Well paint me blue...

... and call me Inky! I actually made a successful felted bag! Remember the felting woes that I posted a few months back? The not-so-booga bag and the tartan boxy thing that was actually more of a tartan saggy thing? I redeemed myself with this little trinket:



The vintage bubble bag from "Pursenalities" by Eva Wiechman:










































It felted down to about a third of its original size, so it turned out smaller than I had anticipated. But I love the fabric that I ended up with. The yarn used for this baby is one of my favorites, Patons SWS in the colorway natural pink. It's a soy/wool mixture and it knits up beautifully. It has a very soft shimmer about it and it's a delight to work with.
I modified the design a little in the sense that I added a flap to it. I want to be able to close it to keep Ariel's little mits out of my purse content. She is fascinated by cell phones and has developed an odd attraction to bills, as in paper money... I have no idea where it comes from, maybe she is headed for a career with the IRS. I sewed on a snap closure which she hasn't figured out yet, so that should be good for a while. Joe suggested I make a mini version for her, and I am seriously considering that. When I took this one away from because I wanted to play with it myself, she was extremely disgruntled and threw a three minute toddler tantrum.

Print o' the wave stole

This is a design by Eunny Yang, whom I admire greatly and have cursed a few times while knitting this up. It isn't hard once you know how, but I had a heck of a time figuring out how to add the knitted-on border. I may be a bit dense though. I used Patons Lacette which has a bit of mohair in it, and size 4 needles. Since I knit extremely loosely and don't know how to fix that, I always select needles that are at least 2 sizes smaller than the pattern prescribes. The yarn has a bit of a fuzzy haze to it, due to the mohair, and is very soft and cuddly. The stole turned out huge, it measures 40 by 80 inches! For something so light and airy it is surprisingly warm. I love it, and I am rather proud of my first real venture into lace knitting!






I am still working on the entrelac socks, also a Eunny Yang design, and they are rather tedious to work on. Six rows of six stitches, pick up six stitches, another six rows of six stitches, etcetera etcetera. I am almost at the heel of the first one, but for some reason it feels more like work than fun at the moment. And since I was in desperate need of some fun I knit up a bubble bag (the Vintage Bubble Bag by Eva Wiechmann) in a few hours, which is now patiently awaiting felting. I will post pictures as soon as it's done.

Mirrored cable anklet socks

These socks are very easy and knit up quite quickly. They are mirror images, the cables on the right sock turn in the opposite direction from the ones on the left sock. This pattern will result in a size 9 sock.

Materials needed:

100 grams of sock yarn, I used Invicta by Scheepjeswol but any sock yarn will do
5 DPNs size 0 or size needed to get gauge of 9 cable pattern stitches per inch.

Terms used:

C2B: place 1 stitch on cable needle and put behind work, knit next stitch, then knit the stitch on the cable needle
C4B: place 2 stitches on cable needle and put behind work, knit next 2 stitches, then knit the stitches on the cable needle.
C2F: place 1 stitch on cable needle and keep in front of work, knit next stitch, then knit the stitch on the cable needle
C4F: place 2 stitches on cable needle and hold in front of work, knit next 2 stitches, then knit the 2 stitches on the cable needle


Cast on 64 stitches and divide evenly over 4 needles (16 stitches per needle). Join, being careful not to twist, and knit in the round in K1, P1 rib for 1 inch.
Knit in cable pattern stitch until work measures 4.5 inches from the cast on.
Cable Pattern 1:

Round 1: P1, K4, P2, C2B, P2, K4, P2
Round 2: P1, K4, P2, K2, P2, K4, P1
Round 3: P1, C4B, P2, C2B, P2, C4B, P1
Round 4: P1, K4, P2, K2, P2, K4, P1
Round 5: P1, K4, P2, C2B, P2, K4, P2
Round 6: P1, K4, P2, K2, P2, K4, P1











Heel: when work measures 4.5 inches, place the first 32 stitches on one needle and knit as follows:

RS rows: *S1, K1* repeat to end
WS rows: S1, P to end

Repeat these two rows until heel flap measures 2 inches. End with a WS row.

Turning the heel:

Round 1: K21, K2tog, turn
Round 2: P 10, P2tog, turn
Round 3: K10, K2tog, turn
Repeat round 2 and 3 until all stitches of the heel flap have been worked.


Gusset:


Pick up stitches for the gusset evenly down the sides of the heel flap. Pick up one stitch in every slipped stitch (the elongated Vs down the side of the heel flap).
Divide the stitches over three needles, the middle of which (needle #2) holds all the cable pattern stitches. Make sure the other two needles each have the same number of stitches.
Work as follows:

Round 1: Knit all stitches
Round 2: Needle #1: knit to last 3 stitches, K2tog, K1
Needle #2: work in cable pattern stitch
Needle #3: K1, SSK, knit to end
Repeat these two rounds until you have 16 stitches again on the first and the third needle.

Knit until the foot of the sock is 2 inches shorter than the tip of your big toe, and then start shaping the toe.


Shaping the toe:

Round 1: Needle #1: knit to last 3 stitches, K2tog, K1
Needle #2: K1, SSK, knit to last 3 stiches, K2tog, K1
Needle #3: K1, SSK, knit to end
Round 2: Knit all stitches

Repeat these two rounds until you have 32 stitches total left, then start decreasing every row until you have 16 stitches left.
Divide the remaining stitches between two needles and graft the toes.


For the second sock, use this cable pattern:


Cable Pattern 2

Round 1: P1, K4, P2, C2F, P2, K4, P2
Round 2: P1, K4, P2, K2, P2, K4, P1
Round 3: P1, C4F, P2, C2F, P2, C4F, P1
Round 4: P1, K4, P2, K2, P2, K4, P1
Round 5: P1, K4, P2, C2F, P2, K4, P2
Round 6: P1, K4, P2, K2, P2, K4, P1










Let me know what you think of the pattern! It is my first, so I welcome all feedback. Thanks for looking!

My very first original design socks

I finished my first pair of original design socks last night! I am taking part in a cable knit-along on KnittingHelp.com and I started a pattern that I hadn't realized was knit flat on two needles, instead of in the round. I don't seam up socks, I love knitting in the round too much, so I decided instead of searching for another cable pattern to my liking, I would just make up my own. And I did! These are the pictures, they are not very clear unfortunately due to the dark color of the yarn, but they look good in real life.

Sheri's lace socks

Yesterday Ariel and I released three hot pink balloons (Aria's favorite color) with little messages attached, to go and find her in heaven. After we came home I took a break and worked on my Sweet Pea sock for a bit, and then I decided to bite the bullet and take pictures of the lace socks and upload them. I have no idea why I hate photographing my stuff so much. Maybe it's because our camera is a pain in the neck. It is too big, has too many possibilities and is too hard to handle. You can never just snap a quick picture, it's always a huge operation. I'm considering saving up money to buy myself a very simple, very quick little camera. All it needs to be able to do is take pictures and zoom in and out. Oh, and a flash, that might come in handy too.
Anyway, without further ado, here is my version of Sheri's lace socks.The pictures are pretty poor quality because I was trying to keep my snugglebug away from both socks and feet while I took the shots.

Aria

I received word two days ago that basically puts all my whining about frogging socks and warm weather into perspective. Aria, 24 years old, mommy of an almost 2 year old girl and a newborn baby boy, passed away on July 26th. I knew her from a close knit mommy community that I have been a member of for the past two years, and I liked her. She was feisty, strong, fiercely loving, loyal, funny, and she adored her little girl. When she got pregnant again, she mentioned several times that she didn't have a good feeling about it, that she didn't feel like it was going to have a happy ending. We responded with "oh honey, that's just hormones, everything will be fine, you'll see!". We meant well, but we pretty much told her she was being silly.
And then things started going wrong when she was induced. She was unconscious when they delivered her baby boy by emergency C section, and she passed away a few hours later due to a amniotic fluid embolism that traveled up to her heart. She never got to see or hold her little boy. He will never know the loving touch of his mother. Their daddy will have to explain to the little girl that mommy is not coming home, ever again. Why do these things happen?

Yeah, about the weather...

So the weather changed again here in beautiful, fickle Massachusetts, and it is now frigging hot. Since I am working on a pair of woolen socks I am NOT happy about it. My hands get sticky, the needles (I work on metal DPNs size 0) get sticky and the yarn keeps getting stuck to them. Ick. Could we moderate the weather for knitters please? I would say a temperature of between 60 and 70 degrees, sunny, dry, with a bit of a breeze but not so bad that your yarn gets tangled when you knit outside. How does that sound? Oh, and no bugs either, please. They scare me and make me jump up, and losing a dozen stitches on a lace patterned sock is a pain in the... well, you know.
All those that are in favor of weather specifically geared towards knitters, say aye!

Felted bags

Long overdue pictures of my not-so-Booga bag. I made it wider than the pattern told me to, I cast on 50 stitches instead of the prescribed 34. Subsequently it didn't turn out as high as the one in the pattern, which was what I was going for. I love how the colors turned out, and the felting has really exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately the edges are a bit wavy and it doesn't keep its shape very well.



My next project was supposed to be this one:




















Pretty, no? This is what it turned out as:

I stuffed it to the gills with books so it has at least a little bit of a boxy feeling to it, but it is a complete flop. The zipper opening is way too small, the zipper was put in in the clumsy manner of a six year old's first attempt at sewing (I did it, but the result is really pretty bad looking), and it's much more floppy than I expected it to be.

So... This is why I stated that although I still love bags, they never seem to work out the way I want them too. Socks however, as long as they have an opening on one side, are closed on the other side, and have something resembling a heel in the middle, are pretty much impossible to foul up. Yay for socks!!

Why kids and lace knitting don't mix

I had this new sock set up. A daring project, all lace. An intricate pattern, or at least for me. And I was doing really well at it too. I was up to two repeats and it looked as perfectly geometrical as the pattern picture said it should.
Until Ariel got her little mits on it. She pulled out all four needles and then grinned up at me with this cute little face that said "look mommy, I helped you with your knitting!"
Nineteen months old, cute as a button and smart as a whip. I should have made sure she couldn't reach the knitting, and usually I do. I just count myself lucky she didn't poke her eye out or something horrible like that. A lace sock is a small thing to sacrifice in a situation like this.

Socks socks socks

I have a new craze, I think. I moved on from bags (still love them but somehow they never pan out the way I want them to) to socks. There is something very manageable about knitting socks. It takes one ball of yarn, a couple of needles (okay, a LOT of needles, since I knit them with 5 DPNs) and two hands. Once you have a "recipe" for a basic sock, you can just go ahead and make up the rest as you go along. Socks are easy to take along and are interesting enough to keep you amused for hours on end. And for such a small project, socks take a lot longer than you would think.
Joe and I spent the past week up in Canada with his parents, and I knit a pair of socks for myself during that week. Need I say more? It was one of the longest weeks of my life and I knitted all my annoyance and frustrations at Joe's mother's meddling, whining, passive-agressiveness and just general annoyingness (yes, that is a word. Well, it is now.) into my socks. They are knit from a beautiful self patterning yarn in various shades of brown, cream and gray, and looking at them gives me cravings for chocolate. They hold a lot of evil thoughts though, so hopefully they won't give me gout or hammertoes as a result.

These are my chocolatey socks before washing and blocking properly:

What kind of knitter are you?

I'm a sucker for these silly quizzes, and since I am also a sucker for knitting, this one was perfect for me:

What Kind of Knitter Are You?

You appear to be a Knitting Guru. You love knitting and do it all the time. While finishing a piece is the plan, you still love the process, and can't imagine a day going by without giving some time to your yarn. Packing for vacation involves leaving ample space for the stash and supplies. It can be hard to tell where the yarn ends and you begin.http://marniemaclean.com
Take this quiz!








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Felting woes

Joe and I live in an apartment without washer or dryer. This has always been a pain as far as I am concerned, but never more so than now. I have a felting thing going. I started working on a Booga Bag with Patton's SWS in the color way plum, and it needs to be felted. I could do it by hand, but it would probably take me a day of scrubbing and rubbing to get it done, and to be honest I have neither the stamina nor the time for that. But using the complex laundry room is costly (1.65 a pop!) and time consuming, especially if the bag takes four or five turns in the machine.
I have no idea where this felting kick comes from, but it's got a fierce hold on me. I already have my next few projects lined up, a Sophie bag, a Lopi tote, and a free form knitting bag. Unless my Booga doesn't turn out well, of course. I modified the pattern, that is to say I want the bag to be more rectangular bottom wise, and not as high. So I cast on 48 stitches, knit 48 rows, and will knit only the 68 rows in the round that the pattern dictates. I will of course post pictures once it's done.

The Dollar and a Half cardigan is slow going at the moment, I am working on the sleeves right now but I am too psyched about my felting thing to sit down and finish it. I have read about so many problems with this pattern, nobody likes the sleeves and the original pattern in Interweave Knits actually got the two front panels mixed up. The needles need to be changed to two sizes smaller for the reversed stockinette panels or there will be major puffiness that even extreme blocking won't fix. Needless to say, if you knit it in 100% acrylic like I am doing, there is no way you can block it anyway. I washed the back and the left front panel and pinned it down to the measurements described while it dried, but it already looks like it's bunching up again. Oh well, if it turns out to be a disaster it will have been a good lesson, and not a very expensive one.
Live and learn! I so wish I had the cash to knit only with excellent material like wool, silk, bamboo, alpaca, mohair, and the like. But as long as Joe is in charge (which will be forever hehe) that is just not going to happen.

My first pair of socks!

I finished my first pair of socks last night. I used this absolutely awesome tutorial: Silver's sock tutorial . I'm convinced anyone can knit a pair of decent looking socks using Silver's instructions! I have no idea who she is, I found the tutorial through my knitting forum on www.knittinghelp.com, but I am mighty grateful to her and I highly recommend her tutorial to anyone who wants to knit socks but is afraid to try.
The pictures are pretty bad, for which I apologize, but they were taken with my cell phone. We went to the Ecotarium in Worcester, MA on the weekend and Joe didn't bring our digital camera in from the car after that. Now he's at work and I am home, hence the use of the cell phone camera.


By the way, the Ecotarium was interesting except for an absolutely ghastly polar bear exhibit with one lonely polar bear in it. Horrible, horrible, horrible. I know polar bears are solitary by nature, but they usually roam across miles of territory instead of being dumped in a concrete pit where the paint is peeling off and where there is not nearly enough room to swim around. It's criminal.

Pictures

There we are, a picture of the famous never ending sweater:






















And for my next project... quite ambitious, but I am going to take a stab at it anyway. The Dollar and a half cardigan, design by Veronik Avery, as published in the spring 2007 issue of Interweave Knits. I love this design, I am trying it in yarn from my stash to see if I can get a feel for it. If it's as complicated as it seems, and I have to rip it back a dozen times, I would rather not waste a ton of beautiful expensive yarn on it. This is a picture of the cardigan:

The never ending sweater project

My cable sweater for my little girl is turning into a nightmare. I, being a bit of an idiot actually, started it with only one skein, figuring that I could pop over to Michaels nearby for another one if needed. When it started to look like I was going to need a second skein, I found that they didn't carry the color I needed (Caron's Simply Soft Plum) anymore. So I went to Joann's to look, and they didn't have it either. Last night I ripped out the sleeve and a half that I had finished, and decided to go and look for another shade to make the sleeves out of. I have redone the front twice, the back once, one sleeve twice and now I have to do both sleeves again in another color... This is really turning into the sweater from hell!

On a more positive note: I tried my hand at an entrelac tutorial from the latest issue of Interweave Knits, and I love it! It seems quite complicated but the description is very clear so it's really not that bad. And it looks awesome! I am definitely using this technique for something in the near future. I have no idea what kind of project yet though. The socks they feature in the magazine seem a bit ambitious for an entrelac newbie like me.

Birthday sweater

There it is, the birthday sweater for the little girl. I made it out of Sugar 'N Cream 100% cotton, color way "Strawberries and cream". It turned out alright, I'm not happy with the distance between the first and the second button from the top (not enough room) but other than that I don't think it turned out too bad.

Disasters always happen in threes

I've not had a good week knit wise so far. Or, if you go by "the longer I get to work on something, the better" I've had an excellent week. The sweater I picked out for the little girl's birthday turned out way too big and way too rough for a baby. I like the yarn but more for something like a pair of thick socks for myself. I let Joe feel it and he said it was fine, but I know I wouldn't put Ariel (DD, 15 months) in it so I didn't feel right about giving it to someone else for their baby. So I rummaged through my stash and found, oh joy, a leftover skein that was virtually the same color way but a lot thinner and a lot softer. So I had to start that one over.

Next there is the case of the kangaroo-turned-rodent. This is a rather sad one. I picked a cute kangaroo pattern from a knitted-toy book and decided to do it in pink Patons Be Mine since I had that in my stash. The finished product doesn't look anything like a kangaroo whatsoever. The ears that are supposed to be perky and upright, are drooping forward instead. The legs are too short and I put them on way too far back, away from the belly. I sewed the tail (which is HUGE) on crooked. In short, the whole thing now looks like a giant naked rat. Don't believe me? Here is proof. Don't say I didn't warn you, and don't email me because you have lost your eye sight or your hair turned gray.






See what I mean? And since Joe's camera is a pain in the hiney, the pictures are fuzzy so you don't even get to see the full extend of the disaster. Lucky you.

Lastly, I discovered a major mistake in my cable sweater for Ariel. So I frogged that one as well. There you go, three projects that have gone horribly awry. Well, at least I won't have to worry about what to knit next for a while!

Future projects

I downloaded a few patterns last night that I would love to try my hand at, and I decided to go ahead and make the sweater for the little girl's birthday. Joe brought up a good point when he said:"I wonder how she is going to explain to her husband where the present came from." and that basically made me decide. Yes, I have a mean streak. Also, I love to knit. And third, Joe paid for the yarn (which normally comes out of my allowance - I know, I know, it sounds very grade schoolish, but it works for us) so it's all good. The birthday isn't until March so I have some time still. The pattern I'm going to use is from "Knits for kids" and it's called Fringe Benefits. The design is by Jean Schafer-Albers.

To knit or not to knit

Wow! Joe (DH) has asked me to knit a sweater as a birthday present for the daughter of a coworker. Her little girl is turning 1 in March. I'm flattered, and at the same time a little dismayed. This is a coworker whose husband accused her and Joe of having an affair and forbade her to talk to him. And then on Valentine's Day she came up behind him and hugged him and said Happy Valentine's Day, oh and by the by, hubby lost his job, their marriage was in big big trouble, and she was pregnant again.
I had told Joe a while ago that I wondered if she had feelings for him, and he told her that (!) and asked her if it was true. And she said yes.
He has no interest in her, which I believe, and he sees her as a friend.
I don't know... I do know men are prone to turning into the knight in shining armor, the one to save the damsel in distress. I have seen situations like this get out of hand quickly, not because the guy sets out to cheat on his wife, but because the poor pregnant friend has no one to turn to but him... and the rest is usually a blur of clothes on the bedroom floor, crumpled bed linen, and a bit (or a LOT) later one guy feeling like an idiot and one woman feeling rather accomplished.
Bitter? Maybe. Been there, done that. Both sides of the fence, albeit not pregnant in either case. And let me tell you, they both suck.
I haven't made up my mind about the sweater yet. The jury is still out on that one.

First posted projects

My first two posted projects are both for my 15 month old daughter. She is the light of my life and I love knitting things for her. The toy turtle is done in stockinette stitch and measures about 10 inches from head to tail.

The sweater is from Zoe Mellor's book "Adorable knits for tots". I had a lot of fun making this and I think it came out really well.