbaum! i get a little ridiculous about the holidays (in a good, excited, gleeful little girlish way), and most especially about my christmas tree. growing up, there were all kinds of fake trees. parents and grandparents had them due to various allergies, shedding of needles, etc. but i just love a real christmas tree. the smell, the look. anyone with glasses can probably tell you of the joy of sitting in a room with a christmas tree and taking off their glasses to look at it.
buttoned garter mitts
pattern: mashup of ysolda‘s garter mitts and through the loops buttoned mitts
yarn: rowan felted tweed
needles: size US 5’s (3.75 mm)
mods: using ysolda’s garter mitts as the base pattern i cast on and did the first bit as the pattern calls for. but i added a few repeats before doing the thumb, and just tried it on periodically until it stretched across my palm (three extra repeats, i believe). knit the thumb as called for in the pattern.
one garter ridge after the thumb, i added four more stitches to the hand section, to make a little extra length that the cables were going to eat up. from the top edge, it went 4 garter sts, make 1 purl, knit 6, make 1 purl, purl 1, knit 6, make 1 purl, purl 1, knit 6, make 1 purl, marker, and garter down the wrist. i did a 6st cable every 7th row, and did 4 w+t repeats for the front of the hand, then decreased the four sts i’d made at the beginning of the cabled section. knit 3 more garter ridges, and then a row of buttonholes. six buttonholes at six stitches apart: knit 3, *(k2tog, yo), k6* until last 5 sts, (k2tog, yo), knit 3 stitches. 3 more garter ridges, and cast off.
now i want to note right now that i am in no way opposed to kitchener’s stitch. on stockinette. but kitchener’s stitch on garter? it can bite me. i can not handle it (as troy from community would say ‘it’s wrinkling my brain!’). the day i manage to do it truly well, i will throw a party. so i was glad to avoid that with my little buttoned down maneuver… plus, the buttons are pretty dang cute. those are little shell buttons from a mega pack of all sizes of shell buttons, bought at some basic sewing depot. they will continue to show up, as i have upwards of 20 in various sizes waiting around.
in other crafty news:
german paper stars. i place the blame on chronographia for inspiring these. though i don’t have nifty sheet music to get all crafty with. tutorial found here. i have about 8. but what to do with them? make a garland? individual ornaments? place them on gifts as an added personal touch? spray them with adhesive an dump copious amounts of glitter on them? spend hours obsessively making more? so many options…
egad. i didn’t even remember that i hadn’t blogged about this. it’s been around for so long i just assumed that i had to have blogged it, sometime… and these pictures were taken at the same time as the saroyan/baktus mashup and as the leaves begin to fall. the last really amazingly gorgeously warm day of summer. to be fair, there were plenty of lovely days after that, but you know what i mean, right? it’s hard to think about that day right now, as i am swaddled on the couch in layers of silk and flannel and wool blankets to keep warm.
my brother has a history of losing handknit hats. his jayne cobb hat actually got lost/stolen at a concert, and his girlfriend saw it sticking out of some dude’s back pocket, and stole it back. at this point, i should probably just plan on making him a new hat every year for christmas. except this was supposed to be last years christmas hat… whoops?
i love love love this hat.
pattern: my own, really. sometime i’d love to get it all down. but it’s only really the numbers that are mine. the two most prominent patterns on the hat are from charts from knitting fair isle mittens & gloves.
yarns: the glorious stonehedge fiber mill shepherds wool that i adore, in pewter (which is actually the lighter of the greys).
berroco ultra alpaca light in brick red.
knit picks swish dk in charcoal.
the rest are random unknown worsted wools and acrylics.
needles: US size 4 (3.5 mm)
so i’ve moved blogs! welcome to this new space! i’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, and i finally got my arse in gear!
i’ve been adding old posts to this guy so that hopefully all of my knitting blogs will be in one place. and i’ve got a bit of a backlog of finished knits to share with you guys, so i’m gonna try to start making it up to you.
pattern: the parseltongue hat, by the excellent tiny owl knits (and her etsy store)
yarn: brown sheep lambs pride worsted in tahiti teal.
needles: US 8’s (5.0 mm) and 9’s (5.5 mm)
ravelry project page
i started this thinking it could be a christmas present for someone, just a random stash busting project that would be great to have on hand when i was figuring out christmas presents. by the time i was halfway into the snakey cables i knew that this hat was for me. i love it and it will be mine forever.
i finished this november 17, just in time to wear it to the midnight opening of harry potter and the deathly hallows part one. side note: i think david yates was the perfect choice to finish off directing the series. nobody has been able to capture the relationships better. especially between harry, ron and hermione. and let’s face it, that is the crux of it all. and especially important during part 1 of deathly hallows, where they are all floundering around, frustrated and trying to figure things out. it would have been so easy to lose their love for each other in showing their frustration. there wasn’t enough snape, though…
ifandany 