27.2.06

Baby Socks



Two pairs of baby socks made for two young friends. Pair #1 were sent off in January, pair #2, which are red, cream, and green striped, were made on location this weekend. Both pairs are Dalegarn Baby Ull, and the baby sock pattern is from 50 Baby Bootees (50 patterns in the book, and I've made the same one twice - but they're so cute!).

23.2.06

Switch, swatch

Today I swatch, yesterday I swatched, tomorrow I will (probably) swatch again.



The light blue is thrifted yarn from my latest find. I unraveled one sleeve and knit a swatch to test it before investing the energy frogging the whole thing. It knit well, I got gauge (well, I got very close to gauge). This one's a go.

The dark blue (so dark it's almost black) is my new project, for which I now have all the yarn. I think I need to reswatch this one, but we'll see what the wet-blocking accomplishes. I think it has grown a little already. I knit back and forth, so I think I'll try doing a circular swatch before changing needles sizes.

21.2.06

Pouring

A quick post before bed - three things, unrelated (except the obvious) :
  • found a sweater yesterday at the thrift store that I think I can frog and use to knit the Lace Leaf Pullover. It's a wool/acrylic blend, but I'll try not to hold that against it. This particular thrift store I tend to not frequent, as it makes me sad. There usually aren't many good things there, anyways, because everything gets so picked over (one of the things that makes me sad - so many people shop there because they clearly need to). I also have a tendency to make up stories about the people who owned the clothes and things before, and why they ended up in the thrift store. This time around I linked the crooked half-complete granny square blanket with the seventies acrylic yarn, three of the crinkly old lady raincoats, and massive orangey-brown cookie jar shaped like a giant russian teapot.
  • have been talking to the LYS ladies about a particular sweater and the particular yarn for that sweater - it came in today! but only some of it - the main color wasn't included in the shipment for some reason, so will have to wait a little longer.
  • started mini-project today (which will also remain nameless), while reading what I discovered tonight was the novel for a class next month, not this week. I'm eight hours ahead in reading, and eight hours behind.

20.2.06

Bag-ette

I'll stage a more interesting action shot once it has dried, but here's part of what I did this weekend. Mom and Dad gave me Knit One, Felt Too and the yarn to make this pattern from it for Christmas! I really like it. I finished the knitting in the early days of January, but waited until now to do the felting.
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I started the job by hand in the sink, which worked well up to a point, then I switched to boiling on the stove with occasional cold water rinses, then kneaded and worked it by hand for a while. All of this was pretty successful (although tiring), but it seemed like the wool just reached a point where I couldn't get it to seize up anymore. I tested it out for size, and it was still 2 inches larger than the pattern called for, and although I happened to like the size a lot, I was afraid it would stretch too much with use since the felted fabric wasn't very dense. So I let it sit overnight, and then went to the laundromat the next day. I was a little concerned it wouldn't felt much in the machine because there was no selecting the load size. But the suds and mechanical agitation did the trick, and it felted down (felted up?) the two more inches.
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loose and floppy before- - - - - - trim and shipshape after!
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I decided to leave the rolled brim unrolled - I enjoy being able to see more of the lime color. I'll have to keep my eyes open for some neat beads for the points of the green triangles (or not - I do like it the way it is), and also pick up a little magnetic closure or something, to keep things inside.

18.2.06

New! Now with 5 fewer fingers per serving!

Wrists are important, and I've always got half an eye on mine. I whipped these up at a birthday party (after the real party part, when we were just watching a dvd - Herzog's documentary on Timothy Treadwell the bear enthusiast, in which Herzog comes out sounding almost equally eccentric, although ultimately, in what proves to be a crucial difference, not eaten by a bear) and an hour or two later that week. I don't know if keeping one's wrists warm really helps the odd twinge, but I think I've noticed a difference.

They're really cozy and yet make me feel sort of tough - like I'm about to get all sweaty dancing around a punching bag. Ha! So far they've spent more time curled around a mug of tea then doing anything truly fierce. They've been called "cool" by the coffeeshop crowd, who collectively have a pretty strong grasp on what is and isn't cool.

The pattern is the 'fingerless mitts' from Weekend Knitting, and the yarn I used is one skein of Nashua Handknits Wooly Stripes (88yds) plus a moeity of leftover Lopi when I ran out. It's not visible in the picture, but this colorway also includes blue, fuschia, and purple - in a felictious turn, the end of the skein where I ran out was purple, the same exact color as the Lopi. It's impossible to tell I switched yarns.

3.2.06

Pterodactyls would like this, I think

I have the last of the three scarfs to show you today, but first, a few words:




It picked up a few words that were, well, boring, so I made free and replaced them with words that fit alphabetically. This means that in the interest of true and accurate representation, I feel compelled to use the words "beauty," "bootees," and "pterodactyl." Bootees will pose no problem - I've been making some recently and will post some pictures soon. Mellor's "50 Baby Bootees" is a real beauty of a book. Conceivably one could even convince a pterodactyl to wear some of these bootees of beauty. (I decided to let "objectionable" stand, even though I think it's a blogger word - so maybe I should use that too. I see nothing objectionable in the gratuitous use of words I like. There.)

(Also? I'm really tickled that "atwitter" is first, and "momma" and "shizzle" made it. Also trying to imagine what in the world a lord marker might look like, let alone a large lord marker.)

A(nother) scarf, this one quite long, quite warm, and wooly. Pattern, if you will, here. The yarns, Manos and Peace Fleece, came from my mom's LYS, which we visited together at Thanksgiving. It's nice and long, long enough that I had to block it on the back of the sofa, and quite cushy. The Manos color is "prairie," I believe - the darkest brown looks loamy, like it should smell moist and dark.