28 posts tagged “knitting”
According to my Ravelry project page I started these Charade Socks in August 2007. Yikes. That said, socks are my whenever-on-going-travel project and so do not get high priority in the knitting queue most of the time. And I had to knit about 2.3 socks to get 2 socks (I had to rip out 3 to 4" of the first sock because it was too small and dense). Also, I am very happy to learn that when I mostly knit on a sock it only takes me about 1 month, I cast on sock number two on June 19 and managed to get a measly 2 inches (if that) done during my six hour flight. Anyway, I plugged away, knitting just a few rows a day here and there. Last weekend when we went camping I was just starting the gusset and somehow during those 4 days managed to knit up to the toe. Wow! I actually needed to tink back 6 rows due to knot believing I'd get anywhere near that much knit and not bringing the needed info (sock #1 foot length and the toe shaping instructions). So I finished up the toe earlier this week and just wove in my ends today.
I hate weaving in ends. I'm also pretty crappy at doing so, but muddled through it. I do have to say it was a lot easier when I stopped using the large blue plastic tapestry needle and started using the smaller, bent tip Chibi needle.
For some reason sock #2's stitch pattern has a lot more definition than sock #1. Hopefully it will even out once I wash and wear them.
Details
pattern: Charade
needles: 5" size 2 dpns (the 5" needles are great, except when all the gusset stitches have been picked up)
yarn: Crystal Palace Panda Wool (46% bamboo, 43% wool, 11% nylon) in color 9628 Periwinkle - 2 balls
Stats: Retro Redux Shrug from Lace Style; 3 entire balls of Karabella Aurora 8 yarn; Bryspun needles in size 8, 9, 10 and 10 1/2 (oh and a 2x" bamboo needle in size 8 for the collar); long tail cast-on and basic cast-off (I think there was a better choice but I ran out of research time); I downsized the pattern in wing-span length but not cast-on numbers.
I'm pretty happy with it, though I think it stretches a wee bit much over my shoulders making them feel unnecessarily wide and while it didn't keep me quite warm enough in the very cold room where the ceremony took place, I got quite warm while dancing at the reception and by the end of the night it started to fall off one of my shoulders. I loved knitting with Aurora. I plan on wearing the shrug again as soon as it gets warm enough (dratted cold weather) and while I have lots of knitting on my to do list I would be interested in knitting this pattern again. It was dead easy to follow, though I would have liked more guidance on the right cast-on & cast-off choices. I struggled and worried about the fit as well. I ended up taking away like 4 inches from the smallest size wingspan (distributing those 4 inches between the various sections) which was a very good idea for me otherwise the cuffs would have been below my elbows (of course there is the excessive stretching across the shoulders...).
I just realized that this is my first finished object of the year. Wow. I'm totally slacking. Well, my first knit finished object, I've sewn a few things.
So check out TurtleButt!
He has a body and clothes and legs and everything. I sewed the last two legs on at my knit night last night. Leave it to wanting oohs and ahhs over a cute knitted toy to get my project finished. Tonight I plan on dragging TheHusband to the bookstore to buy some board books for my nephew then we can pack up and send the birthday present.
What I will do differently next time:
- stuff his body in intervals as it was no fun to stuff his boy through the tiny neck opening
- stuff his shell even less
- leave longer tails after the cast-off of the legs to use for sewing
- leave a slightly bigger neck opening
- follow the pattern's advice regarding the i-cord
- I'd also like to learn a better way to seam the beginning of the i-cord to the end of the i-cord
Sheldon the turtle butt now has a neck, head, eyes, legs and shell. I'm currently in the middle of doing the attached i-cord to put the shell together, then I will stuff and sew on his legs. I missed my own personal deadline, but luckily my nephew probably won't notice (or remember if my SIL cooperates) that his first birthday present didn't arrive on his birthday.
Saturday evening I finally hand-stitched the binding onto the oven mitts and finished my first project almost completely done on my sewing machine. I was really happy that I decided to stitch the quilting lines about 2 inches apart on the oven mitts because all that quilting, even on a machine, got old fast. And I had to pull out the old machine to sew the binding on since the diameter of the babylock's free-arm was just a bit too big for the oven mitts' opening. But the project is done and ready to be packed up and shipped off to my mom. I hope the insul-bright batting works effectively. The potholder pattern is from Amy Butler's In Stitches book and I traced my favorite oven mitt for the oven mitt pattern. Originally I was hoping for two matching oven mitts but didn't have enough fabric. I bought 1/2 yard of each fabric seen and that was basically just enough, I have 2 bias binding strips leftover, 2 triangles from either side of cutting the bias binding and a few pieces of quilted scraps from the oven mitts.
As I knit Sheldon from Knitty the phrase what's up turtle butt? keeps going through my head. Was that a grade school joke or is my inner 5 year old simply amused at the word butt?
Anyways. I am finally knitting Sheldon, just one of the many things on my "to knit" list. I put the Tomten on hold, because I want to send Sheldon to my nephew for his 1st birthday on February 14. I just finished round 45 on the body and have done about 15 rounds a day. I haven't done the time-line but I hope I can make my deadline. I'm being sort of boring with my first Sheldon and knitting him in the called for yarn in the colors green apple and butter. His body as you can see is green apple and his shell will be butter with green apple contrast.
I started knitting a Tomten at the end of December. It took a couple years for this pattern to grow on me, the pictures in Knitting Without Tears are just not all that appealing, but then I found the Zimmermania blog and started seeing gorgeous cute Tomtens on gorgeous cute toddlers and decided that I had to knit it. I decided to knit it for one of my fellow alums' toddlers (not really sure who yet, as I can think of 6 fellow alums with toddlers) in our school colors. I don't think any of us were really big on the whole dress with school spirit thing, but the maize and off-black cotton-ease yarns appealed to me and are sort of spirit-ish without screaming "I've got school spirit yes I do, I've got school spirit how 'bout you?" So I bought 3 skeins of Cotton-ease in maize and one skein in the off-black. 880 yards should be enough for a toddler sweater right? [cue ominous music]
The tomten is a really fun pattern when it isn't completely boring. I knit a rectangle with just over 1-220 yard skein in garter stitch before I got to any of the interesting bits of the pattern. And last week, I finished the hood (don't try to graft/kitchener after 11 pm is my advice) with 7 inches of the second skein to spare. But this is where I ran into a problem: my vision for the tomten involved knitting the entire body and hood in the muted yellow and then finishing it with an attached i-cord in the off-black. And if one skein of yarn gave me 24 1/2" by 8 1/4" (or 4,256 square garter ridge stitches*) I didn't think I was going to get two sleeves that start out 6 1/2" deep (or approximately 2,380 square garter ridge stitches each). So I had a dilemma. How should I knit the sleeves?
All off-black (letter jacket-eh)? Black and maize stripes (bumble-bee)? Neither option appealed to me so I took the third route: hunt like crazy for another skein of maize in the same dye-lot as the 3 skeins I already have. The crazy, one-in-a-million route (well, thanks to Ravelry I did have slightly better odds if I stash-stalked).
Before I started digging through the mountainous number of cotton-ease owners on Ravelry (2164 entries in "stash") I checked at a fabric store I happened to be at that also carried yarn, no luck. And as we headed home from dinner tonight I asked The Husband to stop by Michael's, I mean it is where I bought the yarn four months ago. The bin with maize cotton-ease was pretty full and I pulled each one out to check the dye lot number and stashed them in other bins, they had between 15 and 20 skeins of this color. The very last skein, when I was convinced I was going to knit the Tomten sleeves in a contrasting color, ended up being my dye-lot number - it was the only one of that dye-lot. Hurray! In disbelief I checked the number again. And then I put the rest of those skeins back in their bin and headed to the register (5 minutes to closing no less) and then I triple checked that number while waiting to check-out. But silly me decided to tell you more happy ending instead of actually knitting.
*garter ridges stitches are a completely fake unit of measure that I made up for purposes of figuring out if I had enough yarn. I simply calculated the area of the primary body rectangle and the area of the sleeve trapezoid using stitches and garter ridges as though they were inches/feet/your preferred measurement unit for length.
Remember last January when I was planning my first sweater? No, that's okay, I forgot too. Well I bought the pattern (in February I think) and I did a couple swatches (in June or July) but then I never actually cast-on. The first two swatches didn't come out to gauge, and I had other projects on the needles so I kept getting put off swatch #3 and suddenly 2007 was practically over; I hadn't even cast-on and I still had finished this baby toddler bolero that I started in March and that had to be done before the child would outgrow it.
In April I lost one of the straight needles I was using for this project, but that had a happy ending when I discovered the joy of Bryspun circular needles. In July I finally finished knitting the sleeves,which felt like behemoths compared to the short bolero fronts and back pieces. Then in September (I think) I went out and bought Nancie Wiseman's Knitter's Book of Finishing Techniques to help me get over my fear of seaming knits (fabulous book btw, it now lives in my knitting bag). Sometime after that I got up the nerve to pick up all 225 stitches along the collar. And then in December, while flying to visit our family over christmas I ran out of yarn while casting off (a picot cast-off) the shawl collar on the plane. About 40 stitches from the end! And I had no other knitting with me and a few more hours stuck in a plane.
Luckily I still had a bit more yarn packed in my luggage and the airline did not loose that luggage. So I was able to finish casting-off the morning we arrived at my MIL's house, I started seaming up the arms and sides that night at my mom's and then the next day in the car on the way to visit S&E. I was weaving in the ends just minutes before we met up with S&E and "Ladybug". But luckily the sweater fit :)
I didn't talk about this sweater much during the knitting process because I discovered E's blog and she discovered my blog (thanks Ravelry). I wanted it to be a surprise, not a christmas suprise, but such is life.
Pattern: #1646 Bolero and Hat by Sirdar [double knitting], it is sized 0-3 months up to 5-6 years; I knit the 3-4 year size and Ladybug turned 3 a week ago.
Yarn: Sirdar Snuggly DK, 3-50 gram balls around 191 yards each, nylon/acrylic blend, (25 grams leftover, including the swatch)
Time: late March to late December with a lot of "zzzzz" time
Warning this post is long on detail and how-to as well as photos. If you aren't sewing inclined you might want to skip reading down to the very bottom where I talk about sewing alternatives (or skip it altogether if you are knitting inclined either).
A couple months ago, I got frustrated with the state of my needle drawer. I was looking for a needle I swore I had but could not find it. So I pulled out Stitch n Bitch and looked at their instructions for an organizer. At one time I thought I was all about the needle roll, but then I realized I don't want to carry all my needles with me all the time. Plus I prefer circular needles and the less kinks in them the better (of course my bryspuns don't have kinks in the first place). Anyway, I didn't like the idea of attaching the needle organizer to a clothes hanger but did like the hanging aspect. I also thought the directions were fiddly, so I didn't follow them, just used the finished size as a guideline for my work.
What I did
I cut two pieces of fabric twice the width needed (plus seam allowances), two pieces of peltex craft interfacing the length & width of my finished product. I seamed each fabric rectangle once along the long edge for a tube, turned it right-side and centered the seam. Then I pulled the peltex into each flattened tube. If your fabric is heavier than the lightweight eyelet I used you might not need interfacing (or be able to use a lighter fusible interfacing).
I put both pieces together interior-sides together (so the seams were on the inside) and did a small seam on the top & bottom (short edges). Then I flipped it inside out (so the exterior sides faced each other) and seamed the top and bottom again to enclose the raw edges. I flipped it right-side out again and marked my seams for each circular needle size slot and stitched those, then spent a long time hiding the thread ends. Finally I used a couple thumb tacks to hang it on the wall and inserted my needles. Officially this still needs the needle sizes to be labeled. I am looking for the right buttons to do that (or maybe I'll break down and make them, or get lazy and find a fabric marker).
I also made a DPN roll. I know I said I don't like the idea of needle rolls, but I realized that this could be stored with my yarn stash. The goal is to condense the knitting supplies into this one box. I think that is just so the sewing supplies can take-over, but that is another story. Plus I also had these two fabulous fat quarters that I was itching to use.
What I did (apologies, I forgot to take photos)
This time I grabbed a bit of freezer paper and laid out all my dpns (in the packaging) and basically traced them onto the freezer paper (lining them up on a bottom straight line, and making sure they fit within the width of my fabric) to figure out how tall the finished needle roll should be. Then I cut out an exterior fabric, an interior fabric, a pocket fabric (same size as the exterior & interior but then I folded it in half), interfacing for the pocket, interfacing for the body, an exterior flap, and an interior flap (these were about half the height and the same width as the exterior/interior pieces).
I ironed on some interfacing to the pocket piece, then folded it in half along the longer axis and ironed it*. I ironed interfacing to the wrong side of my interior fabric and placed the pocket on the right side, lining up the bottom edges. At this point I used a erasable fabric marker and made the lines for my pocket stitches; Go ahead and seam the very ends too, this makes the final step easier. It took a little bit of figuring on the freezer to paper to get the distances right. I made the pockets for the smaller needles smaller than the larger needles. Once this was done I pulled the threads through to the wrong side and knotted them.
Setting the main piece aside I put the two flap pieces together (right sides together as is Standard Operating Procedure) and seamed up three side, leaving one long side open for turning it right-side out. Turn this right side out and iron it. If you have a directional pattern for one or more of your fabrics make sure that the open edge is at the top of fabric pattern.
Now you make a fabric sandwich. The bottom layer is the interior piece with pockets (wrong side on the table, right side visible). On top of this lay your flap making sure its raw top edge is lined up and centered along the interior's top raw edge. You want your exterior flap fabric to face out (be visible); if you are worried about catching the short edges when you sew the side seams you . Finally you place your exterior piece on top of these pieces, wrong side down and making sure all the edges line up nicely. Pin this together. You should not see any of the right-side of the fabric just the wrong side. Starting seaming this together. You will first place your needle around the 3/4-of-the-way on the short side of your fabric sandwich, turn at the corner, seam one long side, turn at the corner, seam the other short side, turn at the corner, seam the other long side, turn at the corner and seam about 1/4 of the original short side. Don't forget to back stitch at the beginning and the end. This should leave an opening about 1/2 the width of the short side which allows you to turn your sandwich right-side out. Don't forget to trim your corners before turning it right-side out. You might want to use a chopstick or something to poke the corners out nicely. You might tug gently on the flap and then iron everything. I hand stitched the opening shut, but if you wanted to you could top-stitch around the entire thing to close it.
Now I made a fabric strip and added velcro to it for my closure but you could use a wide ribbon (or ahead of time add buttons/snaps/velco at the appropriate spots on the exterior fabric). I also embroidered the needle sizes on the pockets after sewing this together; I bet it would be easier to do before you sew it together, but after you mark the pocket stitching lines. I put some notes on my flickr photos and can try to draw up some diagrams if my written instructions are confusing (and diagrams are requested).
I haven't been finishing many projects lately. Either they are awaiting that one final embellishment or I just stop working on them to pick up another project. I did finish my scarf for this fall about a week after I started knitting it, I just forgot to take pictures and post about it. Then it went missing in my own home; TheHusband found it for me hiding between the couch and the wall.
Last Sunday I took it out for a photoshoot (actually we were just heading to the park, I was wearing the scarf and grabbed the camera).
I'm really happy with the scarf, it is about 2 1/2 inches wide when the ribbing is relaxed, and I made the length long enough that it will wrap around my neck nicely but not so long that I can't let it hang open. And I keep getting compliments on it, which is really cool. Unfortunately this yarn has gotten a couple snags from the snag-free velcro on my favorite bag. In the end, I did use more than one skein of the yarn, but I had bought two skeins anyway, I just don't have enough leftover for a hat. (Reminder stats: Yarn-Lana Grossa Cool Wool Big, Pattern- Single Cable scarf from One Skein by Leigh Radford, don't remember the needles but that is personal preference anyway.)
On Saturday we went for apple hunting (you call it driving to apple orchards, I call it apple hunting). Instead of bringing a current work in progress (the socks, the baby blanket, but not the bolero--that has "must work at home" status) I cast on for a scarf with some yummy green yarn I bought this past spring. I had jotted down the pattern on a 4 x 6 index card and decided, this is a scarf that is supposed to be 3 inches wide, there is no reason to swatch.
So I cast-on and at row 6 (the first cabled row) I realize that I forgot to write down which direction the cable twists, I decide to wing it and knit away. About 4 inches in (woot for worsted weight yarn again) I loose count of rows and because I am incapable of partially frogging when slipped stitches and cables are involved I rip the entire thing and cast-on again (trying the cable in the other direction) and knit about 4 more inches. Once we get home I discover that I was cabling in the wrong direction. While it would have been fine, I decided to rip out those 4 or so inches and cast-on again. I'm sort of grateful I didn't get more done during the drive.
This time I pull out the safety pins to help me count my rows to keep my cable twist nice and even. So after 3 cast-ons and 8 inches of knitting wasted I sit down for TV watching (3 discs of Grey's Anatomy season 3) and now have 17 1/2 inches of scarf. I've used about half my skein of yarn (Lanna Grossa Cool Wool Big) but I think I want my scarf to be more than three feet so I won't get to use that second skein of yarn for a hat. Boo. I didn't bother swatching, right now my scarf is about 2 1/2" wide instead of the 3 inches the pattern says it will be.
And it is taking lots of will power to not cast on for about 4 more projects that I want to do right now. But I need to finish something first.
