FOs!

Just a couple of things:

This is a hat for Olivia – it’ll probably be the first hat she wears on her head!  It’s made of the same knitpicks shine sport yarn that I made her little shirt out of.  I’m also working on a cardigan that matches in the same yarn, but I kind of got bored and stalled out.  There’s only a sleeve left and then some finishing, so I’m not worried about not finishing it.

I also knitted myself a quick cowl to work on my yarn-over skills:

Now I’m working on my dad’s Christmas scarf.  It’s kind of a “patchwork” scarf of different stitch patterns.  I hope it doesn’t turn out too ugly!

I also bought yarn today for a couple of other Christmas projects.  I’m only making a total of 3 Christmas presents out of yarn – I don’t have the time to make more and I don’t want to stress myself out about it this year.  I’m considering one good weekend of baking instead.

And, of course, an update to my most important project:

These are photos of months 5 and 6 of my pregnancy.  We’re rounding the bend of month 7.  She’s almost here!

FO – and a knitted gift!

I finished Olivia’s undershirt, which was made of stash yarn left over from my mom’s Christmas gift last year.  I have yet to get some pictures of that item…  I was supposed to knit it in the round, but my needles had too long of a cable between them and I impatiently decided to knit two sides flat and sew them together instead.  The result is very similar to the pattern in Interweave Knits Fall ‘09.  Crocheted edging always evens things out.  The Shine Sport yarn from knitpicks.com is so soft!  I love it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have enough left to make a small newborn hat for Livvy, so that’s already begun.  I love knitting in the round, but I confess I hate double-ended needles!  I just have the hardest time working around all those pointy ends.  Usually by the third or fourth round I’ve managed to get some kind of rhythm going, but I often end up starting over and over at the first round, unsatisfied with my cast-on over multiple needles.

The second set of photos is of a wonderful, beautiful, soft and colorful baby blanket that my awesome friend Jef knitted for Olivia!  I couldn’t believe how great it is!  My guess is that he started directly after hearing about our baby, because people have only known for 3 months (we announced around 2 months, just after we found out ourselves).  Jef is the king of patient, even stitches.  The entire blanket is impossibly uniform garter stitch – yes, simple, but it’s about 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, and I think he probably knitted it on a pair of straight needles.  I’ve made a similar attempt before, and it’s kinda hard to do it right.  The photos don’t really reflect how dark and rich the purple is.

Work in Progress (and why I’ve been away)

Months 2-4 of Pregnancy

…Aaaand here is why I haven’t put up a post in ages.  My latest work in progress is a baby girl!  We’re calling her Olivia.  I just completed 5 months (I need to take a new picture, since I’m already much bigger than I was even a month ago).  Soon I’ll have a couple of cute FO’s to post that have been made for her.  The yarn from the evening top below has been ripped to provide stash for a cute little undershirt I’m making from the pattern in Interweave Knits Fall ‘09.  Some too-small booties are also in progress – now that I know, I’ll be making bigger ones soon, too. 

I started crocheting a blanket in my first trimester, but had to put all my knitting/crocheting away for several months since I began to associate it with my nausea.  Now that all that has passed and I feel great, I’m getting creative again.  That’s the latest and I hope to have more detailed posts in the future!

“Evening Top” pattern

I did in fact complete most of the planning for a tube top, but inexplicably became utterly fascinated with a sleeveless top in my mother’s old Reader’s Digest Complete Guide to Needlework.  The set is simply referred to as ”Evening skirt, top, and shawl” and for some reason, even though I’ve passed over these pages browsing the book for as long as I’ve been able to read, the top suddenly called out to me a couple of nights ago.  I adjusted cast-on stitches for the gauge of my stash yarn (and also to tighten up the size a little, since I didn’t like quite how loose and flowy the original is) and have been knitting away at this very simple little pattern that should make a nice summery sleeveless top within a week or so.

Excuse the images; this is the best I could do, since I don’t think there’s a single image of this pattern in the digital world until now:

I’ve managed to get a bit done on the pattern so far, using KnitPicks Shine Sport (or is it Sport Shine?). 

Some of the modifications:

The original pattern calls for a gauge of 5 sts x 7 rows = 1″ in stockinette on #5 needles.  My original gauge swatch gave me 5.5 sts per inch, but then my “natural” knitting was even a bit looser than that.  So while the original pattern directs me to case on 84 sts for a small size, I went with 72.

The basic pattern as I modified it is as follows:

Back:

For stockinette st with eyelets, cast on 72 sts.
Row 1: K 1, 1 eyelet, (to work eyelet: yo, K2tog), *K 12, 1 eyelet*.  Repeat between * and * 5 more times.  Row 2: Purl.  Why the eyelets on either side of the completed fabric?  Because lacing up the sides with ribbon is cool!  Continue with Rows 1 and 2 for 13.5 inches; put markers at each side for armholes and continue work for 2.5 more inches (minus the edge eyelets, which are no longer necessary – just start knitting them in stockinette).  Then get out your trusty Reader’s Digest guide and change to oblique openwork for 2.5 inches, then to network for 4 inches.  Bind off.

When I work the front, the only difference is that there will be a v-neck slit that starts at the point where the armhole markers are placed.  Work to center, place 1/2 of the stitches on a holder, work first half of shoulder to match back.  Attach yarn to second half of shoulder and work up to match back.

I’ll seam at the tops of the shoulders, ribbon up the side seams, and single crochet to finish the armholes.  I’ll probably add a small ribbon waist-tie as well, as I really kinda like the one in the photo (I’m not a belt girl at all, but I’ve got a skinny waist, so I suppose I should at least see how it looks).

My grand masterpiece in the making:

Also, I just remeasured my gauge, and it IS 5.5 sts x 7 rows.  Should still fit fine, but it won’t be as loose as the photo!  We’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

FO!

I finished the Tree Jacket – so here it is!  I’ve been sitting out a sprained ankle for 2 weeks, so I’ve had some extra time on my hands and managed to bust this pattern out superfast.  Now I’m considering creating my own pattern for a tube top… we’ll see how that goes.

New Ideas, Projects, Materials…

Since this week is Spring Break, I went to the library last Friday to celebrate. I picked up a couple of knitting pattern books to peruse and found a nifty book on embellishing, which I’ve been unabashedly stealing ideas from. The Westlake Library has the biggest knitting section I’ve ever seen in a library! I knew I’d hit the jack pot when I walked in there about a year ago, and the collection just keeps growing. Someone on staff must be a knitter.

I finally started my Zephyr tree jacket:

I’ve had the pattern for probably two years now and bought yarn before Christmas. I’m working the pattern in Lion Brand Cotton and the result is snuggly soft, easy to work with, and so far, right on gauge.

Dom’s crochet scarf has come along nicely. I decided to edge it in a complementing green wool (same brand) that I originally purchased for my father’s belated Christmas gift. Dad will get a scarf too sometime this year with the remaining green and maybe some other colors I can whip up out of stash.

Our anniversary shares a special date with St. Patrick’s memory, so my husband and I took a nice “trip” around our house and did whatever we wanted for about three days.  What I wanted included sitting around at Epoch coffeehouse and falling inside Blue Velvet, the vintage store next door (it really was kind of coincidental – Blue Velvet’s been around since I was in high school, but they’ve moved locations several times and just recently moved in next to Epoch).  I found a nicely finished red seventies dress with some bright red lace trimming the sleeves and bodice – it’s good to go and I wore it to work on Thursday.  I also found a couple of project items.

The first is a dress that was handsewn by somebody years ago and fits me perfectly.  I took a look for a tag and discovered handsewn finishing up at the top of the zipper (and no tag).  Whoever made this dress did great zippers – better than mine, that’s for sure!  I didn’t think to take a picture of the item before I started seam ripping, so the “before” photo only has one sleeve.  The bodice and skirt of the dress are great – but those big puffy lacy sleeves have got to go!

The second item was an extra large skirt with some cute embroidered flowers in several bright colors.  The skirt itself was in bad shape – seams and elastic going – but the fabric decorating the bottom is great.  One of the suggestions of the embellishing book is to use old embroidery from items that are too beat up to wear and add it to things that you do want to wear (hey, it’s a lot faster than embroidering the whole theme yourself!).  I like it.  Once I figure out what to do with the raw materials, I’ll post a photo of the transformation.

Old FO’s and a WIP

As promised, a few pictures of things I’ve been working on – and I’m playing with the collage maker on my Picasa software, so apologies for my dorky “artistic” attempts!  I’ve never been good with visual composition, which is sad since I long had aspirations as a painter – in fact, the first 18 years of my life were spent with the expectation that painting would be my eventual career.  No worries; I still paint for fun.

Here’s my braided hat, taken from Lion Brand Yarn’s free pattern set:

Warm and cozy!

And next, my fingerless gloves that I totally adore… the only problem is that the gray really lends itself to a “homeless chic” kind of look when I wear them with long sleeves.  With short sleeves on, they look much more fashionable.  I need to make some new ones in a brighter color, but at the time, I was trying out the pattern on scrap yarn and didn’t expect the result to turn out so well.  This is the pattern that taught me to cable – “Dashing”, which you can find on the Knitty website:

Hope that collage works!

A couple other things I’ve been working on:

First is curtains for the kitchen – just long sheets of muslin and some fun quilting squares I cut into pieces and patched onto the muslin.  I need to iron the finished product and trim loose strings, then I’ll put a final picture up of them hanging in our kitchenette area.  As you can see, Antigone was quite eager to help on this project (I edited out the picture in which she sits on my lap in the middle of working the sewing machine).

Last, I’m working on a scarf for my brother-in-law, Dom.  He’s tall, thin, English, and wears a brown fedora, so I’m hoping a manly crocheted scarf will suit.  Amusingly, the yarn I picked from knitpicks.com is Fedora, one of their Wool of the Andes line.  I started by working the crochet width-wise (typical) but kind of got bored and didn’t get the result I wanted from playing around with different crochet stitches.  So I am working it length-wise, which is proving an interesting change, and I’ve been able to utilize a V-stitch pattern down one row, which is the holey part you can see in what is currently the center of the scarf.  I decided to do only one V-stitch row, and to leave it off center.  Once I’ve completed a few more rows, it will look a bit more asymmetrical.

Not dead yet!

School was busting my butt for a while, but things seem to be evening out. Who knew hard science would be so… hard? Okay, I guess everyone does.

However, I have been knitting and need to take some pictures and post them! I have a hat, several head bands (only one of which I like enough to wear) and my Gramma Cathy’s shawl which was intended to be her Christmas present and now will be a “get well soon” present since she’s spending time in the hospital. I apparently can’t judge how much yarn I need for a project – but in a good way. I now have several extra stash balls in several yarn types because I overestimated the amount to purchase on several projects. I usually end up subbing yarn because I don’t like to order it online – I go to the store for fun instead. So I tend to try to cover my bases and it’s worked out in my favor. I have a LOT of extra yarn, which means I get to play with it on projects for myself! Pictures posted THIS WEEKEND at the latest.

I haven’t abandoned the blog…

Updates will be slow for a bit while I get into a new routine.  I’m starting school next week and getting over illness this week.  I know that sounds like a great time to knit, but it’s the kind of sick where I go to work all day, and then I get home with nuthin’ left, so I go to bed.  I’ve been getting curious about embroidery lately, but still have a ton of projects to finish before I go anywhere with that!  More pictures and projects soon; promise.

FO!

Here is the finished Ms. Marigold.  Blocking worked out great; it fits (almost) perfectly and I wore it for three days straight over three different shirts because I’m so delighted to have an FO that I love.  Also, the photo has me all dolled up for Christmas Eve service… I figured it was a great time to take pictures.  Hooray self-timer.

I can also reveal that I have another FO: Mom’s crocheted v-stitch wrap that I took from a pattern book at the library.  Since you’re probably the only one reading, Mom, I didn’t want to spill the beans before you opened your present.  I’ll get photos of the wrap up soon.  

I’ve finally succumbed to my cold, although I managed to fend it off so that I could enjoy both the Eve and Christmas Day with all the events, food, and family I could want.  Today I’m staying at home with Biscuit in my big-head dog pajamas.  Happy Holidays!