wip: sam's stripes

Last week while the world outside was working on this...

I started working on this:

I know the holidays are behind us and my gift is only getting later and later, but it's a striped scarf for my boss.  It may look a bit familiar, because the stripes are leftover yarn from the rest of the holiday knits I've made!  It's another "design" of my own, and hopefully it will be the one I finally write up!

wip wednesday: another hat

Are you sick of looking at the large swathes of ribbing I'm knitting?  Me too a little bit.  It's all in the holiday spirit though!  I'm also working on a hat to give to my brother in law (Baby J's daddy) as a gift.  It's the same pattern as the second Brother Hat, but I won't be knitting a fold over brim.  I should be done with all this unselfish knitting soon, so I can get back to my poor left by the wayside Cocoa sweater!

wip wednesday: swap scarf

If you've scrolled through this blog at all, this scarf might look eerily familiar.  Early this year I knit almost exactly the same scarf for a birthday present and liked it so much - not too girly or manly!  such a nice color!  easy for a non-knitter to take care of! - that I'm essentially knitting the same scarf again as my gift for a Yankee Swap!  It's not very exciting as far as gift knitting goes, but it's quick and easy!

wip wednesday: laraine

Oh, gift knitting!  I usually don't offer to knit gifts - friends and family get what I want to knit for them, and that's that.  This year Don's mom asked me to knit her a shawl and I agreed, said we'd check out Ravelry together and pick something out.  The next time I saw her she handed me a little bag with yarn and a pattern and told me she'd gotten excited.

So I am knitting a huge lace weight shawl for her, oh boy!  This is the first time I've knit with a lace weight yarn, and while the yarn itself is very nice I'm not really enjoying it.  D's mom took the ball band off, but I'm almost positive it's the yarn called for in the pattern, the Twin Leaf Shawl.  I'm maaaaaaybe half way done with it at this point.  I'll jot down some of the small changes I made to the pattern on my Ravelry project page, but haven't done so yet.  Ok, back to knittng!  This behemoth isn't going to knit itself, unfortunately!

wip thursday: the brother hat, take two

Are you ready for the deluge of holiday knitting posts?  Because here they come!

This year my brother gets a hat.  Again.  Last year I knit him essentially the same hat, but in a nice Malabrigo yarn, which he put through the washer and dryer.  Sometimes I just forget that teenage boys don't know anything about proper laundry care.  So this year I'm using Berroco Vintage, and hoping it will last more than a year!

The pattern I'm using is The Boy Hat, and I love it.  The crown shaping is fantastic, everything one could hope for: it looks nice and keeps up the visual pattern until the very end.  Perfect!

wip wednesday: tessa prototype

Holy unintentional blogging break, Batman!  It's not that I don't have anything to say (guys, I have too much to say!), I'm just too lazy to take pictures most of the time, and what good is a blog post about knitting projects with out pictures?!  This is yet another reason I will never be a serious blogger.  You can, however, look forward to plenty of work in progress posts in the next couple weeks as I gear up for holiday knitting.

This hat is a sort of pre-holiday gift hat.  A friend commissioned it to go with both her jackets (red and purple), and when I couldn't find a pattern that she would like wearing and I would like knitting, I decided to design one!  I'm not quite satisfied with the center cable, so I'm calling this a prototype for the finished design.

I should probably start trying to get all these ideas worked up into some usable patterns if I want to be able to actually call them designs!  Weirdly enough, that's the part I find most difficult.  Maybe that will be one of my resolutions for next year.

lining the very warmest mittens

Today's work in progress post is going to be a bit different than usual. Yesterday I picked up the stitches for the inner layer of my second Warmest Mitten, so I thought I'd show you a little how to.

First, make sure your assistant is standing at the ready.  Just kidding, this is so easy!  You don't need an assistant.  Little Dog just doesn't make it on to the blog very often, so I wanted to show you what she does while I'm working at my desk.  She can't even comprehend what's up there that could be more important than her.

The real first step is to make sure all your yarn ends from the outer layer are woven in.  They'll be trapped between the lining and outer layer with no way to access them if you don't weave them in now!

Next you'll want to find were to begin your row.  The red arrow is pointing to the original first stitch.  You do NOT want to start your lining with this stitch!  Since the outer layer is inside out right now you'll be working in the opposite direction.  You'll pick up your first lining stitch (green arrow) two stitches to the right of the original first stitch.  This way the center stitches of the thumb gussets will be lined up.  Puzzling out where to pick up the first lining stitch is probably the hardest part of knitting a lining into a mitten!

I found it pretty impossible to pick up stitches with my knitting needle, so a small crochet hook is useful for pulling yarn loops through to create new stitches.  Here we are poised to pick up the very first stitch!

And here we've picked up a few.  You'll want to continue picking up stitches all the way around until you have the same number that you started with on the outer layer.  For these mittens I picked up 36 stitches.

Just as a note, the outer layer of these mittens were knit with a US4 for the ribbing and a US5 for the hand.  I used the US4 again to pick up my stitches.  When I started the actual knitting for the lining I switched to a US3 to insure a nice, snug fit.  The original mitten came out far too large for my hand, which is why I wanted to knit them a lining.  You may not need such a drastic difference between the size needles you use for your outer and lining layers.

All the stitches have been picked up at this point and the mitten looks a bit like a dangerous weapon!  So we...

Tuck the outer layer back through the cuff, out of the way and...

Knit a second mitten inside the first!  I had to fudge a little and add a couple more rounds for length after the gusset shaping was done, then again for length in the hand.  This really does create the warmest mitten!

wip wednesday: cocoa

One yarn you won't be seeing in my stash posts is the Cascade 220 I picked up at the beginning of last month, because I've already started a sweater with it!  Cocoa has turned into something much dressier than the lounging sweater I first imagined; my inspiration sweater is the Cozy V-Neck Pullover with Deep Ribbing from Fitted Knits, though I'm modding a different pattern.  There's not much to show yet (I haven't even separated the sleeves), but it has been a nice relaxing knit so far.

wip wednesday: the very warmest mittens

You know how a couple days ago I said I didn't have any mittens?  I might have fibbed just a little, because I have a pair in the works and oh boy, are these ever going to be the warmest mittens!  I've used this pattern before and the mittens I made came out perfectly, but my tension must have changed quite a bit since then because the first mitten came out huge!  So, like the knitting overachiever I am, I decided to knit them a lining!  My little fingers definitely will not be cold this winter!

Here are some of my notes on Ravelry.  When I start the lining for the second mitten I'll snap a couple pics to show you how I managed it.

wip wednesday: zig zag

Dear readers, the design bug has really bit this season!  Over the summer I dreamed up a number of cowls and now that the weather has cooled down I can finally start working on them.  Whether it's worth publishing them (and I really only mean self publishing and putting them on Ravelry for free, but I would still want them to look pretty!) is a whole other question.

This cowl is only a prototype since there are a few things I'd like to change for the final version, but it still makes a great holiday gift!  There's one present off my list already!  You can check out my project page on Ravelry, but I haven't added much information there yet.

wip wednesday: cabled mitts

So, I may have gone back to my favorite thrift store the day after the turn over sale and scored more yarn!  I picked up another bag, this time full of mysterious blue partial skeins.  The yarn I'm using for these mittens is a mystery sport-ish weight with tonal variegation, very pretty!

These mittens aren't really turning out how I expected them too (they're too big because I misjudged the yarn weight, silly me!) so it's good that I have friends who don't have such tiny hands as mine! Here they are on Ravelry.

wip wednesday: miette

Ok, I know it might not look like it from this angle, but right now I'm sitting on top of an almost finished Miette!  Over the weekend I visited the flea market and found the missing piece(s) to my sweater: buttons!  I've been rushing through this sweater to finish before the start of the knit along for Andi Satterlund's newest pattern, Hetty.  I'm definitely on course to be able to start a new sweater at the end of the week, I just need yarn for it!

wip wednesday: tiny fisherman

Tiny Fisherman on Ravelry

Crazy about knitting sweaters for my nephew?  Me?  Never.

This one I designed myself, and while I'm definitely only calling it a prototype I still think it will come out decent.  As long as it's comfortable I don't think he'll mind!

wip wednesday: not where's waldo

Not Where's Waldo on Ravelry

I feel a bit silly even posting a wip shot of this hat since it's just more candy knitting, but I haven't posted in a while and a work-in-progress Wednesday post is an easy way to dip the toes back in.

Last weekend D and I went to Boston to visit the aquarium and I needed some travel knitting, so this hat was born.  We stayed with his parents and when his mom saw my nice navy and white hat she said, "Oh, it's like Where's Waldo!"  I felt a little sad about this ("Don, is this a Where's Waldo hat?  Will I look like a dweeb wearing it???") but the next day she called a black and white striped shirt a Where's Waldo shirt, so I'm not taking it personally anymore.

wip wednesday: baby sophisticate

Baby Sophisticate on Ravelry

I wanted to post the finished sweater for my nephew earlier this week so it wouldn't be quite so weird when I started posting all of my other obsessive baby knitting.  This little boy is going to have a better collection of knitwear than I do!  I've heavily modified the (free) Baby Sophisticate pattern but haven't documented all my mods on Ravelry yet.

wip wednesday: as yet unnamed loop

Stripey Loop on Ravelry

Over the past couple months the urge to design my own knitting patterns has really struck.  I've bumbled my way through designing before (I've only bothered to document it once) though never with the thought of publishing a pattern afterward.  There are a few things I want to puzzle through and put out there, but I have no idea if anyone would ever be interested in them.

What I'm working on will be a stripey, loose gauge, single loop summer cowl.  It uses leftover Firefly yarn from my finished though not photographed Firefly shirt.  I'm very enamored with it and it's such relaxing knitting!

wip wednesday: jayne hat

Jayne Hat on Ravelry

This hat makes me giggle so much.  I'm knitting it as a going away present for my former college roommate.  Sadly (for me) she's moving overseas (but good for her!).  She told me I didn't need to make her anything but I don't think she's expecting this goofy thing.

Incidentally, there were so many hits on my last work in progress post!  I'm pretty sure that almost all the hits on this blog are just bots, but maybe with my shirt being called Firefly I got some hits for the TV show, which is where the inspiration for this hat comes from.  Or maybe everyone on the internet wants to see a wedge of my sexy pale tummy.

wip: firefly

Firefly on Ravelry

I've had the Gemini top from Knitty on my list since it came out last year.  This year after finishing my first real sweater I felt confident enough to try it and here it is, almost finished already!  I didn't want to call it Gemini so I named it Firefly after the yarn instead.  You can find my list of haphazard mods on the project page on Ravelry.

One of my casual New Years Resolutions (as in only in my head) was to practice project monogamy.  I very seldom leave a project unfinished, but I liked the idea of focusing on one or two knitting projects at a time.  The way this has worked for me is to have one big project and one small project going at once.  The Gemini top is what I started after finishing my Girly Grandfather Vest, which, oops!  I haven't gotten around to talking about here.

My little shirt before it was even separated for the sleeves. They grow so fast!

wip wednesday: wedding spatterdash

Wedding Spatterdash on Ravelry

Not my wedding, mind you.  For her birthday (which was two days ago), my sister asked me to knit lacy white mittens for when she eventually marries her sweetheart.  I'm happy to oblige, and this is what I've been working on.

These mittens are fiddly!  I love them already, but after finishing the first one the other day I definitely need a break!  Right after taking this picture I picked up the stitches for the edging and the mitten looked about ten times tidier, but I was so impressed with this Frankensteinian look that I decided not to take another.

wip wednesday: big green

Big Green on Ravelry

Do I need a big winter cowl in the middle of June?  Absolutely not!  But I got yarn for my birthday and I'm feeling far too lazy right now to swatch for another project, so a gauge-is-not-important cowl it is!