Welcome, 2008!!

Happy New Year, everyone!! This was my last project of 2007, a baby hat and pullover for a coworker.

Pattern: Caron Baby Caftan (without girly embroidery, added white stripes for boyish look.)

Needles: Size 7 & 8

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft – Country Blue and some misc white acrylic baby yarn doubled for contrast.

This was a fast, easy weekend project.

The hat is from this pattern: TLL Basic Knit Hat Pattern, though I increased the length of the hat a few extra rows.

Also, I started the decreases at Knit 4, Knit 2tog, because with a cast on of 54, 6 is easily divisible. The pattern starts it at Knit 3, Knit2tog…and well, 54 isn’t divided evenly by 5.

Also in December, I knit 2 pairs of wrist warmers (not shown) and in early December I crocheted the Sweet Pea Shawl from the Happy Hooker book.

I took the picture in the evening, right before I gave it to my friend for her birthday, so the picture/lighting isn’t the greatest.

I have also been working on a few other projects, but that is all that I finished.

In 2008, Tony and I have both decided to work on our health more, exercise more, eat better, get more organized, work harder on our finances so we can buy a house, be nicer to each other and the kids…you know, all of the usual things. Probably things everyone can hope to do better. Maybe I should add, be a better blogger in there…

Tony added, may we not have to visit the ER more then once in a month…and I added…may we not visit the ER at ALL this year.

Monkey socks in Oops

I finished my first pair of Monkey socks. They are done in Claudia Co. hand painted yarn in the color way of Oops, which is blue, purple and turquoise and brown/maroon. I made them for a lady in my mother’s club who won a charity auction. She wanted blue and earthy colors, not bright colors. I hope this is a color that she will be happy with. I love them. This was a pretty easy knit.

Tomorrow you will get to see a picture of Sierra’s “pretty” black eye. She was making a village up on her bookshelf while standing on a plastic table and slipped and hit her cheekbone on the toy box. She is okay, just bruised. Nothing like going to school the second week with a black eye. I went and got her some arnica for it. They sell it at Longs, the dissolving tablets and gel.

Crocheted Bag

I finished another Fat Bottom Bag. It is done with Classic Elite Imagine and Crystal Palace Cotton Chenille. I took the picture at night, so it is hard to see that the yarn colors compliment each other, but they do. I lined it with a rayon material that I had. It was really silky and hard to sew in, but once I did, it looks perfect for the bag. I made it for my sil for her birthday and she loves it.

Socka 4 Finished & Blocking

Yep, I finished them last night and washed them this morning. They were suppose to be mailed today. I will mail them tomorrow. I hope my swap partner likes them.

I have never participated in a swap like this and am nervous that the socks won’t fit or the toe isn’t the way she will like it. I am going to send her the remaining yarn so if she needs to make them longer or different she can. I wish I had sock blockers so the socks would dry more uniform, but ah…once you get them on your feet it won’t matter that much, right?

I won an awesome blog contest a few weeks ago and look what came in the mail last weekend.  Thanks Sara!!!

Esta muy bueno!!  Te quero!

The book is more awesome then I had expected.  This is my first lace weight yarn.  I look forward to knitting a shawl. 

Askew – Finished

And, I like it.

I did a little bit of manipulations to get this pattern to work for me.

The first thing I did was I unseamed the side seams. I then resewed it to from the bottom up. I stopped the side seam at the garter stitches before the last 10 stockinette stitches on the front. This is actually what it looks like in the original picture. I think that the finishing details might have been off, because the pattern says to seam up to the garter stitch on the strap.

So, when I seamed to the garter stitches before the 10 st, I got a larger armhole, which was perfect. I tried it on and I still wasn’t happy with the straps, but they were better than before.

So, I ripped the straps down. I bound off 9 stitches on the outside edge and picked up 9 stitches on the middle section (the stitches I had previously bound off.) I then knit the straps back up and attached them in the back.

I did attach them towards the center, which I think I might move, because I don’t think they are as comfortable.

I love how it turned out and glad that I gave it some time to fiddle with it. I am wearing this directly against my skin and it isn’t too bad. This is definitely a top I can wear while at the ocean.

Pattern: Knitty Askew

Needles: Size 9

Yarn: Noro Silk Garden color 230 approx 6 balls (I had a little bit leftover.)

So Sorry Silk

I bought some Sari Silk about a year ago off ebay and got a fantastic deal.  When I got it, I was in awe of all of the colors and how beautiful the yarn looked, trying to ignore the terribly musty and icky smell.

I thought it would make a neat clapotis or shawl.  So I casted on for the clapotis.  However, as I was knitting with it, I noticed how dirty it was.  (I have blog posted about this before.)  It took awhile to wind the yarn up into balls, so the thought of winding the balls into a hank and washing them just seemed a waste of my time.

As I would knit with it, my throat would feel scratchy and I would start to think about the possibility of getting some weird illness from dust or dirt from the other side of the world.  Silly, I am sure, but other people handled this yarn and it was dirty.  I would find fingernails and other odd things spun into the yarn.  Gross, but I tried to be open minded.  It is just yarn and these were probably nice people spinning it, but still…

So I put the clapotis down and told myself I will either frog it or one day finish it.

This was over a year ago.

A week ago, I decided that I needed to knit some of my novelty and misc yarns into scarves.  I have a few things I am doing soon where I will need gifts and thought big scarves would be perfect.  I will have to talk about the novelty yarns I used in another blog post.  It is interesting.  But that isn’t what I am posting about today.

I decided to try the Sari Silk yarn again and just make a simple garter stitch/drop stitch scarf.  Again, the yarn was dirty, smelly, and made me squirm.  I knit with size 17 needles and in less than 2 days I had a nice long scarf.  I bound off the scarf and threw it in the washing machine on gentle.

I had read that this yarn softens up real nicely after washing it.   I put it on a long soak.  The washing machine smelled like gasoline.  GASOLINE!  My scarf!!  How crazy is that?  Tony said it smelled like a tire store.  I thought it was gas.  Tony has a bad sense of smell and rarely can smell anything.

After it washed, I looked at it and there was a huge gaping hole.  Not only that, but the yarn some how sealed itself off, so I can’t find the ends.  I have thought of a few ways to fix it, like taking more of that yarn and trying to sew the hole closed.  I don’t know.  That would require me to touch the dirty yarn again.

I suppose I could wind it all into long hanks and wash it…

ps…it is pretty, isn’t it…even with the hole…

Baby Hats

My cousin will be having her baby in a few days…yep, a boy.  I thought a pile of hats would be nice.  I am not done with the blanket I was working on.

The top one is a ribbed hat, I just winged it.  I cast on 48 st on size 8 needles w/ cotton-ease.  It is really stretchy and light.

The one on the right, I also winged.  I cast on 92 st with Rowan Calmer on size 5 needles.  At the top, I did two decreases to get to  90 and then did your normal hat decreasing (K8, K2tog….k7, k2tog…k6, k2tog…etc.)

The one on the left is from this pattern, thought I casted on 8 stitches to get an 8 point star, instead of 7.  It is also with the Rowan Calmer, which I am thinking is a lot like cotton-ease, but a bit stretchier, softer, and slightly thinner.

My Garden & Shedir

Here are the pics!

***Edited to Add…Do you see the first sunflower in the row?  The one on the very far left?  This morning when I went out to the garden, it had fallen over and all of the leaves were limp and sad.  I lightly lifted it out of the soil, only to find half of its roots were eaten.  The culprit?  A Gopher.   Sierra warned me there was a hole in the yard and after a few minutes it was buried.  I suspected it was a gopher, but I didn’t think he could get into my garden.

Sunflowers and corn (and weeds…just ignore those, I do.)

Zucchini (what you can’t see the carrots and bell peppers? They are under the canopy of the zucchini. The bell pepper will be moved soon. Today if I feel up to it.)

Do you see the baby zucchini? Here is a closeup.

My tomatoes are doing great! The one that was wilting has bounced back and has overcome whatever problems it was having. My remedy? Water and sunshine. I even have a baby tomato. I put the cage around them too late, so I couldn’t get it over the large one. I got it over half of it.

Finally, Shedir. I made this hat for a friend. I love the yarn. Like I said before, it was one of the most difficult knits for me, but that is because of my concentration issues. I enjoyed knitting it.

I am considering making a baby Shedir for my cousin’s baby. I was crocheting a blanket, but thanks to Madeleine it is now a ball of mess. (I love that Madeleine loves yarn, but am thinking she just needs to get her own.)

Also, Shedir has given me an idea for a new hat design. It will make me crazy doing it, but I have this inner desire…so I guess I will be going to the crazy house soon and will have a hat to show for it.

The tank I am making myself is going great! I should take an in-progress picture. I am almost up to the bust on the front side. I will give it a proper post tonight or tomorrow.

Dad’s Sweater

I finished it on Saturday night.

I substituted yarns.  I used Patons Classic Merino in Gray, instead of The Tahki Donegal Tweed the pattern suggested.  I also left off the patches.  My dad wanted a sweater that had a collar to cover his neck.  He lives by the ocean where ocean breezes can give you a chill.  Hopefully he won’t mind me putting his picture on my blog.

Pattern:  Patch Man designed by Ann Budd for Knit Scene Magazine, Spring 2007.

Yarn:  Patons Classic Merino in Dark Grey

Needles:  Size 6 and 8 (to get gauge)

My only real pattern tweak (besides yarn substitution) was that I knitted longer on the collar than suggested.  When I first tried to sew it down it puckered in the corners.  I could have blocked it, but really didn’t have the time to block just the collar.  So I decided to just knit about an inch or so longer and it sewed down perfect.

He loves it and I love it.  I am very happy how it turned out!

If I could have changed one thing on it, I might have made it longer.

Prosperous Plum, Finished

For a close up of this picture, click here.

Pattern:  Prosperous Plum Tank

Needles:  Size 5 and then 7 (but wasn’t getting gauge, so switched to size 6 to get gauge.)

Yarn:  LB Cotton-ease – Violet

I loved working with this yarn.  I loved working with this pattern.  Really, this was an really fun and nice project.

I didn’t have any problems with the pattern, except for my own clumsiness…which Andrea pointed that that I couldn’t blame you, because I never posted a picture of the finished straps…so…how would you know I was off?

I got the crab stitch done.  It looks awesome.  My left thumb is happy I am not working on that anymore.