Matching Hands and Feet

Autumn in New England is ever-changing; crisp days, cool nights, a freak snow storm (seriously that was not cool - I am not ready for snow). I thought before I had to bust out the serious hand knits that I would be able to use these new mitts at least a little. Actually I have been wearing them more indoors than out. I have one of those apartments with steam radiator heat and if it's not cold outside then the heat doesn't kick in and the apartment is just a bit nippy. These mitts do the trick, keep my hands warm but fingers free for typing, fast-forwarding thru commercials on the DVR etc....

The pattern is Elphaba knit in Knitpicks Felici. I am such a sucker for self-striping yarn. Super straight-forward pattern and the only mod I made was to add an additional 12 stitches since I have big hands. They fit great. I would show you in a picture but it is freakishly hard to take a photo of your own hands.

They took just about a skein to knit and then I was left with another skein just sitting there mocking me. So I decided to make a pair of anklets. While I was pretty precise in getting the mitts to match I didn't really care on the socks. I knit these toe-up because I wasn't sure how far my yarn would go and since the anklets were going to be pretty easy I figured I may as well try out an afterthought heel for the first time to up my degree of difficulty as it were. It was not hard to do at all really and it keeps the striping going unlike a big heel flap.

Check out my brand spanking new sock blockers I picked up on my recent trip to Webs.

I Was a Knitting Moron

I present  my Coralicious Socks knit in the Piedmont Wildsocks yarn I bought while in California. They really should not have taken as long as they did but I had a touch of the moron that slowed down their creation. I tried knitting them as Artichoke socks and after knitting over 4 inches there was no denying it they looked like crap. Maybe the yarn was meant to be toe-up socks so I tried Victory Socks - about 3 inches knit, again crap. Seriously what was going wrong?   Was I screwing up when doing a yarn over between a knit and purl stitch? So I hit the you tube videos and the truth was enlightening and embarrassing. Somehow I had forgotten how to do a simple yarn over. I had been doing them in the wrong direction. I have done yarn overs before, lots of them. No problems. Honestly!

So I started fresh with the frogged yarn rewound and a new pattern picked out. And lo and behold - not crap!

I know I've mentioned before how freaky my feet are but seriously check out how much wider my right foot is!

Toe-Up Stripey Goodness

Yay! A finished project. These are my Toe-Up Stripey Noro Socks and I love them. I even kept knitting them higher than I normally wear my socks because I loved seeing the colors change and contrast with the black.

They are far from perfect. there some serious color jag issues in spots and yet, still love them. I love them because they fit just right and because they are my first toe-up socks and because I figured out Judy's Magic Cast-On (which is freakin' brilliant, by the way) and because I knit them while I was visiting Ariel and because the second sock flew off my needles within days and because it was cool that flight attendants would stop by my seat and ask about them and compliment the socks (and therefore me) and because Noro is just so damn pretty. 

The details: Wendy's Fingering Weight Toe-Up Socks with Gusset Heel in Noro Kureyon Sock (left over from my sister's socks) and Valley Yarns Huntington.

Knitting Out West

Greetings! I am back from my trip to West Coast to visit the fabulous Ariel. It was my first time to the San Francisco/Oakland area and it was great. A wonderful mix of sight-seeing, eating, imbibing and knitting. Since this is a knitting blog,I figured this first post will focus on the knitting bits.
My first day there we popped into Article Pract in Oakland.  A wonderful store with a large variety of yarn, really helpful staff and they were having a sale. A sale on ALL yarn. Really, it would have been simply rude to not buy anything. (I am all about the good manners.) As much as I love stripey and variegated sock yarns, I realized that for certain patterns I really need to have some nice solid tonal yarns in my stash.  This madelinetosh sock is so soft and the color just so heavenly.

A trip to the Mission had to include a stop at ImagiKnit. A big store with a huge variety of yarns, where I think I was so overwhelmed I walked away empty-handed. But being the good friend that I am, I did find perfect green yarn that she simply I knew Ariel would be unable to resist. I can spot Ariel green's and orange's from a good 15 feet away.

I really wanted "souvenir yarn" something either spun or dyed local so we hit up  Piedmont Yarn for some of their hand-dyed Piedmont Wildsocks. I am pretty certain I already have the pattern chosen for this yarn. Stay tuned...

Even better than the new yarn, it was so wonderful just to hang out with Ariel and knit. It reminded me how much I miss knitting with others.   Our weekly group kind of faded away a while back and while I have seen some of my knittah's socially we haven't sat and knit together for a long time. Ariel and I would pull out our socks and knit all over the place. We scoured projects on ravelry together when we discovered a shawl pattern we loved from someone we met at Article Pract. I may have even have been molested by some of her stash. (I am working hard to repress that memory).   We chatted with one sweet woman on BART whose husband was very well-trained to feign interest in the difference between DPN's and circulars.  Nearly any time we stopped to rest our weary feet out came the knitting. A fellow knitter understands that we are not leaving the cafe in North Beach until I have finished turning the heel.  I loved when one of her friends asked us how we knew each other and Ariel said simply "knitting". The look on his face was one of such confusion, it was priceless.  One evening after a lot of walking, Ariel said "How 'bout wine, knitting and Firefly?" and I could not imagine anything better. 

My sock in progress while enjoying an afternoon beer.

Gifts for My Niece that Aren't Zoobles

Have you ever seen a Zooble? They are these little round plastic balls that pop out into animals and they were the hip toy for the 6 year-old set this winter. My niece pointed them out to me at a toy store when I asked what she wanted and I took one look at them and said "Yeah, someone else will get you those." And they did. At no point, was the small child deprived of  Zoobles. But to be honest, they creep me out. I am pretty sure if you look at them too long they will try to steal your soul, just sayin'.

So I got her something that I always liked, a kaleidoscope. Actually a  make your own nature kaleidoscope kit. It came with rocks and dried flowers and glass gems but you can change what's in it whenever you want. We put it together over the holidays and it made really pretty views. I wanted to see if I could get a few pics by sticking my camera to the eye hole and it worked.  Here are a few of my favorite shots just because I think they look neat.

I also wanted to make something for my niece so she said she wanted a new hat, as long as it had a pompom. I made the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat (a free ravelry download ). It's got a little bit of colorwork but it's a real quick knit that I naturally did not finish in time for the holidays and now I just need to get it to her. I mostly knit the pattern as-is and just made mods on the detail work. I added a single crochet edging, made the ties braids instead of i-cords and added a pompom of course.

Holy crap, it's been how long?

Whoops, guess who hasn't blogged for a long while? Truth is I didn't have a whole lot to say (insert sister's snickering here) and most of my knitting was for the holidays so I couldn't show anything. But I have re-emerged and hope to blog more often in the new year. I would like to take more photos and cook more in the new year so you may see some fancy pics of beet risotto or at least more veggies with googly eyes.

So now let's do some knitting project catch-up.  A few years back, I knit my brother a scarf. It was a really nice scarf, it had cables and it was the first thing I had ever knit for him. So last year I noticed on a cold day that he wasn't wearing it or any scarf. I mentioned it casually to my mom and she said, "He lost it and he's afraid to tell you". While striking fear into my brother's heart would have at one point given me a sick thrill I guess we both must have matured at some point by not wanting to inflict pain on each other. The scarf was lost on one of those odd Boston days when you walk out of the house and it's cold only to have the temperature swing by 25 degrees in a few hours and having a super long wool scarf wrapped around your neck while on the T (Boston's subway) is torture. So the scarf somehow disappeared and joined the ranks of other things gone missing on the T, I myself must have contributed half a dozen umbrellas to the T lost & found over the years. So my brother got a new scarf, the Shale Pleated Scarf knit in Ultra Alpaca.  It has a really nice texture when knit up and the only mods I made were to knit it on needles one size down to make it a bit denser to block out the winter winds. The color is a much darker navy than what appears in the photo.

For my brother-in-law, I knit a pair of the Pirate Mittens (it's a free download on ravelry) to go with last year's pirate hat. I followed the pattern to go up in yarn size and I went up in needles and they still won't fit him unless we cut off his fingers down a knuckle or two. So I officially owe him a project of his choosing. Maybe a nice scarf perhaps? They tend to fit well. Something silly and geek related?  So here are photos of the too-small mittens which I am sure someone will wear...someday. 

 

I decided my sister would appreciate the gift of hand-knit socks. There was a bit of a false start, it's amazing how a nice yarn and a good pattern can result in something that gives you motion sickness while knitting it. I knit about an itch into the pattern saying "she'll either love it or hate it but I sure as hell hate it" and had to stop. So putting that yarn aside for another day, I went back to one of those basic yarn facts, my sister loves her some Noro and she loves stripey socks. So off to Mind's Eye Yarn I went to pick up Noro Sock yarn. While there Lucy reminded me why LYS' are so awesome by helping me split my skein into halves. What was likely to have been stressful and frustrating at home (Noro sock yarn twists onto itself a lot)  was a much more pleasant experience in her cozy shop chatting with other knitters . (Note to self: a scale for yarn would be awful handy to have).  The socks don't match each other at all but luckily for me I know that my sister probably prefers totally mismatched stripes. 

Ubiquitous Baby Knits

I've got some friends who are knocked up so it's time to work on some knits for the wee ones. My usual go-to is a toy but I figured I'd go for something different. Well, different for me, really these are some of the most knit patterns out there and you know why? Because they are so frakkin' cute.

This set is for my college roommate who is not due until October so it is really odd of me to be so ahead of the game.  Everything is knit with Tahki Cotton Classic with just a bit of Knit Picks Shine Sport of the green parts.

The Kid's Fruit Cap - I figure we can say it's a blueberry. The hat seems amazingly small to me but after putting out a call to my friends on facebook asking them to compare newborn heads to various fruits i.e. melons, grapefruits etc...it probably is not too small after all.

Saatje Booties (although I actually used the Fleegle Seamless Version - because avoiding seaming is always better) Yes, the buttons are little blue apples and as far as I know there are no blue apples but hey, they are cute and I was sticking with the fruit theme. And buying them  gave me an excuse to go Windsor Button and hang out at the counter fondling the Malabrigo lace weight.

Odds and Ends

I swear this recent sock-knitting binge is going to end soon, I mean it has to, doesn't it?  I was looking through my stash and figured I could eek out a pair of anklets from the leftovers of my Endpaper Mitts project.  The pattern is the Pom Pom Peds knit up in Valley Yarn's Huntington. I was so concerned that I was going to run out of the grey that I started the toe on the first sock a bit early and the sock is a teensy bit short. And did I run out of yarn, noooo, of course there's still some leftover.

I then had to decide on what to cast on next.  I was on ravelry playing around with all the new pattern categories and found this super simple crochet necklace.  I dug down into the big old Rubbermaid tub of stash and found this bag of gold and silver metallic yarns that my grandma had given me. To put in perspective how long this stuff has been kicking around her place I am pretty certain some of the thicker gold yarn was used to make my Barbie a very fabulous skirt/sweater set with matching set of luggage. In the bag there was some thin silver almost thread weight yarn and with some beads from the bead stash, voila! a super simple necklace made up of three strands. I like it so much I can actually see myself wearing it out of the house (I have a bad tendency to make jewelry and then never wear it - stupid, stupid, stupid).  Anyway, I am pretty glad to have actually use some of grandma's yarn - she will be thrilled to know I got some use out of it.

Too Hot to Knit

Hi, I would have written this post sooner but it's been hot and humid and sticky and icky for quite a few days now and I don't deal with heat all that well sometimes.  It makes me cranky and sleep funny and I forget to eat and then get crankier and a bit woozy because I forgot to eat. I am also pretty sure a large portion of my blood stream has been replaced with a mix of iced coffee and iced tea. Yes, I realize that the large intake of iced caffeinated beverages may have something to do with the sleeping funny thing but we'll ignore that for now -I am pretty sure logic does not survive in high humidity. But today is cooler and my CSA veggies have been washed and tucked in to their crispers so now I can post. 

I spent the 4th of July weekend up in Maine. Luckily I was not told about the recent bear sighting on my folks front lawn until after I was already up there or I may have begged off.  It was one of those "Didn't we tell you about the bear? Your brother knows about the bear." I get to hear about the trip to Costco so my Dad can get white fish but they forget to mention a bear!! Apparently some crankiness lingers....maybe I should have another iced coffee.  Anyway....I saw no bears just the usual finch and chickadees and a special treat. 

A robin had build her nest on the edge of the garage and we spend the first few days checking up her three baby birdies, we watched Mama come by with some tasty food, and then them venturing out on the ledge and stretching their wings.  But when we woke up on the 4th we discovered two of the birdies had their own independence day of sorts and had taken off.  Leaving just one little birdie, sulking that he had been left all alone.

Don't worry by the end of the day he too had left to join his Mama and siblings up in the trees somewhere.

Back in knitting news, I finished up yet another pair of socks. Seriously, they are the crack of the knitting world. I may need an intervention. This time it's Spring Forward  knit in TOFUtsies.  I think a solid colorway may show off the pattern better but I since this is mainly a non-wool yarn I am excited that I may actually be able to wear a pair of my hand-knit socks sometime before October although clearly not for a while.

Here my sock takes in the view of the lake from the deck. Trust me there's a lake out there past the trees.

My friend Lisa came back from Maryland Sheep and Wool a few months back with beautiful raw silk from Tess Designer Yarns and cast on right away to knit Summit. Turns out they have a retail shop in Portland. Cut to me spending a large amount of time admiring the beautiful colors and chatting away with the dyer herself (not Tess by the way), Melinda.  I really went in with the mindset to buy some of the raw silk to knit up Summit myself since I just adore the pattern and have had it queued since it that edition of knitty came out. But somehow I  ended up with this GORGEOUS 100% silk in this fabulous brass colorway as a belated b-day gift from my mom. It has less yardage than the raw silk so I may make a smaller version of Summit or find another pattern or just clutch it close to me muttering "precious" as I did for the first few hours after I got it.  Really the picture does not do it justice it is luminous and so amazing to touch.....

Seriously, another Knit Chicken?

Clearly I have a problem.  (And to my sister who had the thought "Just one?" a second ago, I'll get you for that, beware you may be forced to laugh at something so hard a beverage comes out your nose.) Anyway, back to my problem, it's the damn knit toys!  I can't stop making them.  I see this pattern by Susan B. Anderson for chickens and I think that's a cute pattern. But nothing I really need to make. But then looking through the projects on ravelry I see the chicken made with these great charts that a ravelry user has been so gracious as to put up on her blog. 

There is something about the colors and the wing pattern that reminds me of this set of chicken knick-knack things that my grandmother used to have on top of her fridge and suddenly I really wanted to make this bird. Ah, nostalgia.  The fact that I happened to have all the colors I needed  just hanging around in my stash made it a done deal. 

Since the last thing I need is another stuffed animal in my place and he's a bit too country to fit with my style the chicken will soon be crossing the road and traveling up to Maine to enjoy the simple life of my folks place there. 

The charts are available here at rav member, ElleM's blog. You still need to buy the original pattern, the blog just has the charts for the stranded design.

I would say this is the last toy I will be knitting for a while but my mom just asked if I'd make a toy for the grand-daughter of one of her friends.  And seriously can I stop knitting toys for longer than a few months? Apparently not.

Oops, I Did It Again

Crazy as it sounds, well at least to me, I knit a second pair of socks. And again,I enjoyed it, this may become a habit.  I dug down into my stash and found my Flying Happy Jenny yarn.  I think this yarn had been waiting to be made into socks and I just didn't know it until now. It is Knitpicks Bare, that Jenny had dyed for me a few years ago. 

Based on recommendations from my sock-loving friends I knit Charade, a super popular sock pattern.  It's a a free ravelry download so click here to check it out. You know why it's a super popular? Because it's a really good pattern. It's easy to memorize, keeps you interested, looks great, an all-around good pattern.  I made a few tweaks just to adjust for my weird feet and they fit amazingly well.  I also made the cuff a bit shorter because I don't really like tall socks and I used an eye of partridge heel just because I kept reading people mention it in the rav forums and wanted to see what the difference was between the other heel I did.  I think it's just a bit prettier and I am sure there is something about how the heel wears but since it's 80 degrees here I am not wearing these soon to test that out.

Look at My Foot!

My trip to the Dark Side is complete, I have finished my first pair of socks. And *gasp* I enjoyed it. 

I definitely did learn a bit along the way. They are a teeny bit big since I was so afraid of them being too small. They are definitely not perfect, the first one has a serious pointy toe. Oh and how does one get that last stitch when you're doing the kitchener stitch to be tight? I seem to always end up with that last loop flying around. Then on the second one I was about half-way through kitchener'ing (that's a verb right?) when I realized I was doing it the wrong direction and would only have worked if my toes were moved by 90 degrees and then it would be seriously hard to walk. My feet are wonky but not that much.  I do understand now the serious pride at being able to turn a heel.  I found myself thinking things like "sure that person can do such and such (insert impressive achievement here) but can they make a sock? Doubt it!"

I also got to experience trying to take photos of my feet. It seemed to work best with me upside down with my legs propped on the back of the sofa and my head resting on the ottomon. Should anyone from the apartment building across the street happened to look at that time they must have been seriously confused, all the more since it was at something like 6:30am on a Saturday.

Since I normally wear short socks, anklets and such, I am now scouring these kinds of patterns on rav.  If anyone has a favorite or a favorite spring sock yarn let me know. It's finally too warm to wear wool socks here! Except my folks did say the got 2 inches of snow this weekend in Maine.  Really, winter is over now!

It's Flooding in Boston, but I Hear Hell May Have Frozen Over

My knitter's block has not really not wanted to un-block. I made several attempts at casting on only to rip everything out. Nothing was working. I had to try a new tact.

Did you ever see that Seinfeld episode where George decides to do the exact opposite of what his natural instincts tell him to do? I decided to give that a whirl. So what is the item I never, ever,ever knit? That I have stubbornly refused to knit.   Altogether now boys and girl- SOCKS! 

Yes, I decided to knit socks. (Somewhere in San Francisco, Ariel is cheering). I went to my LYS and I scanned their wide selection of sock yarns.  My instincts pulled me to my familiar favoite colorways, blues, blue and green, blue and purple, do you see a trend? And it struck me again - opposite! No blues, no quiet, muted nature or jewel tones. I had to go for loud and bright to break me from this block.

So I picked this skein I would normally never buy.  Look it has orange and a bits of pink! I don't wear/knit orange or light pink.

I have cast on the plain old sock recipe in The Yarn Harlot's Knitting Rules.  Well actually I cast on and frogged and cast on again, and then knit a whole bunch and ripped back to the ribbing and changed needles sizes. First they were going to be too big, then too small, then too big again, and I mutter about my fat calves and freakishly wide feet but I kept knitting. I was determined and it helped that I was like a small child and really wanted to see what happened next with the self-striping yarn. 

Here's a pic of where I am so far.  I just finished turning the heel which was far less stressful than I anticipated.

Totoro and his Mittens

Last month Craftzine had this post showing Totoro mittens, and I immediately thought of my cousin who is a big fan of Totoro.  The next day I get an email from said cousin hinting strongly that she loves those mittens and she did have a birthday in January.....

(By the way, Totoro is from Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese animated film "My Neighbor Totoro".  I have it on my Netflix queue but there is a Loooooong Wait for it. )

Since it does not take a whole lot of arm twisting to get me to A) Make something cutesie and B) Knit stranded mittens - I knew what what my next project would be. I had some Berroco Ultra Alpaca in Winter White leftover from the scarf I had made my cousin for Hannukah so her new mittens will match perfectly. I headed downtown to my LYS to pick up a blue or grey and found this great new colorway of Ultra Alpaca called Blue Steel.  A great color (I like greys) and the added bonus of sounding like a cheesy 80s action movie. Then woman ringing up my sale asked my what I was making, it turns out she is a huge Miyazaki fan and was thrilled to talk knitting and japanese film. 

I seemed to bang out the mittens pretty quickly, there are some long floats that you have to deal with but otherwise a straightforward knit.  I think they are pretty sweet.

After the mittens were done I still had a ton of Blue Steel left over so I scanned through rav and found the cutest stuffed Totoro.  Turns out a ingenious ravelry user had adapted the stuffed cat, Kate from Knitty into Totoro and was kind enough to put all the changes in her project notes (I love rav).  I got this guy done in one night of insomnia with just some detail work to be done the next day.  He is pretty frakkin' adorable if I do say so myself.

Elijah & Sheldon

I am a bit late with these guys but a friend of mine had twin boys a few months back and I am just finishing up their gifts now.  Initially, I scoured ravelry looking at patterns for sweaters, hats, blankets but then I realized I love knitting toys but really don't want to keep them so this was the best of all worlds.  I feel a kinship to the new baby boys since it turns out I was there when my friend started labor, she was completely unphased and was sure it was Braxton Hicks (um, it wasn't)  and we kept chatting away.  Her boys arrived bright and early the next morning - on my birthday. Well, our birthday now.

First there is Sheldon the Turtle. I have wanted to knit this up since that issue of Knitty came out.  I even used the recommended yard and colors. It's actually a bit fiddly for a toy, there's some crochet in there, applied i-cord but it was all worth it. I love that you can take his shell on and off.  There are a whole bunch of examples on ravelry where people have made other outfits for him, lions, cowboy, police, Santa even ick a bat.  He's like his very own Village People.

Then there is Elijah.  This adorable elephant is done with no seaming at all.  Yay, for that! More than once I thought about how her design process must have worked because there are some ingenious parts to it. Since it involved knitting the limbs by picking up stitches I found it easier to use *gasp* DPNs instead of Magic Loop.

The two have become fast friends already and I look forward to hearing of their adventures with my friend's little boys.

Holiday Knitting on Parade

We exchanged most of our gifts in the family over New Years this year so I am now able to show you some of my holiday knitting. 

For my brother-in-law I knit him the We Call Them Pirates hat. I was afraid it was going to be a bit snug but it seemed to fit well and even covered his ears which is necessary with the wind chills putting us into single digits around here recently.



A few months back my sister and I are chatting on the phone and she says "you'd knit me radishes, right?" To which I answered "of course I would."   Seems like a normal conversation to me apparently to others it's a bit weird, bah. Turns out she had a copy of Marie Claire Idees with a pattern for french radishes.  So I had to go and translate the pattern from french to english.  Time to put that French Lit degree to good use! Only I wasn't that familiar with french knitting terms but luckily I found this French Knitting dictionary on Chez Plum, a great find that has been bookmarked for future endeavors. I did adapt it to knit it the round, less seaming, but otherwise I stuck pretty much to the pattern, I think.  They came out very cute and my sister loved them.



Also for those keeping track at home I knit the Squirrel and Oak Mittens (same designer Hello Yarn, as the pirate hat) about a year and a half ago (my first stranding project) and they came out a wee bit small. My niece has finally grown into them (go milk!) and is now their proud owner. It's nice to know they are finally being used to their full potential (making a snow woman in the wilds of Maine - no pictures to show you since I was not crazy enough to leave my warm cocoon under a pile of afghans on the sofa to face the cold.

Oh, Now I Get It

I always heard people talk about Malabrigo yarn and I've touched it but I never really got it before now. I was shopping at my LYS and I figured it was about time I knit with it. While I was holding the gorgeous Worsted in Indigo, I looked up at a sample knit of Wavy. I knew that it was the perfect meeting of the right yarn and the right pattern.

The yarn is so soft and such a dream to knit up. I suddenly got it, ah, malabrigo. Then there is the color. I would be knitting this scarf up and would just stop to stare at it, the mixtures of colors from the kettle dying that just is such a feast for the eyes. Even at work, people (non-knitters) would comment on it as they walked by me knitting away at lunch. The photo doesn't do it justice but it is just wonderful.

Here it is being modeled by the lovely Glenda at my folks house on Thanksgiving. Yeah, you see the whole mannequin thing runs in the family.