FO Friday: My Christmas Knitting

I never did post my other Christmas knitting projects, did I? Well, seeing as they have been given to their respective recipients, and it is now February, I suppose it’s safe to post them!

Originally, I was going to make my mother the Chrysantemums mittens from Knitty:

Why I picked this pattern, other than the fact that it’s pretty, I do not know, as my stranded knitting skills are not really up to par. But I did and after a bunch of tries I finally got the first mitten done and was really happy with it. A little too happy, because the further I got on the second mitten the more I wanted to keep them for myself!  Terrible I know, right? Anyway….my mixed feelings about the gift translated into major procrastination and that second mitten languished on the needles, undone.

Then a little more than a week before Christmas my mom actually asked me if I could knit her some leg-warmers. Since her color preference was just “something fun” I decided to make some cool stripey Noro ones.

I was up very late Christmas Eve finishing these but I did get them finished and she loved them! Yay!

The only other gift I made was a pair of socks for my mom’s boyfriend, from another Knitty pattern (I love that site!)–Lighthouse Gansey Socks.

The yarn is Knit Picks Stroll Sport in the color “Baltic Heather”, which is a nice masculine shade of grey-blue with reddish heathering. I really like it and need to order more. The recipient was pretty pleased as well and immediately put them on and modeled them for me.

And that’s all. I would have liked to knit more gifts but unfortunately I can’t knit as fast in real life as I can in my head!

Midwinter Scarfy Thing

Hello there, long time no blog! Yeah…I probably shouldn’t have a blog, as I have trouble being faithful to such things. But every once in a while I get the urge to write so I hang on to it.

Today’s inspiration is a really simple yet terrific crochet pattern: Newidyn Shawlette. Last year when Knit Picks came out with Chroma * I bought a bunch of it in the fingering weight and I still have a few balls left in my stash. One of my absolute favorite colorways is called “Midwinter” and it combines grey, blue, and purple. I love blue and purple together and I love how this came out:

Now, the pattern says you can use any weight of yarn you like but I  recommend using a sock-weight yarn if you’re planning to wear it as a scarf like I did. The finished project is lighter, drapes beautifully, and uses up about 100g.

*Chroma is similar to Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, but is about half the price. I highly recommend it.

FO Friday: Classic Watch Cap

Happy Friday! Just a quick post to share a recent project, this striped beanie:

Classic WWII Watch Cap

My department at work is sponsoring a family this year through the United Way, and this is for their 12-year-old son. We bought him a coat and I figured it just wouldn’t be complete without a hand-knit wooly hat to match. I’ve been itching to try this pattern anyway. It’s been around a long time, since the 40′s when it was used to knit hats for WWII soldiers. You can find it here.

This hat is  actually interesting to make because the decreases at the crown form a cool star pattern.  However, the end result is a simple, classic-looking beanie that appeals to most guys. I knew the boy’s school colors are black and purple, so I added the stripes to give it a little pizzazz. That I regret a bit–not the stripes per se but their size and placement. I wish I’d put the black and purple on the brim and the thinner stripes up top. Oh well.  Live and learn! I hope he likes it anyway!

That’s all from me  for now. I’ll probably be back after the holidays when I can finally share the rest of my Christmas knitting!

I Won! I Won!

In my last post I mentioned entering my socks into the Sock Knitter’s Anonymous October challenge. Well, much to my amazement my post was one of the ones randomly selected to win a prize! How cool is that? I never win anything!

My prize was a skein of sock yarn from Slackford Studio, my choice. I chose a skein of Stalwart in Blushing Peach. It was soooo hard to choose, the colors were all so beautiful. I’ll be sure to post a pic when I get it so we can all ooh and aah.

In other news…there isn’t much other news. I have been busy trying to get my Christmas gifts knitted, and since they’re gifts I can’t really post much about them until after Christmas. Fortunately I don’t have too much to do, and it’s all small stuff. What about you? Are you knitting any gifts this year? I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season!

UPDATE: Got my yarn in the mail….here’s a pic!

Finished Object Friday: Lilac Gansey Socks*

Pattern: Amble

If you use Ravelry, you may have heard of a group called Sock Knitter’s Anonymous. (Perfect group for me, right?) A really neat thing about this group is that every month they host a sock knitting challenge, usually having to do with a particular designer, construction element, color, etc.  As long as you cast on and finish within the time period, you can enter any number of socks to be chosen randomly to win a prize. It’s a lot of fun and a great inspiration to try new things.

The challenge for the month of October was “texture with knits and purls other than rib.” I actually already had a bunch of socks on the needles already, but I was home sick so I decided to give it a try in order to take my mind off how miserable I felt. Plus I love the way gansey patterns look (and the story behind them), and they were perfect for this challenge.

Since gansey sweaters were traditionally knitted on DPNs, I felt inspired to dig mine out again. I forgot how cool it feels to knit with them!

The yarn is Araucania Ranco Solid in a pale grey-ish lavender. I got this yarn for six bucks at Tuesday Morning! It doesn’t have the greatest reviews but I figured at that price who cared!  So far I’ve found that it rises above its’ reputation. It is not the softest yarn in the world, but it knit up nicely enough. I wash all my socks in cold water on the regular cycle with all my other clothes, and lay them out to dry. These have been through about 3 or 4 washes and I haven’t noticed any shrinking or pills. They’ve fuzzed up just enough to be soft and comfy but still keep the stitch definition. I’m pretty glad I snatched up several skeins, and I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more next time I shop at TM!

*I keep running out of ideas on what to post about so I’m jumping on the meme bandwagon. We’ll see how long it lasts!

And Now For Something Completely Different

Purple Fan Socks

Okay, so it’s not completely different, since it’s yet another pair of socks, but they’re crocheted!  I haven’t crocheted in over a year, since I learned to knit, but my boyfriend’s daughter recently took it up again, and seeing her posting cute crochet stuff on Ravelry got me in the mood to get my hooks out.

It was like slipping into a comfy old sweater. I’ve crocheted since I was 7, so it comes very naturally to me. One thing I really miss about crocheting is how easy it is to rip back, because you only have one loop to get back on your hook, whereas with knitting you have to be so painstakingly careful to get all the loops back on the needle and in the right direction. Alternatively, you can unknit each stitch one by one back to where you goofed, but that can also take forever if your mistake is way back.  Ugh!!!

The drawback to crochet is that you don’t have the flexibility to create different kinds of fabric that you can with knitting. Crochet fabric tends to be thick and stiff, which makes it great for stuff that needs to be sturdy, like blankets, slippers, and bags, but not so great for socks. They don’t stretch and hug your feet like knit socks do.  These socks look pretty and are comfy enough, but they are more like booties than socks. Which is fine for me, because I plan to wear them around the house, since my feet get cold but I really don’t like slippers. I can slip these over regular socks and not worry they will wear holes.

Pattern: 120-36 Socks with Fan Pattern, by Drops Design

Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll, colorway Majestic, about 1.5 balls

Hook: B, 2.0mm

Made For: myself

All in all,  they were fun and quick to make, and now I feel motivated to do more crochet projects, like this pretty bag that I had queued ages ago (and have the yarn for!):

Sunflower Satchel

Or this gorgeous hooded scarf which is going to be in the next issue of Interweave Crochet:

Hooded Scarf

It’s so nice being “bicraftual”!

Sugarbunny Cowl

This past weekend was the first weekend where it really felt like autumn, and it put me in the mood to sit down with a good cup of  spicy chai tea and knit something fuzzy and warm. This cowl, knit in Knit Picks new Sugarbunny yarn, was the perfect thing to make.

Sugarbunny Cowl

Pattern: Ridged Lace Cowl, by Elinor Brown

Yarn: 1. 5 balls (about 200 yds) Knit Picks Sugarbunny, 80% merino wool, 20% rabbit angora, in Topaz

Needle: Knit Picks Harmony 16″ circular, size 7

Made for: Me!

Labor Day Sale Loot

Last week there was an awesome Labor Day sale on supersockstore.com–all Cherry Tree Hill yarn was HALF PRICE. Also, the first 200 customers were getting a free goodie bag with their order. So you know I bought some.

I got my order in the mail today, but I had totally forgotten about the goodie bag thing. So imagine my surprise when I opened up the package and found this:

Granted, I would never buy any of this stuff, except for the point protectors and needles. The pink yarn is super soft and there’s enough for a hat. I love the Duo Plus but not sure what to do with two balls that are different colors. The aqua stuff that’s on the card is some kind of corn fiber that the copy on the tag claims I will become addicted to but I’m not so sure about that. The orangey skeins on the left are 100% linen. I’ve never knit with linen so that should be interesting. It feels like twine so I might crochet with it instead. I can see it working up into a cute mesh bag or something.

The magazine is from Spring of 1989 and is the stuff of nightmares!!

But it was good for a laugh. All in all it was lots of fun and hey, it was free!

Here’s what I actually ordered:

From left to right: 2 Supersock Merino  in Northern Lights and Birches, 1 Fingerpaints in Mountain Moss, and 1 Supersock Silk Handpaints in Magical Waters. Yum!

Harry Potter and a Hurricane

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I posted anything here!  Sorry about that.

It’s been pretty eventful around here the past few weeks. The weekend before last, I dropped my daughter off at college, and the following weekend we had a hurricane. Of course I commemorated both of these occasions by….knitting a pair of socks!

For my daughter, I used some Opal yarn I got on eBay a while back. This is the “Ron Weasley” colorway:

Basic stockinette toe-up socks, with an Eye of Partridge heel (my favorite).

Yes, I bought Harry Potter yarn! My boyfriend asked me, “How can you tell it’s Harry Potter once it’s all knitted up?” What a silly question. There’s absolutely no way to tell! It’s just “inspired by” the characters.  It’s gimmicky I know, but it’s a nice quality yarn so I don’t feel too silly. And what with the final movie having just come out, and HP having been a huge part of my daughter’s childhood, it seemed like the perfect thing.  I think they look pretty cool, too.

And, to occupy myself during the hurricane (which thankfully did not affect my area as badly as it could have), I worked on these:

Knit Picks Stroll, Wonderland Heather

The pattern is Seaweed Socks, by Wendy Johnson.  The lace pattern is nice for socks because it kinda looks like cables, but without the bulk cables often add. What I don’t like about it is that the fabric tends to twist to one side because the yarn-overs aren’t symmetrical. I’m knitting the second sock with the pattern reversed to counteract this (at least visually) by making the socks mirror images of each other, but if I were to do this pattern again, I would reverse the pattern repeat on one side of each sock. To help visualize, rather than the pattern going like this:

)   )   )   )

I’d do it like this:

(   (    )    )

That way the twist would balance out and the “cables” would travel straight up the leg without biasing.

Well, that’s all from me for now. Hope you all have a nice holiday weekend!

You Know You’re a Yarnaholic When….

….you buy a 3-drawer rolling storage cart  to organize just your sock yarn…

Solid-Colored Drawer

Multi-colored and Striped Drawer

"Fancy" Drawer!

And you still run out of room!

I think I need a 12-Step Program!

(Isn’t it pretty though?!)