Winter knitting

What, let me ask you, is sadder than a dedicated knitter walking around in her winter coat without a suitable hat?  This conundrum plagued my brain recently when the weather here finally turned winterish and I dug out my winter coat.  The one I wore last year had gotten rather disreputable, so I found a nice coat in the back of the closet which I have had for years but never wore much.  Naturally my thoughts then turned to the proper accessories.  The way the coat is made, it doesn't really need a scarf, and one of the pairs of gloves I knitted with K1Frog2 last spring matched it well.  But I had no hat that matched.  In fact, I am down to only one winter hat, period, so clearly some hats are needed!

Time to ransack the stash.  Ooh, look, another skein of the yarn I used for the gloves.  That's good, but not enough.  Hmm.  Ah ha!  Some more yarn that goes with it (and the coat)!  Victory is mine!

So here's the hat so far:

Since the yarn is sport weight and I want the hat to be good for the coldest part of winter, I am making it double layered.  The top part is the outside crown.  Cables, knit bottom up.  I'm using dpn simply because I'm using my circular needles of the same size for a different project right now.  The light part covers the ears.  That's the yarn that matches the gloves.  2x2 ribbing, partly for a little extra thickness and warmth, partly because the yarn is a little larger than the other and I thought the ribbing might be needed to draw it in a little.  The fold between outside and inside is in the middle of the light part.  At the bottom I have started on the inside crown.  It's a k8p2 ribbing.  Ribbed for a bit of flexibility in the fit, but mostly smooth, which I think will work better for the inside of the hat.  I have tried it each time the color changes, and so far it's making me happy.  The 2x2 rib could be a little snugger, but I don't think it's because it's really too large, I think it's because it stretches very easily so does not hold very tight.  I'm hoping some washing and blocking at the end will tighten that up a bit.

The exciting news of the week was that K1Frog2 and Blonde Knitter would like to hold this year's NSKO East in conjunction with the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival.  Mucho fun to be had there.  I am poised to put in my vacation request at work, waiting only to find out their exact travel plans.  Yay!

Christmas recap

I hope one and all had a good Christmas this year.  I sure did, got together with the whole family for lots of good food and company.  Got some Christmas knitting done, the rest was postponed by choice, no hard feelings there.  Finished the socks for Peter.  Also made a headband / ear warmer for mom, which she had requested.  And several more ornaments. 

Beads turned out to be quite a challenge, not the least of which was finding suitable beads to begin with!  Most of what I already had, had holes too small for yarn.  But I've been playing with them anyway, here are a couple I made with what I had.  I have also bought some craft beads with larger holes.

The one on the left has some crystals at the tips of the snowflakes, I'm not sure you can see it, but it sure catches the light.  I'm not sure about the "hula skirt" of pearls on the right.  It seemed like a good idea in my mind.

Not wanting to get slowed down too much by the bead dilemmas, I proceeded to knit these as well, from patterns in Arne and Carlos's book.  The one on top is a "Christmas pig".  It's a German thing, what can I say.  It was in the book.

And working from a pattern I purchased thanks to a link from Blonde Knitter, I came up with these.  We all love the mousie (left), but the bird (right) is not so convincing.  In the yarn I used, we all think it looks more like a lamb. 

My sister-in-law gave me another ornament pattern book for Christmas.  She just went on a trip to Germany, so it's in German, but if you click on the row of pictures on this web page you'll get the idea. They're very different, less about color work and more about stitch patterns.  Because many of them are lacy, they're worked over unbreakable metallic ornaments, not just stuffed.  More ideas to explore.  By next Christmas you may have to shovel your way around the house through the ornaments!

I'm off of work now until Jan. 2.  Time to knit!

Thanksgiving ornaments

More ornaments! Will it never end? Maybe not, I'm still having fun! This time five big ones. Three from the book, and in honor of the Thanksgiving day dog show, two dog themed ornaments using fair isle patterns from the little Vogue book of Knits for Pets.

Next: Beads! Stay tuned!

It's magical!

The knitted ornament frenzy continues.  Here's the latest crop:

Experimenting with different colors, yarns, etc.  I scaled the basic pattern down to make a medium size and a small size as well, and boy are those little guys cute!  And fun to make; they work up in just about an hour vs. about three for the standard (largest) size.

The Houdini socks have progressed, got the feet done.  I now have two closed tubes, each with a toe at each end.  Sorry, it just feels silly.

Tomorrow at knitting group I guess we'll steek the ankle openings and start up the legs.  I can't wait to see how they fit, especially in the heel.

Getting my holidays in the wrong order

Well, an interesting weekend it has been.  East Coast ravaged by Frankenstorm, Casa Bell/Lynn survives intact.  It rained, it blew, yes it was pretty amazingly stormy, but the old domicile proved its mettle once again.  Power stayed on, basement stayed dry.  No major tree loss.  Hurray!

College was closed for two days.  Boss called us in anyway to batten down the computer room.  Seems the roof has leaked before.  They say they've fixed it, but a bit of plastic over the top of the computer racks did seem like a wise precaution.  Today the weather was actually not bad, but a lot of things were closed to give people time to clean up roads etc.  Boss once again felt we should be making use of time.  With offices closed, I elected to spend some time catching up on "read this interesting thing" emails from boss and others and doing research on current projects.  You know, all those things you never quite get to at work because of all the other crises-of-the-day and impromptu strategy meetings that come up.  Ah, the bliss of working without interruptions.

Of course, a weekend full of clouds and rain also afforded some time for knitting.  I am having a ton of fun with these Christmas balls.  Here's the latest:

Hearts, probably the prettiest patterns in Arne and Carlos's book.

Trees, in timeout until I get some gold yarn to make the little stars at the tops.

I'm calling them scales.  I was intrigued by the idea of combining a regular yarn with the glitter eyelash I bought during the NSKO3.  Not a lot of contrast, but I think it will be lovely when it's done.

Also started my socks for the Houdini Sock knit-along.  The sock looks pretty normal, but the construction is odd.  You start at the toes, knit the foot, then knit the toe again backwards for the heel.  At that point you have a closed tube.  Then you basically steek it and knit the tube for the leg.  So far I have the toe and a bit of the foot.  Pictures will be posted as it develops.  Steeking is scary!

Summer Socks

NSKO3 is approaching, which has put me in mind of what great friends I have.  Great partly because they are still my friends, even though I neglect my blog which I started so they can keep up with what I'm doing.  So thank you, friends, and here at long last is an update!

I've done a lot of sock knitting this summer.  I realized that I have finished 3 soon to be 4 pairs of socks.  Imagine, 4 pairs of socks which I have never worn languishing in my sock drawer.  It's enough to make me look forward to cooler weather.

Without further ado, here they are:

The pink ones were different for me.  I had to knit them top down.  My usual m.o. is to take whatever I find interesting about a pattern and adapt it to my favorite toe-up sock method, but these have a band of cabling that travels diagonally across the top of the foot, and I thought that was cool.  I pondered how to reverse it so I could knit it toe-up, and I decided it would require making some guesses about lengths and such which I wouldn't want to bet the farm on.  I decided my best bet was to actually follow the original pattern.  Here's a close-up.  All the cabling at the top cinched them up more than I expected, I hope they don't shrink too much!

The pair next to the pink ones are based on the Turkish Socks pattern in the Vogue Knitting on the Go Socks book.  These I adapted to my normal method, so they're much less folky than the originals.  I wanted to use up some of those odds and ends you have left over after finishing a pair of socks, and this was great for it.  They didn't actually use up all of anything I had, but they were so fun to knit that I can see just keeping a big basket with all the odds and ends and knitting up a pair like them any time I find some good colorwork patterns to use.  I like to do something different every time, so I wouldn't use exactly the same patterns again.  Here they are close up.  Don't you love the colors??

The blue pair are also based on a pair of Turkish socks, this time from Ethnic Socks & Stockings by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  I love this book, it has so many cool socks I want to make.  The blue ones have a pretty stitch pattern made with traveling stitches (kind of like cables).  That was some slow knitting, let me tell you, but it was worth it.  The effect is more subtle in person than in the photo below, and everyone I have shown them to seems to find them very attractive.

 The last pair is just a plain foot and ribbed leg made of some of the Cherry Tree Hill self-striping type yarn I got at the Sheep and Wool festival this year.  They were my traveling project for a trip to California with my mom last week.  We went to a family reunion.  The colorway is called Birches, and I do like the colors.  They're just a few inches from being done.  I hope to have them off the needles in time to start a new pair of traveling socks for the trip to NSKO3.  

Finally there's this little darlin':

My friend Mardi was asked by another friend to knit a "pumpkin hat" for her baby.  Mardi is an advanced beginner knitter, would be intermediate if she had a little more confidence.  She found a pattern but was a bit afraid, so we did a knit-along.  It is just so cute!  I love that you can make babies wear anything.

That's it for now!  See you soon!

Blacksmith Days

So here's what I did last weekend.  Peter and I went to Blacksmith Days down at the Farm Museum.  My fiber group does a weaving demo there every year.  This year the lady who normally leads the group could not be there, so I volunteered to head up the weaving demo, having done a little weaving myself.  The spinners prepared the yarn from the Jacob fleece Ralene gave us last summer, and I chose a pattern and planned the piece.  A couple of other weavers in the group helped warp the loom.  Over the weekend, I was the only weaver who actually made it to the event, so I sat in the log schoolhouse and wove the 6' long shawl.  Here it is:

(It got a little wrinkled in the car coming home.)  It was a LOT of weaving for one weekend, and I still have to finish off the ends (a medium length fringe, I think), but I'm quite proud of it!  It feels like a real accomplishment to have done it.