Eleven Stitches

Sharing the Love

There are a few things that relate to the title of this post.  First of all, Jacquie, Stacey, and Sharon gave me a You Make My Day award, and Brenda gave me an Excellent Award. 

Thanks SO MUCH, ladies!  You made my day, too!  I'm so happy with all of the positive energy in knitblogland.  While real life tends towards having negative interactions in addition to the positive, it seems like here people are always encouraging, complimentary, and well, nice.  Yay for all of us.

Of course, I'm happy to pass along the compliment to other bloggers!  Here are ten, although there are so many more that I could mention. 

Librarian-in-Training I found Ariel's blog through Yarnival, and I'm so glad I did!  She's so funny, whether she's talking about tragically frogging the wrong half of a sweater or if she's justifying why she bought more tweed.

Knitting on Impulse  Ruth takes such beautiful pictures, and her knitting and jewelry are equally beautiful.

Molecular Knitting Brenda's posts are funny, and her knitting is also great.  She's the only person I know who uses her couch as a gauge of knitting progress, and to great effect!

More than One Way to Knit a Hat I first found Carla's blog because of this picture on Flickr.  The things she knits are an inspiration for me.

Novamade  Nova's posts are always funny and clever.  In addition, there's often pictures of pie and of her cute son!

On and Off the Needles Stacey so often has amazing colorwork, beautiful socks, and cute dog pictures and stories.

Peaknit Stacey is always knitting with such bright and cheerful yarn, and her posts cheer me up too!

SavannahChik Even though Jody's a friend in real life, I enjoyed reading her blog even before we met.  She's such a knowlegeable, thoughtful knitter, and I learn a lot from her posts.

Stash, Knit, Repeat  Amy makes beautiful things, and her son is so cute to boot!

Zarzuela Knits and Crochets  This girl makes such pretty socks and sweaters, and she's got an orange cat who looks a lot like mine.  When I first met Jessica, I kept thinking of her as "Zarzulea", but I've finally got it straight in my head.

In other love news, my friends threw me a surprise wedding shower this weekend.  Apparently David and my bridesmaids have been scheming for months, and they did everything just right.  I was so surprised I cried a little bit (happy tears) and I got to visit with faraway friends, eat wonderful food cooked by Sara (including a crossword puzzle themed cake), and enjoy seeing all of our friends meet and have fun.  Yay.

And finally, I would like to play with this Pay It Forward game.  I think I'm signed up to receive a gift, but I don't want to wait to get it to sign up three people to receive a gift from me. So if you're interested in playing, leave a comment saying so, and I'll randomly select three of you.  I'll make you a handmade gift in the next 365 days, and you can pass it on to three other people.  This is the best kind of chain "letter", in my opinion.  The recipient is also the beneficiary!

Cowl Top

Finally, finally, I finished up my Cowl Top from Morehouse Merino.  This vest was the first thing I started knitting after Rhinebeck, and then it sat for a very long time after the great sleeve disaster.

After all of your suggestions, I blocked the vest, and it draped beautifully.  But the sleeves were still too big.  I finally pulled out my sewing machine (there was no way I wanted to rip this back and re-knit it!) and made a seam to make the sleeves smaller.  I had a little bit of trouble with this as the bottom part fed through faster than the top did, and I had to rip out a few times.  I should have pulled out my walking foot, but I ended up using my fingers to feed the fabric through to my satisfaction.  After I was satisfied with the fit, I cut off the extra fabric.

To give you an idea of what I had to do, here's a small schematic. 

I sewed across the red lines.  This really changed the shape of the sleeves, and didn't make them look quite so... dramatic.  I really had no idea what I was getting into with this pattern.  The schematic is not what you would expect to see.  It was a picture of the modeled sweater with numbers drawn over top of it.  If I had realized that the sleeves looked like the above, I might have done something about it sooner.

The end result, however, is an oversized, cozy top.  I wouldn't have chosen to have all of the frustration, but I do like the top now that it's done.

Pattern: CowlTop from Morehouse Farms
Yarn: Morehouse Merino 3 strand, 7 skeins
Needles: US 9

PS:  My blog got some love recently.  A post to pass it on is coming soon!

Another Quick Hat

As the weather has gotten cold here in New Jersey, I found myself in need of a hat.  My Slouch does quite well in cool weather, but the Morehouse Merino is not very elastic, and the ribbed band doesn't fit tightly around my ears.  Besides, I wanted a hat to match my yellow scarf, which is what I wear with my warm coat.

Really, a knitter does not need so much justification to knit a hat.

Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Sauterne
Needles: US 8

This is something I made up as I went along. It has a rolled stockinette brim and then ribbing to fit around my ears. I don't like the way regular ribbed hats fit my head so closely, so this one puffs out a fair amount after the ribbing.  I  didn't want to have obvious decrease lines along the top, so I used spaced out centered double decreases.  I decreased rather quickly at the top, so it puckers, but I think it's still pleasing.

Best of all?  I started it last night, finished it tonight, and I'll have a warm hat to wear tomorrow.

I Now Introduce for the Very First Time...

...my Phyllo Yoked Pullover!  Most of the time I spent working on this sweater was the days leading up to our wedding, and posting about it just was not on the radar.  In fact, I spent a little bit of down time knitting this sweater on my wedding day, and I finished it up soon after I got back to the East Coast.

Pattern: Phyllo Yoked Pullover from Knitting Nature by Norah Gaughan
Yarn: Brooks Farm Solana, 3 skeins
Needles: US 8, Knit Picks Harmony Options
Time to Knit: December 18 - January 7

I made a few modifications to this sweater.  My gauge was looser than what was recommended, so I basically knit the body according to my own measurements and ignored the pattern until I got to the yoke!  I sized it to have a slight amount of negative ease and waist shaping.  I used a garter stitch edge because I like that look better than the rolled edge.  I also didn't bell out the sleeves.... I knit them straight until they were about 11 inches long, and then I started the increases.

The yoke pattern started out as a repeat of 11 stitches, so I made sure I decreased enough stitches to have a multiple of 11 when I started the yoke.  My row gauge was also off, so I ended up with a really tall yoke by knitting the entire chart, so I ripped back a couple of diamonds to get a better-sized neck.

The yoke pattern was interesting and fun to knit.  I also think it looks really nice all finished up!

I loved working with the Solana yarn.  It's soft and smooth, and the colors are fantastic.  If you see any at a fiber festival, you really should consider purchasing some!

It's a great sweater.  One of my favorites so far!

WIPing Away

As promised, here are my two favorite WIPs. 

I've been completely enchanted by this pair of socks recently.  They're from leftover bits of sock yarn. I love them, and I can't decide if they're pretty or ugly.  But I don't care because I love them. I'm knitting two at once so I can keep them even, and I'm ready to turn the heel.

I'm also working on a sweater, using Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed and Kathmandu Aran Tweed (it's the same yarn, I think).  I searched around Ravelry for awhile trying to find a pattern I wanted to use for this yarn, and after looking at a lot of sweaters I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted.  So I'm improvising it now.

It's got a hemmed edge, and the body is straight stockinette up until the yoke. I just cast on provisionally for the sleeves and knit 3 rows before joining, because I'm not certain how much of the sleeves I want to be red yet... it partially depends on how much yarn remains!  I'm planning to have the yoke be moss stitch with a stripe of the dark purple just after everything is joined together.  I'm very excited about how it's going, and the yarn is a dream to work with.

So there you have it!  Enjoy Friday, everyone.

2008 Resolutions

Well, it's getting late, but here are my crafting resolutions for 2008. 

• Write (and publish) patterns.  Christy had a great post about conquering knitting fears recently, and I admit that there aren't very many knitting techniques that scare me.  But pattern writing does scare me!  The patterns people choose to knit are personal things, and I would hate to write something that someone finds frustrating or doesn't look right in the end.  I think I need to accept the fact that this most likely will happen no matter what, and just publish stuff already!
• Finish up my non-single-sock FOs quickly.  I have two sweaters-to-be languishing, and I really want them finished and have the yarn marked as "All Used Up" on Ravelry!
• Knit a really ambitious sweater for Rhinebeck next fall.  I'm hoping that if I start soon, I'll be able to finish in plenty of time, and not feel burned out along the way.
• Finish more sweaters in general.  I really do love my hand knit sweaters, and I want more :)
• Post more WIPs.  I don't like this rumor that the WIP posts are dying.  Unfortunately, I've recently gotten so behind on blogging that my things are FOs even before I post about them the first time.  (Case in point: I finished a sweater last week.  I've never posted about it, but I'll have a FO post soon.) I like reading about the process others take in knitting, and I want to share part of my process too!
• Quilt and sew more.  I find that knitting is so much more comfortable to do that I've seriously neglected my sewing machine this year.  Back before I started knitting, I was traumatized to think that the sewing machine store would need to keep my machine for 3 days if I wanted it cleaned! Although I don't need to get back to that level of obsession commitment, I would like to be using my sewing machine more.

I already have an idea of what my ambitious sweater will be.  It involves this yarn, which just arrived from Denmark....

More Art Stuff

Here are a few of my favorite projects that I finished up last semester.

This landscape was based on a picture I took very close to the field of yellow flowers. 

Here's the original photo.

My other favorite painting was my first self portrait.  I spent a lot of time on this, and I got a lot of feedback from my instructor, which helped a great deal.  It actually looks like me, which makes me feel quite proud.

I ended up getting an A in Oil Painting, which really pleased me.  I thought painting was hard, and I had to spend a lot of time and effort to make things look the way I wanted them to.  I'm glad to know my hard work paid off!

This is my favorite project from my ceramics class.  It stands about 15 inches high.

I'm taking ceramics (wheel throwing this time) and sculpture this semester, and I"m looking forward to what I'll learn and make!

FO: Glittens

Last March, while David and I were on the train on the way to the airport, we had a conversation about mittens.  Wouldn't it be nice, he opined, if there were mittens with the index finger separated off, so you get more dexterity but also keep your other fingers warm. A glitten, if you will. I thought that was kind of a silly idea, and told him as much.  We arrived at his mother's house in San Francisco that evening to find that she was making a glitten.

Well, after that, there was no stopping him.  When I announced to him this fall I would like to make him a pair of gloves or mittens, he carefully looked over my Selbuvotter and Folk Knitting in Estonia books, and selected Annemor #17 because he thought it would be easiest to convert to glittens.

Pattern: Annemor #17 from Selbuvotter by Terri Shea
Yarn: Dale Baby Ull #2908 (orange) and Claudia's Handpainted in Argyle, 1 50g skein each
Needles: US 2.5 Knit Picks DPNs

Along the way, I had to make various other changes.  We didn't like how the thumb traditionally came off of the palm in these patterns, and I added palm stitches and make the thumb come out from the side instead.  This was also helpful for up-sizing the pattern, as it was sized for a woman's hands in the book.  Also, since the chart only came up partway on his hand, I repeated the band on the cuff and started the finger chart without separating the fingers off.  It was easy to just knit three of the fingers together instead of making them all individually.

I also reversed the wave chart on the cuff for the second glitten, because I just like to do that.  You'll also notice that the cuffs look pretty different.  I've learned that when I do combination knitting, the yarn in my left hand is more prominent.  One I figured that out, I started always knitting with the background color in my right hand, and things worked out nicely.

I've found colorwork knitting on an airplane really maximizes the wow factor with my non-knitting passengers.   On one flight, the stewardess was exclaiming over the glitten I was finishing, and I gave her the first one to examine.  She immediately said "Oh, I have to show this to someone." and took off!  Too funny.

All in all, I'm very satisfied with this FO.  It really satisfied my colorwork urge (which plagues me often), and I got to make a lot of interesting modifications along the way.  And David is happy with his warm, interesting glittens!

Socking on Lombard Street

I knit my first Lombard Street Sock when I was in San Francisco this past May.  I decided that I would finish the pair during my Christmas visit, and get in a trip to the famed street as well!

Pattern: Lombard Street Socks by Susan Lawrence for Magknits
Yarn: Tess Supersock & Baby
Needles: US 2 on the cuff and US 1 on the foot
Modifications: I changed the needle size when I got to the foot.

Actually, I probably should have knit the entire sock in either US1 or US1.5  When I revisited this sock a few weeks ago, I was surprised at how large the leg was in the first sock.  It seems like I've come a long way since May in knitting socks that fit me!  With wear, the socks seemed to fall down some around my ankles, but I'm not too concerned about it.  If it gets annoying I'll thread some elastic through the top.  Much better too big in the leg than too small!

My parents were also in San Francisco for the wedding, and I asked if we could go to Lombard Street along with the other toursity things they wanted to do.  I discovered, though, that it's very difficult to get a photograph of socks AND the famous street.  Even with getting LOTS of suggestions from my husband and my dad.   It sure it different taking blog photos when my family is around!

For instance, Dad thought this would be a great photo to take for some reason.

Anyway, it was a great pair of socks to knit, and I had a lot of fun blogging the finished pair as well!

Catching Up

The last of my Christmas gifts were two Koolhaassen, one for my dad and one for David's dad. Both were knit with Malabrigo, and I used a different color yarn on the brim because I wasn't certain I'd have enough for the whole thing.  I also liked the effect.

My father-in-law's hat is a little larger because he has a big head!  Both hats were well received.

I also knit a single Chalet sock.  When I was in the midst of stressing out about my final painting, I really wanted to be knitting something luxurious for myself, so I did.  The yarn is Wollmeise, and I love it of course.  This is an unfinished photo, but it has since been finished up!

Before 2007 ended I also finished up the glittens and my pair of Lombard Street Socks (Ravelry links, both of them).  They each deserve their own post, so more about them later!

In 2007 I did a lot of knitting.  Here's the rundown.

4 sweaters and 2 vests

14 pairs of socks and 8 singles

6 pairs of gloves (or hand things), 4 hats, a scarf, a shawl, and a dodecahedron

Whew!  It was a good year!