Busting stashes, taking names

Seen on Buzzfeed - several great ideas to bust your stash!  Here are some of my favorites.  I already wrap presents with some of that acrylic / eyelash yarn that is no fun to actually knit with.

Cabled tree covers for corks

Wrap a wooden block and use as a stamp

It's about time

She knits while doing what?!

Celebrity knitting!  Amanda Seyfried knits for Ellen and tells us she's obsessed:

I can't believe she knits while on the elliptical!  I can barely keep my balance while holding on!

Wishing for more sun

Check out Alan Dart's latest design in Simply Knitting.  Daphne loves his designs, and I can see why!

Her ears were cold

Made for my neighbor - her choice of yarn and pattern.   Matches the scarf I made first for her. 

Pattern:  Parisian Twist ear warmer

Yarn:  Berroco Borealis

Now that I look back, I don't think I posted about it.  A relatively quick knit - love knitting with bulky yarn.  Messed up the pattern at the beginning and had to rip it out a couple of times.  She picked out the pattern.

Pattern:  Loopluftikus.

off on the right foot

Just found this picture of some booties that Arielle made right before her baby was born ... so cute!

A new Angle for 2013

This week I have been madly knitting ... got a late start on my Christmas present (on the plane on Christmas day ...) to my favorite niece, who is also visiting here in Virginia.

A week and a half of steady knitting, and it is done!  Love the colors!  I found them at Stitches Midwest at Tucker Woods.  They offered "BB Cakes", small cake-like skeins of yarn in lovely saturated colors.  

I love this pattern for many reasons.  One, it is ribbing, so it will fit for a long time.  If you pull the ribbing apart, the valleys are a different color!  Very clever design.  Two, it is knitted in all one piece!  Just a little kitchener for the sleeves at the end, plus the border, is all the finishing it needs.  I like the punch of color in the front flap.

The button is also super cute.  I reinforced it with some sewing thread to ensure it never falls off.

Pattern:  Angle

Yarn:  Tucker Woods Molly's Toes, superwash sock  yarn

knitting at the Art Institute

My friend Katie reported to me recently that I had to check out the latest traveling exhibit in the modern wing of the Art Institute.  It's on fashion, but there are some fabulous knitted items.Bulky wool, knitted sideways, cowl neck.  Love it!  I want to make one for me, if I still wore sweaters.  

(Wish I could manipulate these images a bit better and display them all neatly in a row)

These are some illegally shot images of the Sandra Backland exhibit.  Check out some of her fantastic crocheted and knitted designs! Behind each mannequin there is a still life photo taken by a Swedish photographer, which I think is also a breathtaking rendering of the texture and feel of the knitted item.   There was also an origami dress - you can see it in the background of the second photo.

Backlund develops all her designs from scratch in three dimensions.  "I like the way I can build my own fabric while working and the way it is mathematical, but at the same time permits improvisation.  It is really time-consuming and a real trial on one's mental and physical strength, and yet for me knitting is synonymous with creative freedom."

blanket

When I visited my cousin this summer, she took me to her local yarn store and she loved the colors of this yarn.  So I bought it and asked her what kind of baby blanket she might like.  Turns out she had already gone through Ravelry and noted on one of her 'favorites' - "Mel, can you make this?  :)"

Indeed.  Though she had to pick a pattern with a lot of purl rows :)

Pattern:  Mountain Chickadee
Edging:  found in a book ("Crochet Edging," appropriately enough) I found at a Stitches East book signing
Yarn:  Casbah.  Used every inch!
 rimmed with a sea green sock yarn I found at Stitches Midwest

I'm never getting gauge

Here is the sweater that I was knitting along with my friend Thuy... (Haven't shortened the zipper yet)

Yummy, yummy yarn.  I love the tonal brown.  "Fig" is the shade.

We converted the pattern to be a more seamless pattern.  Not the easiest thing, since the pattern wasn't exactly the easiest written pattern.   I normally knit quite loosely and with going down a couple needle sizes I seemed to roughly get gauge.  But the other tricky thing about sizing was that it was sizing the sweater according to your bust size, and I don't have a bust anymore.  So I tried to hedge it and make the next size up from my chest circumference.

 It was a top down pattern and everything seemed to be going swimmingly .... until I put in the raglan sleeves, and it was too tight right at the seams.  Aaagh!!

Pattern: Ribby cardi
Yarn: madelinetosh merino vintage

Finally (in) his shell

Look!  I finally finished him!

5 years ago I started Sheldon, which was a popular pattern on knitty.com.    The thing about knitting toys is that there are a lot of fiddly finishing details. I finished just about everything except his eyes and limbs, and then I got discouraged when it came to putting the pieces together.  The shell and the belly are attached with icord, for example, and that was beyond my knitting skills at the time.  And so he seemed doomed to never be finished.

Then E comes home from school and tells me that their class pet is a turtle.  Named Sheldon.

So I resurrected him and finished him as a Christmas present from his teacher.  

She probably thinks I'm a bit crazy.  

But at least I finished him!!

Pattern:  Sheldon, on knitty.com

Yarn:  Knitpicks simply cotton

Ruffles have ridges

Impulse purchase at 3 Bags Full:  Broadway Yarn.
About 5-6 hours of knit time, and I had a scarf!  Very fun.  Hard to get the colors right - they are a navy blue and purple with silver sparkle edge.

Ideas for guests

This is a page out of one of my cousin's books.  A great idea for a guest room:  start knitting a sampler scarf, fill a basket with some different yarns, and guests can add on as they wish.  It can be used to teach guests how to knit as well.  Then you have a sort of knitted "guest book" and memories of visits.

Auntie Mel makes me the silliest hats

Made a quick little hat from Rosemary's stash. Used the whole ball with only scraps to spare! Gotta love bulky weight yarn for a quick satisfying project.

Knitting - c'est bon!

While in Montreal, do what the Montreal knitters do - look at French patterns :). My cousin has a couple of books from the Parisian knitting store la droguerie, and I could not resist a peek. Here are a few highlights.

Little habu hat

Arielle and I fell in love with this cottony slub yarn at the Habu booth at Stitches East, because the sample was the cutest little simple hat. She had a 2 month old and I knew my cousin was about to have a baby, so we both made one.

But then I always seem to knit loosely, and made a hat that was way too big for a newborn. And she made a hat that was too small for her 3 month old.

So we swapped! And they were perfect!

Be sweet

Visiting my SIL's darling little one ... Born late August, so cute! Here she is modeling a hat I made from a skein of Be Sweet cotton. The ball band pattern is cute, but the size was a bit off - it said it would fit a 3-6 month old, but even with using a size smaller needles the circumference was 19"! Into the dryer and got it down to around 15". And here they are.

Thought the yarn would transition between the color changes, but it turns out that it's merely knotted.  I took the knots out and wove the ends in so that no knots would end up by the baby's head.  Good thing it claims to be giving jobs to South African women, else I might be a bit more miffed.

Yarn:  Be Sweet Taffy (bamboo cotton blend)

Pattern:  Sweetie Pie hat (on the yarn label)

  (skipped the bobbles)

i've a lot of affection for this color

This is 3 skeins of gorgeous sock yarn twisted together.  This booth at Stitches had a bunch of colors pre-selected to do the Color Affection shawl, and this is the one that Pat selected.  Yummy!!  Can't wait to see this knitted up!

Wind beneath my wings

pattern:  Wingspan (over 4000 projects in Ravelry!)

yarn:  Noro Taiyo sock, found at the Midwest Fiber Fair

recipient:  a friend, for her 40th birthday

Love this pattern!!   Super easy - it's basically a whole lot of garter stitch and short rows.  Perfect traveling project.  Most of this was knitted at the pool this summer.  The original pattern is a "shawlette" and only called for 8 triangles, but I basically kept going till the end of the skein because I was envisioning more of a scarf.  3g of yarn left!

I think I see one of these in my future for myself ...

silk comfort

I made this for my friend in Houston, so I chose a fiber that was 100% silk by Araucania (Chaiten) - it's sort of a matte nubby finish, which is really nice and drapes really well.  I used the Lace Ribbon pattern that I love - so easy to memorize, easy to execute (once you get the hang of it), and looks complicated.  I made it a bit wider than the pattern so that she could use it as a shawl in the air-conditioned buildings that she works in.

It was originally intended as a prayer shawl of sorts - something to give her a modicum of comfort in the aftermath of her mother's recent death - but turned out to be a congratulations-on-your-engagement gift :)

In stitches

School has started!  I feel a collective sigh go through the neighborhood as all the area stay-at-home moms get a breather :)  So it is time to restart this blog - so much fiber to catch up on!

A couple of weeks ago we basked in Stitches Midwest.  Pat and I took a class on lining a knitted item - more on that in the next post.

Lots of color in the market.  This is the Derecho shawl, a pattern sold out everywhere we looked:

The other pattern of choice was Color Affection, an easy-looking yet breathtaking pattern that melds 3 skeins of contrasting sock yarn.  Many booths had various combinations put together for you, making the possibilities reachable.  Pat got one that was a dark red, beige, and I think gray - it's going to be stunning!  I think I want to do one too, but I'm going to cull from my stash because I really have more sock yarn than I know what to do with.

One thing I searched for was a bulky jewel-tone blue variegated yarn for a friend, for whom I offered to make the scarf of her yarn and pattern choice.  I tried to find it at a small purveyor, to no avail.  But I found it at WEBS - it's Berroco!  And yes, the color really is this electric.

I also got some black yarn to make this hat, which a friend saw on Pinterest and asked me to make.  Black, yech!  At least it's a crochet pattern.

In that same issue of Vogue Crochet, I saw this pattern for a lace pullover.    Intriguing.  I got some charcoal-y madeleinetosh yarn from WEBS to attempt it.

Craftsy.com was also advertising by giving away a free class.  Looks intriguing - take online classes in sewing, fiber arts, and cooking.  Probably exactly up my alley!

Every year at Stitches I try on this jacket and look at it longingly.  It's a kit, and every year they never have my colors (the sample is in these lovely jewel tones and the kits always seem to be pastel, like in the photo in the link), so I'm able to easily walk away.  But this year they had it in the most gorgeous deep blues and browns.  It was tough to walk away from it. Finally I decided that I would never have a chance to wear it - I'm just not a fancy kind of person, and if I'm going to get fancy, I'll wear something fancier than a jacket I knit myself.  And with my luck, I'd snag it on something anyway.

Anyways, I've got something else to obsess about and save my pocketbook for ... I want a knitting machine!  Something to help me with the miles of stockinette that these Habu patterns call for.  I was intrigued by the machine knitting booth - so easy! - and I'm going to check out a dealer (the only one within several hours of me) in a couple of weeks.  I had to make an appointment because it's an hour's drive and she works out of her home.