Even with the stripes, this is a very quick knit on 5.0 mm needles. I sped through the body and did everything according to the pattern ...
.. until ... haha, you knew there was an until, right?
At the beginning of December I decided to start a couple of sweaters. Out of the blue, I suddenly HAD to cast on for both of them. One is slumbering now, but I'm still in the thick of the other, so I'm going to start blogging about it -
Panoply of Purple Stripes using Stefanie Japel's knitting pattern
Shapely Boyfriend.
You may remember that the
mustard gloves were an experiment to not make little holes when the stitches split at the thumb/palm and in between the fingertubes. For these gloves, I'm trying the
crossed stitch technique I found on TECHKnitting.
As I mentioned in my last post about
these gloves, I started these gloves about 6 months ago. I was fresh off my own pair of turtleneck gloves and I was curious about how to avoid the holes that appear on either side of the thumb when you pick up the stitches for the thumb tube.
Well, in my
previous post about these gloves I admitted that they'd been sitting around for 5 months waiting for 12 stitches to be bound off (and the ends to be woven in). I was pretty incredulous. Maybe I should have given myself a break though.
I've finished my cream scarf and even had a chance to use it last week when we experienced an unseasonal rainy cold front.
So when I consulted my list of WIPs to choose the next featured project, I found "mustard gloves." I started these six months ago. I didn't think I had much left to do on them. When I unearthed them from the WIP drawer, this is what I discovered ...
Woo hoo! Check out my
Intarsia 101 tutorial on CRAFT Magazine's site.
Look at what blocking does! It's a must for knitted lace. If you're going to take the time to knit lace, you gotta block it. And, let me tell you, knitting is slow and knitting complicated lace is SLOWER than slow. When I was first starting out, I think I was going so slowly that time started running backwards.
I bought this cream yarn over a year ago to make myself a scarf. I've had a hell of a time figuring out what I wanted to do with it.
I completed my knitted braided cable headband. It's made from Schulana Merino Cotton 135. It's a soft and spongy yarn that doesn't itch me at all.
Get ready to learn more information about the construction of a mini clown sweater than any one human should know.
I am savoring this project. Taking my time. Enjoying every step. This is so much fun, I don't want it to end. I'm going to be a little sad when it's all over and I have to mail it away.
I've finished the embroidery on the face. Now to do the hairy sleeves.
Yes, it's as terrifyingly adorable as you'd imagine.
I'm totally smitten with knitted cables lately. This is a bunch of pre-work for a headband/earwarmer. None of the stitching shown here was used in the final headband.
Here's a little wristlet I've been knitting up.
I started these gloves in a cold snap, then it got nice so I stopped working on them. This has happened a couple of times. Finally, it got so cold, I finished them up.
I spent a some time this weekend reorganizing my craft supplies and WIPs. Mixed in one of my craft piles, I found the fair isle swatch from
the class I took. Yay!
Gah! I took an Fair Isle class at
Knit One One taught by Carrie Vermazen several weeks ago. I just got around to blogging about it tonight , but I can't find the Fair Isle swatch I made. The heck?! It wasn't very fancy, but I would have liked to show it off to you. :(
So now we get to the mechanics of attaching knitted and crocheted rectangles to curving chairs. I didn't plan ahead. I figured I'd come up with something.
This post explains the yarn, needles, hook, and design process for my office chair covers.
So last night I had to run out to the cafe for an hour. I grabbed my needles and some yarn and thought I might start some gloves for myself because my store-bought gloves just sprang a hole in the first finger of one hand. When I got to the cafe, my first thought was, "Crap. There is no way in hell I will be able to do the cast on I want to do."
I've started exploring/practicing/studying knitted increases.
A co-worker brought in this animatronic gopher that dances like the
Caddyshack gopher. I don't know what came over me, but I said I'd make him a hat and scarf. It's not like I'm drowning in WIPs or anything ...
If you follow me on twitter and are up late, you probably heard about the girl gloves. I made a pair of fingertube gloves for a friend.
When I saw the photo of the color stripes in my first post about the
knitted chair covers, I noticed something that really got under my skin: accidental red-white-blue.
When I last showed you the
Less-Crazy Phone Cozy I'd just completed the phone cozy part. But I also want to have a zippered part for money, ID, etc.
I have started a less-crazy phone cozy. One of the color knitting techniques I've read about is doing two color stripes in a continuous spiral so there are no row-changes between colors.
Back to the crazy phone cozy and the steek saga. In my sewn steek searches I'd stumbled across crochet steeks. I decided to try it out on the now-unusable knitting.
The two guest chairs in my office from work have been well-loved. I want to spruce them up a little with slip covers.
I first read about steeks while browsing knitting books at the bookstore. A
steek is a CUT YOU MAKE IN YOUR KNITTING. When I read that, I almost dropped the book.
I've actually taken the time to start reading Color Knitting the Easy Way. One of the techniques it talks about is knit-slide. I thought it might make my crazy phone cozy easier to knit because I wouldn't have all these knotted ends to deal with. Although, I'm pretty sure the author would recommend against trying this technique with 11 colors.
I've got a crazy idea for a phone cozy and an undeniable urge to knit stripes, so I'm killing two birds with one stone.
When I originally moved to San Francisco in '92, the library was the main place I got books. I was in this hulking, dark, cold building that seemed ancient and ominous. I would spend whole Saturdays puttering around in there. I loved it!
Anyone else get a
Beetlejuice flashback from the post title? I sure did. :) "I can't believe we're eating Cantonese. Is there no Szechuan up here?"
I bought some fingertube yarn since I didn't have enough left over from the scarf to finish the gloves. It matches perfectly!
This is the softest, squishiest cotton scarf ever. Just in time for summer in San Francisco ... ha! No matter, it'll be chilly here soon enough.
These are man-sized gloves on my woman-sized hands. I've gotten as far as I can with the yarn I have left.
The other day I started thinking of cool things you could do with knit cables. I did some searches and I couldn't find what I had in my head. So I made a swatch.
I'm plowing ahead on the fingerless gloves. I figured out how to use my double pointed needles. I learned the
tubular cast on from a Ysolda Teague you tube video for the ribbed cuff. I also learned the cable cast on from the Stitch and Bitch book for the top of the thumb hole.
Andrew loves this scarf. It's too long, but he wears it anyway, which is a testament to just how much he loves it. For a long time (omg, it's been *years*) I've been saying, "I can make it shorter." But now that I can knit, I thought I'd actually tackle this project.
After letting the sweater sit for months, I got the urge to try and fix the armhole and neck line situation.
I bought some SUPER fancy (read: expensive) cotton yarn to knit Andrew a scarf. I made all sorts of fancy swatches for him to choose from (no photos), but he always came back to stockinette as his favorite.
This weekend I finished up my first knitted sweater. It's awful.
Last Sunday I was sitting on a bench in Yerba Buena Gardens knitting, and two older Chinese women slowly walked by me smiling and nodding at my knitting. I smiled back. The younger woman, who I'm guessing is in her 60s, stopped. She started talking to me in Chinese. I held out my knitting to her so she could see the fabric. She touched it and ooo'd and ahhh'd.
I've been using my courdory bag to go to the laundr-o-mat and grocery store. I have a brand new fancy phone, and I feel like protecting it. There was a perfect little project in the Stitch 'n' Bitch book!
Craft time has been very limited lately which makes working on big projects impossible. But having snippets of time here and there is perfect for working on my knitting skills, because I only know how to knit and how to purl. Five minutes working on knitting and purling seems like an eternity. In a good way.
I made plans with a friend to go to Craft Bar last Thursday. In between making plans to go and the big night, I got an email from a wonderful woman with the Museum because she saw my post about
Open Source Embroidery. She thanked me for my post invited me to Craft Bar. And I said, "Oh, yeah, I'll be there!"
I don't feel like taking the time to actually submit it to
fail blog. No one but us would probably get it anyway ... right? ;)
Wow! Thanks for all the owl links in the comments of
my last post! It's a smart suggestion that I start out with something small like a hat, mittens, or a scarf before I try a sweater (oh, here's the link to the
owl sweater pdf if you want it).
I like to ponder things for a while before jumping in, so knitting probably won't happen for me for a while. In fact, because of
the challenge, it'll probably be 2010 before I pick up the pointy sticks, because I'll need to buy some.
I've been feeling the pull to start knitting.
And then Strawberry emailed me a link to this
owl sweater. Oh, man. The button eyes just kill me. I've saved the
free pdf pattern for my knitting future ...
** Edit: you can find the pattern here **