Whole Lotta Knittin' Goin' On...

Oh my!  I have been a busy bee since I was last here...

I am quite proud of these adult size fliptop mittens.  For some reason I struggled much more with these than I did with the ones I made for Mr. Boy.  But in the end they came out very lovely and deliciously warm. 

 Above is my very first successful adventure into the provisional cast on.  This is actually a practice/experimental hat that I wasn't really expecting to love as much as I do.  I just wanted to try out a double sided beanie with a seamless provisional cast on and I didn't want to "waste" any "nice" yarn.  Funny thing is I love this hat! I used left-over cheapy cheap baby yarn thinking that it would just be an "extra" hat to store in the car for when I forget my hat or whatever, and then I ended up truly loving the style, fit, softness, warmth, and even colors so much that it quickly became my favorite.  Perfect for those wishy-washy Spring days when the weather can't decide if it wants to be nice or blustery. Those two layers block out the wind and those bright colors remind you that yes, it really is Spring even if the wind is trying to give you frostbite. 

The pattern is actually for a men's hat, but it is so cute on my girlie head that I couldn't believe it.

Above is the exact same pattern.  This one made for my brother with only a single layer as written and requested.  This is the third one of these I have made for him since he either loses them or claims they don't fit. But I think he's just a hat hoarder. 

The poncho that I started literally years ago and finally finished this winter just as it was warming up. It is lovely and warm and soft as kittens and I plan to live in it next fall and winter.  I don't have it written up in Ravelry yet partly because ponchos are just not that cool anymore and I feel like a weirdo for still loving them as I do and partly because I forgot.  Maybe I'll get to that some day and add a link.  Maybe not.  

 

Socks! Two pair of actual, genuine, bona fide, knitted socks! I am super excited about this new skill of mine because it has been a long, slow, road, of gathering knitting skills like breadcrumbs until I felt confident enough to even try to knit these babies. I think I will just leave this picture up here and make my next blog post an entire post about socks because I have a lot to say about this development. Unfortunately I actually sort of overdid it while making that 2nd pair- too much knitting with not enough rest in between and I have a little Repetitive Stress Injury going on so I'm taking a break from knitting anything for a week or so- which is how I ended up writing up this blog post instead... 

And here are some Irises from my garden because they're pretty and because I am just so darn stoked to even have a garden.  

There's probably going to be a lot more garden talk going on around here from now on. Fair warning. 

Oh yeah... my blog... and fingerless mitts

I just keep forgetting that I have this blog! 

Well... here's some more mitts to post.  I'm in love with mitts, especially the fingerless mitts, though I'll eventually have to make myself some flip top ones like Mr. Boy's.  

The ones below are a Christmas gift and will have a hat to match (which I will post here if I can manage to remember that I have this blog!) 

 I just love this color! And I really wanted to make myself a sweater or something out of this yarn, but (of course!) I can't seem to find it again in the stores.  It's just plain ole Patons Classic Wool in Natural Heather and I could order it, but there's no way to guarantee I'd get this exact color.  If I were a better photographer you'd be able to see how beautiful this yarn is close up.  All kinds of soft Monet-like colors all spun together to make this dreamy soft pink.  For a craft store yarn, they really pulled out all the stops on this dye lot.  Well, I'll keep my eye out for some more of it.

The above pair are the ones I made for myself because I was just so jealous of the pink ones and I was on a role so I whipped these babies up and they are deliciously warm, if not quite as pretty to look at.  These were also made from Patons Classic Wool, though I don't know the color.  This stuff has just been sitting around in my stash for years and I don't even know what it was originally intended for, but it makes a nice warm pair of mitts- warmer actually than the pink pair because over the years Patons has thinned out their worsted weight yarn considerably... (We SEE you Patons! Not cool!) 

I used this pattern for both mitts. I just adjusted it from full mittens to fingerless mitts.  The cool thing about this pattern is that it uses smaller needles than usual for worsted weight yarn which makes your mittens (or mitts) very dense and wind-proof(ish). 

More details about needles, modifications, yarn etc. here. 

I have all sorts of knitting and crocheting things planned for the next few months. So if I can get my stuff together you will see some of that soon. I'm currently on the hunt for the perfect hat yarn that doesn't itch like the dickens and doesn't stretch out weirdly and is warm and once I find it I plan to make myself a hat in every color offered and as God is my witness I'll never be cold or itchy again!  

I got the mitts!

I am extremely proud of these, my first ever, mittens. This was a big learning curve for me and I've never been what anyone would call an adventurous knitter.  Plus I've always felt super awkward when using double pointed needles so I avoided it whenever I could, but Mr. Boy needed mittens and the cheapo acrylic ones I bought from Target (twice because he lost one somewhere in Kentucky on a road trip for Christmas vacation and it was a complete fiasco!) were not going to cut it.  And I knew he would want flip-top mittens (because the infamous Target ones were flip-tops) and really who wants to take off their entire mitten just to zip up your coat or backpack? Well some people do I guess because there are a ton of super cute regular mitten patterns available, but I don't and neither does Mr. Boy.

The pattern I used for these were actually not fliptop mittens so I had to modify it which is another thing I usually don't do, but this time I did it and pretty successfully, too! I will admit to making a few hilariously ridiculous mistakes (like making the thumb long enough to almost reach the top of the mitten) and having to rip back parts of the first mitten more than once (actually more than twice) which is very scary for me because again, I'm not adventurous, but it worked out in the end and I'm feeling like maybe I've jumped up from intermediate knitter to beginning advanced.

At first I was worried that Mr. Boy would reject these in favor of the Target ones, but he loved them instantly and now won't leave the house without them, even when it's not really mitten weather.  Which makes me so proud I could burst into spontaneous song like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

That reminds me that I have to make a back up pair (or two) so we don't have a repeat of the Kentucky Mitten Fiasco.

Mitten stats on Ravelry. 

Slippers!

I have been trying to write this post for the past week or two.  I've started on it 3 or 4 times, and then something distracts me or I just don't feel like it so I think, okay, I'll do it tomorrow... then repeat.

I don't have much to actually say, I guess.
So, I'm just gonna show you these slippers I made as Christmas gifts.

Nola's Slippers
Various worsted scrap yarns used
Size 9 Circular needles with yarn doubled throughout
Raveled

  

The first pair went to my mom, the second to my brother, and the third I made for myself.
If you're looking for a great easy slipper pattern these are the ones. They're basically booties made for adults.  They're knitted flat then grafted on the bottom.  You don't actually have to use kitchener stitch, but I did so there wouldn't be a seam to walk on.  This was my first time doing kitchener.  I used this video to show me how and I was so surprised by how wonderfully easy it was! Yay!

The only thing that was kind of annoying about this pattern was the picking up the stitches around the foot part.  And that was annoying only because the stitches are super tight at first and I'm still a little challenged at picking up stitches, but this pattern taught me a lot about how to do it correctly and make it look nice, so that is a good thing.

Truth be told, this pattern actually looks a lot more eh... sophisticated when you use only one or two colors, but I was determined to bust some of my stash so I decided that warmth trumped sophistication and since no one is likely to wear these anywhere but home, who really gives a hoot.

Let me say that these are wonderfully warm and comfy slippers.  They are a bit slippery on a hard floor, just like socks, but they are so warm and if you use wool then your feet won't sweat at all when wearing them. I have already worn mine so much that they look like something passed down from my grandmother.

Here's a little something I'm working on for a friend who just adopted a baby boy.

These pictures are actually just two sides of the same swatch.
Isn't it precious?

Happy New Year!

You are an obsession. You're my obsession.

A few months ago, I wrote this post about shawls and how I finally "get it" about why everyone is so crazy about them.  Well, here's my next confession:  I am obsessed with shawls now.  I honestly can't figure out how I ever survived and thrived without them.  AND I finally knitted one with some of that stash yarn I was talking about in my last post.

Ravelry link  

Araucania Atacama- now discontinued  

I was worried about trying to knit one because as I've said before I am a s l o w knitter.  Also, most of the patterns I see getting ooohed and ahhhhed over are lace knit shawls and despite the undeniable beauty of the lace knitting.  I am just not there yet and don't know if I ever will be. Aside from the mind-numbing complicatedness of the lace stitch patterns,  I'm just not a lacey shawl kind of gal so I'm not motivated to figure out how to do something that's, strictly speaking, not even really my style.  But I found this pattern for the Mara shawl and I thought it was perfect.  Exactly the kind of thing I might actually wear and easy as pie to knit.  Now this shawl consists of a whole lotta garter stitch, so if that's not your thing, then you probably wont like this pattern, but while knitting this one I discovered that I really love the garter stitch, especially with a yummy dk variegated yarn.  For the first time in a long time I found myself enjoying a knitting project so much that I really didn't want it to end.  And of course, I finished this one amazingly quickly because I was enjoying it so much.  

Here's a close up of the color and the stripes I added to make the shawl bigger. It's still not as big as I wanted it to be, but I really used up every scrap of that yarn that I had and it's now discontinued, so that's that.  A word about this yarn:  Yummy!
This is 100% alpaca, which is a very warm fiber.  In the garter stitch it is so squishy and delicious.  I put this shawl on my shoulders any time I'm feeling chilled and in no time at all I am toasty warm.
(I had no idea that just putting a little something warm on your shoulders could make you feel so warm!  I am so in awe of that new discovery.)
Alpace, like wool, can be a little itchy, but so far I'm persevering because I love the warmth so much.

Another confession:  I already bought some more yarn because I want to make another one of these, but next time in a solid color and much bigger.
Yes... obsessed.  

And just to ease my troubled conscience about the abandoned ripple blanket, I also finished a sweater that I started last year and that was languishing in my UFO pile.

Yarn:  Caron Country

I actually kind of forgot I had started this one.   I think I got discouraged because I knew I wouldn't quite have enough yarn to make the sleeves for this sweater long and at the time I really wanted it to be long sleeved, but after pulling it back out I decided that short sleeves would be just fine and in fact I really actually love the short sleeves.  I think for a long time I thought short-sleeved sweaters were kind of silly.  Like those open-toed boots that were all the rage last fall/winter?  I thought, "What's the point?  If it's cold enough to wear boots/a sweater, then wouldn't you need to cover your toes/arms?"  But living in Houston, I'm now understanding how it can be chilly enough to want a sweater, but not cold enough to need a long sleeved sweater.  And if it gets colder I can always wear a long sleeved shirt underneath and really that's about as cold as it ever gets in Houston.  (Still don't really get those open-toed boots, though.)

And that's about all I can tell you about this sweater.  I have no idea what pattern I used or if I just made it up as I was going along. All I know is that it's a top-down raglan knit in the round and that the yarn is super soft and lovely and machine washable and if it holds up well I'll definitely use it again.
Perhaps on another shawl?  

Playing Hooky (no pun intended)

I have a few confessions to make...

I've been playing hooky from my ripple blanket.  It's not that I don't love the ripple, but sometimes, you just need to think about/ look at/ fixate on another project before the one you're working on is finished.  I used to have a real problem with this until I decided that I would only work on one project at a time.  But seriously people, ripple blankets take a really, really long time to finish.  Especially the particular ripple I love to do which consists of nothing but single crochet through the back loop (sc tbl) until the end of eternity.  This magical stitch makes a beautiful fabric that is cozier than should be possible, but that has a wonderful dreamy drape to it.  It even makes really cheap acrylic seem wonderful.  But it is boring! (Of course, if this blanket was for me, I'd probably be finished by now.)

There's also the fact that for about 2 weeks we thought we might be moving to Chicago.  Now as soon as I heard this, I naturally thought about yarn and knitting and making all kinds of things that I don't really have any occasion to knit while living somewhere that only gets cold about 3 times a year.  I was thinking about mittens and wool sweaters, (with real wool!)  And the imagination was sparking all sorts of inspiration frenzies and visions of walking through snow in a beautiful, perfectly knitted cable knit sweater. But alas, the dream died and the job Mr. Man was hoping to get went to some other (undeserving) candidate (who probably has no appreciation whatsoever for hand-knit sweaters.)  And I had to go back to finding things to knit/crochet that I might actually get to wear here in Houston. But by then I'd already raided my stash and found some pretty awesome and some other not so awesome yarns that I'd forgotten I had.  Well, this sparked another frenzy.  This frenzy had to do with finally knowing what I wanted to make with these certain forgotten yarns.

First up we have Nashua Vignette:

It looks like a lovely yarn, doesn't it.
Well, it isn't.
I bought this yarn years ago (it's now discontinued) to make a sweater, but once I started knitting with it, I hated it.  For one thing it is incredibly scratchy.  For another thing it's really... sproingy.  I don't know any other word to use.  What I'm trying to say is that even though it's a worsted weight yarn it behaves like a bulky weight yarn once you start knitting or crocheting with it.  It just... sproings up! I had a lot of this stuff, too because I bought enough to make a whole sweater, (but not a bulky sweater because, let's face it, Kate Moss I am not, and who else would look good in a bulky sweater?)  It's just been sitting in my stash for 5 years or so but a few weeks ago I had an epiphany about what to make with it.  

Can you guess what it is? (See how sproingy?)

Okay, I'll show you...



Yeah, that's right, I made another Half-granny shawl.  This one was made more for warmth than for prettiness.  I don't really have any plans to wear it out in public.  For one thing, it's huge!  I was trying to use up all that yarn (I still have one ball left.)  And I found a surprising amount of other scraps of very similarly colored yarn hiding out in my stash so I threw that stuff in there too.  Now I have a shawl that I can wrap around myself whenever I have to go outside to let the dog out or whatever, but don't feel like putting on a sweater or jacket. Or just for when I'm cold inside, which happens to me a lot. This shawl is very warm, and it of reminds me a little of the kind of thing you might see on an ancient Italian widow. I kind of hated every minute of working on it because of that crappy yarn, but I do have the satisfaction of knowing that it's no longer in my stash and it is exactly what I was wanting when I decided to make it.  My favorite part is the little picots on the edge.  I need to use more picots.

Okay so even though I do have more to show you of my "playing hooky" projects, I have no more pictures so it will have to come in the next post.

Meanwhile I'd like to know if anyone else is having this playing hooky problem.  Also if anyone else has any yarn in their stash that they hate and don't know what to do with it.  Anyone?  

Do you tawashi?

A tawashi is actually a japanese word for a specific type of scrub brush, but the term has expanded in the crochet realm to these cute little thingees that people started making and using as scrubbies for their dishes.  

I came across these first on etsy.  What caught my eye in particular was the fact that they were made out of acrylic.  Cheapo acrylic yarn, the scratchier the better.  I had always followed the yarn commandment that says, "Thou shalt only use cotton for handmade yarny kitchen thingees."  But much to my surprise acrylic does an extraordinary job of scrubbing dishes. I even scrubbed my lasagna pan without soaking it first with above tawashi and it took no time at all and nowhere near as much elbow grease as it usually would.  Hmmmm... looks like I'll have to take back my vow to never ever buy Red Heart Supersaver again.

I used this pattern to make the tawashi above.  The crochet part was super simple, but I had to watch a video  I found on ravelry to understand how to put it together.  So I made a little picture tool to show how it's done in case anyone wants to make one.
  

When I looked up "tawashi" on Flickr and ravelry I found that people are cuckoo for these things.  Sort of like useful amurigami.  For me the awesomeness of tawashi all lies in the idea of maybe never having to buy a sponge again.  And the fact that you can throw them in with your regular laundry. Because I've always been a little creeped out by the whole sponge crawling with bacteria situation.  Speaking of which, supposedly tawashi made from acrylic is so good at removing food particles from dishes that you don't even need to use soap. (Of course, I still will use soap, but how cool is that?)  There is also some Japanese yarn that has been treated with silver ions to make it anti-bacterial.  Yarn made especially for tawashi making! But I'll stick with my Red Heart stash for now.

So far I've just tried this one pattern, but I found all kinds of super cute tawashi pictures on Flickr.

Here are some of my favorites: 

1. ks-00b, 2. redblueset2, 3. Leaf tawashi, revisited, 4. Heart Tawashi, 5. it's the circle of fish...., 6. Veggie Tawashi, 7. Happy little orange, 8. granny_square tawashi, 9. Strawberry Tawashi, 10. japanese tawashi, 11. 978452904249 natural tawashi, 12. paw_print

Happy tawashi making!

Updated to add video link on 10-5-2012.

Sometimes I knit.

Not often, but sometimes, I knit.  I really love to knit, actually, but it takes sooooo loooonng to finish anything, which means that I hardly ever do finish anything knitted these days, which is why I just crochet most of the time.  I can crochet like the wind.

However, every now and then someone asks me to make them something, and inevitably that something is usually knitted.

This hat for example was made for my dad.  I made him a hat long ago for Christmas, I think it was?  And when I asked him what he wanted for Father's Day it turned out to be another hat just like the other one.  Really, a hat?  In the summer?  You want a hat?  Are you sure?  Yes.  He's sure he wants a hat, only he wants it to be burnt orange (UT colors) so he can wear it to the UT games.  And let me tell you, that was no easy task finding the exact right shade of burnt orange.  You can't just pick any old orange.  I had to take him to the yarn store and we spent quite a bit of time going over which orange is burnt orange and which is Tennessee orange and which is almost burnt orange but not quite.  (Apparently to show up to a UT game wearing Tennessee orange or not quite UT orange is a major faux pas. Who knew?)  But alas, Dad will have his hat.  (Quite a few weeks past Father's Day, but knitting takes me soooo loooonng!)

Here's the pattern I used for the hat, though instead of a rolled brim, I used a 1X1 ribbing for the brim. And the stripe sequence I chose was based on the Fibonacci sequence because it's one of those math geeky things that men think are cool.

And then once I start knitting, well, I have to make a few of these too:

Now these are dishcloths made of cheapety cheap cheap cotton yarn, and they are magic.  Magic I tell you!  Everyone loves these things, and thankfully they are extremely quick and easy to make.  I can turn these suckers out in a day or two.  Less if I didn't have a toddler to tend to.  They may not look like much, and usually when I give them to people as gifts they look at me kind of like,  "Oh... knitted dishcloths... well... thanks... I guess..."  But then they always come back to me and say, "HEY! Those things are AWESOME! I need, like 100 more of them!"  But really you only need, like, 3 of them because they are damn near impossible to destroy.  Unless you're my mother.  She always finds a way to tear them up, so I made the above for her.  But when Dad saw them, his eyes lit up!  "OH! You made us some more dishcloths! Oh I LOVE these things!"  Really?  Well, that's what I like to hear!

Anyone want the pattern?  Here it is!

(In case anyone is interested, when I make them I change row 3 so that the first knit 2 together is an SKP, only because I think it makes a more fetching dishcloth, but it's really not necessary for functionality.)

Oh Mr. Darcy, can you fetch me my shawl?

I must admit that when I first noticed that shawls were becoming the thing in the knitting realm, I was a bit baffled.  I know something had to replace ponchos once those went out of favor, (which I was really dismayed about because I still love ponchos, but that's a whole other story) but shawls seemed a bit too... I don't know... Jane Austenish to carry over into our current modern times.  I mean shawls and texting?  It just didn't seem right.

Don't get me wrong.  I love all things Jane Austen, myself.  I've read every one of her books.  I've probably watched Sense and Sensibility at least 400 times (much to my husbands dismay.) That scene where Elinor's shawl falls off while she's taking one of those oh so English strolls and talking to Edward and he tenderly places it back over her shoulder... *sigh.*

But the point is, I just couldn't really see the need to spend hours knitting a shawl and then where would I wear it and with what?  I mean I'm pretty much a lounge pants/sweats and tee shirt kind of gal.  In the summer I might wear a dress or two, but there's rarely a need for a shawl in a Houston summer.

Then I saw a girl in Starbucks and she had a shawl wrapped around her neck in this certain way so that it was more like a scarf and she looked très soigné, and I thought, well OK, I could maybe pull that off.  And then I saw this pattern on Ravelry and I knew I had to make myself one. It kind of goes along with my whole granny craze that I've been on lately.

So I went for a little stash dive and found some sock yarn that I seriously don't even remember buying and before I knew it I had my first shawl.  Here's three things I finally understand about shawls and why people love them.
1.  They keep you so warm!
2.  You can wear them inside without feeling like you're dressed for outside.
3.  Shawls are like little blankets that are acceptable to carry around with you all day.





I actually did a little research on the shawl (because that's the kind of thing I do when I get semi-obsessed with something new) and I found out that shawls first came into fashion around the Jane Austenish times (1780-1870) along with all things in any way Oriental.  Most everything else soon went out of style (turbans) but the shawl stuck around because it served an actual purpose which was mainly keeping women warm in drafty houses. And to think I used to feel sorry for poor Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood freezing their arses off in the English winters with nothing but a shawl to keep them warm.  Ha!

(This is as close as I get to soigné.)


Here's Mr. Boy in my shawl.  He always gets cold in the grocery store.

By the way, crocheting a shawl is so much less time consuming than knitting one.  I used sock yarn and an F hook and it still went fairly quickly.  I would have made it bigger, but I kept running out of yarn.
There are definitely more of these in my future.  I've just about worn this one out already during this crazy cold winter storm nonsense.  (I seriously have already had to mend it!)  

Bad Penny (badly photographed...sorry)

Voila!

As promised here is a picture of what I've been working on all summer. Yeah, it took me all summer long to knit this. And yeah, the pics kinda suck because I took them on my phone, at night, in my bathroom. I really was going to try to take some really nice pics. I was going to stage it all up and maybe figure out how to work the timer on the "good" camera. Well... I was gonna do a lot of things. But I'm finally starting to realize that if I wait for the perfect opportunity, or if I wait until I have time to do it perfectly, it just doesn't happen at all. So this is what you get.

Above is a close-up of the stitch definition. This is my first top-down raglan sweater and I'm particularly stoked with the way these things knit up. I love the little pattern created by working in the round and increasing twice in one place in the same place every other row and how that eventually makes the front, back, and two arms for a sweater. That is just the freakin' coolest thing ever.

Here's a pic of me, braless, no make-up, in sweatpants. (But we're just going with it. Remember the important thing here is that I actually finally posted the pics. We're not judging. Right? And to be fair, this is how I look probably about 80% of the time anyway.)

I have no idea why I decided to make the sweater this short. The pattern itself is a bit short, but not quite this short I don't think. I just really have no explanation for this. I'm not a belly-showing kind of girl. Never have been, even before I had a child. Even when it was the "cool" thing to do and "everyone" did it. Even when I took dance classes every day and had pretty nice abs. I just don't understand. Anyway, when I wear it in public I wear a camisole underneath.

Here's the side view. Still with no bra and sweatpants. (This is character building. That's what this is.)

The pattern is Bad Penny from knitty.com.

I didn't do the cute little lace design thingy in the bottom ribbed section. I just didn't have the patience for knitting from a chart, but I may someday make this sweater again and I will make it longer and I might even do the lacey thing because I do think it's cute.

I used two different yarns because I ran out of one and it's discontinued. So the ribbing and a small portion of the bottom of the sweater are totally different colors, but I'm pretty pleased to see how well they worked together. (The one that's not discontinued is Katia Degrade.) Both were dk weight cotton so I went down to a size 5US needle for the body and a size 3US for the ribbing and knitted the pattern in the largest size to make up for the difference in gauge.

The Katia is a really nice yarn with a velvety feel and is surprisingly light weight for a 100% cotton yarn and BONUS: it washes and dries in the dryer beautifully.

Haekelbeutel!

This is what I made out of those mystery squares!

It's called Inga's Haekelbeutel which my German sister-in-law tells me means "bag" or was it "crocheted bag?" Well, anyway, that's what the pattern is called. It's free and super easy if you want to make one of your own. It's basically a bunch of squares sewn together in a clever way. The pattern calls for 16 squares, but I only did 12 because I didn't want the bag to be so huge and because I didn't feel like making anymore squares. I also used a square pattern from this book instead of the one on the pattern because I wanted something a little different. You can use any darn kind of square you want as long as they're all the same size.

I gifted this bag to my mom for Mother's Day, but eventually I plan to make one for myself that's lined with fabric as soon as I learn to use and stop being afraid of my sewing machine.

I used mercerized cotton scrap yarn for this bag, but I think it would be really cool in linen or hemp also. I still have SO MUCH of this yarn left!

Why did this take so long?

So a friend of mine sent me an invitation to her little girl's 1st birthday party one day. It was sent a good 3 weeks before the actual party which should give me plenty of time, even with a rather rambunctious 2 year old on my hands, to make a simple baby sweater. Right? Suuuuure.....

Well let me just tell you right now, that's not how it happened. And the thing is, I still can't really explain why. I was so sure this would be a quick and easy project. So Sure. I read up about it on Ravelry, and almost universally the word on the street was that this baby could be worked up in a matter of days. Certainly 3 weeks should be plenty of time.

And how long did it actually take me? Well, I lost count, but I'd say it was a little over a month. Now there were some factors contributing to this.
1. Out of town husband for 2 weeks which means no one to relieve me and give me some knitting time.
2. Never really have knitted a baby sweater before. But how hard can it be? It's just a small sweater for God's sake.
3. Had to start over once because it was turning out way bigger than I expected according to what I thought was a "good enough" gauge estimation.

Still this was supposed to be easy, and it was NOT.

The pattern is from the book Last Minute Knitted Gifts, (yet another reason why I thought it wouldn't take too long), but it's also available for free on-line. Maybe someone else will have better luck with it. Though I should say that it did turn out just as cute as it was supposed to turn out, it was just way more trouble than I wanted it to be.

I used Lion Brand Cotton Ease, which is a good substitute yarn, but it's a bit thicker than the recommended yarn. It's also a little harder to work with than wool would have been. The sleeves, which were done in the round, then attached to the body ended up being a bit of a stretch, also there were huge gaps to be sewn up under the arms aside from the kitchener attachment method in the pattern (which by the way, I totally ignored and did a three needle bind off instead). In retrospect, if I ever attempt this pattern again, I think I'll just go ahead and do the sleeves back and forth and seam them up the inside of the arm. Which will be just as much trouble as all the kitchener and sewing up gaps nonsense ended up being when I followed the pattern as written.

I also omitted putting buttons or beads on because I didn't feel like doing button holes by the time I got to that section and I didn't have any beads that would fit through the seed stitch without being too small or too big.

All I can say is... thank God, it's over.

Just in time for the warm weather.

Emergency Hats!

So lately my knitting has been all about hats, because if you haven't heard, it is cold. I mean like, seriously cold here in Houston these days. Well, actually today it's kind of nice. It's around 41 according to Yahoo weather anyway, but even the fact that I am calling 41 "kind of nice" should tell you just how cold it has been. Because usually 41 means that I stay inside and don't go out unless I have to. But after three (or was it four) staight days of highs of 35 or so and that was for about 2 hours during the warmest part of the day just before the sun sets, 41 at 9a.m. sounds pretty durn good. Now I know, I know, for those of you living in Antarctica or Fargo or Germany or hell, even Kansas, you're thinking, "Hell! That's not cold! Yesterday we had a high of -25 now that's cold!" But here in Houston, it just never really gets that cold. It hardly even freezes. Our green stuff stays green pretty much all year round , true it's kind of a sad brownish green in the winter, but it's green, and if it dips down below 32 we all get a little excited and start sanding down overpasses and covering pipes and whatnot. You want to call us weenies and make fun of us for it, well, all right. But come talk to me next time you have one of your sweltering heat waves of 90 degrees, cause 90 is a cool summer day in Houston.

I guess the point I'm making is that it's all pretty relative. And the other point I'm making is that I did not have one decent hat to see me through. I've said before that I don't have such good luck with the hats. I just have a hard time making one that fits my tiny pinhead and looks good and doesn't itch my forehead like the dickens. And after a few misguided and ridiculous attempts in my early knitting career, I finally pretty much gave up on hats altogether. I did manage to make one, just one, that I actually like and wear somewhat regularly, but it's cotton and it's only good for regular Houston winters. I've blogged about it here. But mostly, I just go without because hell, we live in Houston. I mean no one ever really needs a hat in Houston, right? Wrong.
I needed a hat.
The boy needed a hat.
A warm hat.

Voila! A warm hat!

The pattern is Simple Pleasures by Purlsoho and it is aptly named. It was an extremely simple and pleasurable knit, well, except for the 6 inches of ribbing. I'm not particularly fond of ribbing, but let me tell you, it is worth it because once you fold that double strand of ribbed knitted wool and it covers your ears, it is wonderfully, blissfully warm! I used Koigu instead of whatever the pattern calls for because that's what I had already in my stash. For the fuzzy part I used Anny Blatt's Fine Kid instead of Kidsilk Haze because, once again, that is what I had in my stash. Both yarns worked beautifully as substitutes. And the Kid mixed with the Koigu makes a beautiful and also very warm material. I would love to have an entire sweater out of that stuff.

Maybe someday.

The coolest thing about the pattern, in my opinion, is that it can be knit entirely on one size 6, 16" circular needle. Yes, my friends, one needle, no double points! Yes, the last couple of rows are a little tight, but as the pattern says, it can be done and I did it! Technically speaking, I was supposed to change to a bigger needle once I finished the ribbing, but I didn't because I didn't have a bigger 16" circular needle and I was not going to brave the frigid cold to go buy one. Nevertheless, it all worked out wonderfully in the end. I used a size 6 instead of the size 8 and 9 that the pattern calls for because, as I said, that's what I had, but also I have a strangely small head and I hate a too big hat. That sucker needs to be snug to keep out all the cold and wind. And the 2 by 2 rib has plenty of stretch.

The end result is pretty cute, too! If I do say so myself.

The boy also got an emergency hat:
Simple Hat by Debbie Bliss. The pattern can be found in her book, Baby Knits for Beginners. (From which I long ago checked out of the library and photocopied the patterns I liked.) This is the second one of these hats I've made for the boy. The first one fit him from the time he was tiny and actually still fits, but only stretched to it's limits and the yarn I used wasn't that warm. So I made him the next one using some stashed Lion Brand Wool Ease that I happened to have and I upped the needle size from a 4 to a 6 which made it perfect for his toddler head. I also left off the little nubby end this time. He's a toddler now. He should have the dignity of a nubless hat.

Though I don't use Wool Ease anymore because it pills too badly and starts looking like something your grandmother might drag out of the attic to show you how cute and tiny you once were after about 2 washes, I really like the way this hat turned out. The variegated navy/forest mixed with the solid blue looks much better than I thought it would. Though honestly I didn't really care. I just wanted to use up some stashed yarn and have a warm hat for the boy.

He actually likes and wears his hat which is more than I hoped for!

10 Cool things about CROCHETED SOCKS

1. Crocheted socks are easy!
Seriously. They are. Back in the day, when I was a new crocheter, I picked up this book from the library, thinking that I would maybe make me some socks. I read through a couple of patterns until my eyes crossed and returned the book thinking to myself, "Well, that's not gonna happen..." The patterns in the book are actually easy, but they weren't easy enough for me at that time. (I like easy things, in general.) If only I had known that:
2. You don't even really need a pattern.
I'm not sure what made me start thinking about crocheted socks again. I guess I was getting tired of trying to think of summery things to knit or crochet. (I'm SO ready for Fall to be here.) So I was browsing around ravelry and I came across this pattern, and I thought, "Well, I can do that..." It's really more of a simple, general explanation than a pattern, but somehow, it was just what I needed to give me courage to try to make me some socks. And low and behold...

Before I knew it I had one sock finished. Which leads me to cool thing number
3. Crocheted socks are fast!
I took me maybe a day and a half to finish this one sock, and that's while running around after a very busy 19 month old. Which leads me to
4. You only really need some yarn, a hook, and 2 stitch markers.
Also maybe a needle to weave in the ends and sew the afterthought heel closed. (Though if you want you can also slip stitch it closed. Which I tried on the first sock and it worked, but wasn't as pretty as sewing it closed.) Now, let's just take a moment to fully appreciate the magnitude of #4 here. You only basically need one hook and some yarn. That's one hook compared to 4 or 5 double pointed needles or two circular needles or one super long circular needle. I don't know about anyone else, but for me that is a big deal. For one thing, my little one loves to sneak up to me and pull whatever I'm working on out of my hands. Let's just imagine for a moment how devastating that would be if I were trying to juggle 4 or 5 needles and he ran up and grabbed one... Not a pretty picture. But when he grabs my hook, I can just giggle at him, chase him down, and finagle the hook out of his hand, then get right back to work, redoing the two or three stitches that got pulled out by his mischief. "No problem, sweetie... aren't you cute..." So maybe #4 should be, "Crocheted socks make you a better Mommy."
5. You get to use sock yarn.
I, for one, have always gazed longingly at the sock yarn. Especially now that you can even get it at any old craft store that also sells Red Heart Super Saver. But I never really bought any because I never made socks. Sure you can make other things with sock yarn, but I never did. But now I plan to happily browse through the sock yarns, just dreaming and scheming about all the cool socks I'm going to make. Yippee!
6. If you use an afterthought heel you can replace the heel part when (not if) it gets worn out. Now there are other heel methods that can be used when crocheting socks. There's the short row heel and the gussetted heel. Both of which are sort of copies of the heels of knitted socks. But I can't really see any great benefits to either of those types of heels. Looking on ravelry I saw a lot of complaints and confusions related to both these heel types. Even so, some crocheters seem to see them as superior in some way to the afterthought heel, maybe because they're harder, or maybe because they copy the knitted sock heel. But personally, I think the afterthought heel is the greatest thing since sliced bread. For one thing it is spectacularly, extraordinarily easy to do. For another thing, I think it's a whole lot prettier than the other ones, mainly because with the afterthought heel I can keep the lovely spiraling stitch pattern that I started out with, and that you can only get by spiraling, instead of interrupting it to suddenly start working back and forth in rows. It gives the finished sock a sort of continuity that looks really beautiful so that you can't necessarily see where the sock ends and begins. I love that.
7. You can custom make them to fit your foot exactly.
In fact that's why you don't really need a pattern. Because you try them on as you're making them to see when to do the next thing.
8. If you make a mistake, it ain't no big thang.
Since this is crochet, not knit, making a mistake means just pulling out the hook ripping to exactly where you need to, then putting the hook back into one live stitch and moving on with your life. It also means you can play around a little. You can try new things, be creative, try a ripple or a ribbed cuff or a fan-stitch, or lace, or filet crochet, tapestry crochet... the possibilities are almost endless.
9. Crocheted socks are very comfy, very warm, and Yes, you can wear them with shoes.
I don't know who started the nasty rumor that crocheted socks can't be worn with shoes, but I'm guessing that same person probably can't sleep with a pea under her mattress either. The fact is, if you use a small enough hook and thin enough yarn (I used an 3.5mm E hook with Red Heart and Sole yarn) they can be easily worn with shoes. They are a little thicker than the thin socks that you can buy in packs of 6, but they aren't like slippers. The stitch pattern that single crochet makes is a little different than stockinette stitch, but I got used to it pretty quickly and I'm fairly sensitive skinned. If you're skeptical, go ahead and give it a try. It's a quick enough project and if you don't like them you can always give them away to someone as a gift because
10. Crocheted socks make great gifts and people are impressed by handmade socks, knitted or crocheted.
As soon as my mom saw them she tried them on then "ordered" 2 pair. Though some knitters may turn their noses up at crocheted socks, non yarn worshipping people generally don't even know the real difference between knit and crochet. All they know is, "Hey, someone made me a pair of socks with their own two little hands! How cool is that!" Personally, I love the fact that because crochet can't be duplicated with a machine, crocheted socks can't be bought, only made. So there!



Update:  The pattern I used to make this is no longer available apparently.  The link isn't working anymore.  Too bad because it was sort of perfect.  But I found another one that is similar, though it starts at the cuff and works down to the toe instead of toe-up like I did for this one.  (Toe up is easier, I think.) Soon, I'll have to write out the sock recipe that I used to make these.