Finished Object

I have special knitting plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. However, I won't be able to knit them guilt-free if I'm not finished with--or nearly so--the gifts for my parents. I allocated my Dream in Colour Classy for the gifts, and first knit the fetching. It was finished up yesterday afternoon, ends woven and all. (I don't like this picture, you can't see the lovely colours. If I can get better pictures, I will.)



I weighed the yarn. The fetchings weighed 60 grams, and the yarn left weighed 70 grams. I started on the dashing, and when I was half way through the first dashing, I weighed what yarn was left. I had 50 grams left. As I had half still remaining, my best math was telling me that I didn't have enough yarn to finish a pair of dashings. SIGH.


So today I diverted our afternoon walk to the yarn store that opened up recently. I purchased some emergency Cascade and will start over on the dashing.

More Doll Clothes

This dolly finally has assembled a nice, varied wardrobe. I hope she can leave for her next adventure the week following Thanksgiving.

They call this Startitis

We knitters have a term, startitis. It describes the condition a knitter gets when she or he compulsively starts more and more projects. Interestingly, everything in this photo is something I've knitted before. There are two sets of fetching, another pair of socks from the sKnitches, a couple aliens, and a dolly dress. (The dress is the scrap of yellow. It didn't get far, yet)

This picture was taken a couple days ago, and there's actually some significant progress, and no further new projects started yet. I'll blog a little later if I can actually convert a few of these to Finished Objects.

more underwears!

I've been making good use of the remnants kicking around. This set of underwear used up most of what was left of my Rushing Rivulet Socks. I'm happy to have some underwears for this gal. It makes her that much closer to being ready to go.

a lil pansy sports bra

After Jeanie and the Onion Dome hat, I only had a tiny scrap of pansy yarn left. (That is, of course, not counting the extra skein I bought when I panicked on Jeanie's length.) I used up the last of it today knitting a cute lil sports bra.

Finished Objects Three!

In the aftermath of knitting Jeanie, I have found myself in a frenzy of knitting. I'm back to the point where work feels like a major barrier to my creative needs. The carpool driving means an hour out of my knitting time, though the wait-time is all about knitting.

In this frenzy, I'm actually finishing things, sometimes. First I have the stripey socks to show. These were actually done knitting probably two weeks ago, but it took me a while to weave in the ends. I was too busy knitting!



They fit the grrl and fit her well! The socks have gone to school today. Look how well those stripes line up. Let me remind you, I was knitting from opposite ends of the ball!!!



I also used some Knitpicks Andean Silk that I had on hand to make up some donation hats. The yarn was designated for some Christmas gifts, but I decided it wasn't exactly what I wanted. So the gifts will use a different yarn, and I couldn't let this go to waste! I'm very happy with the yarn. It has a lovely soft hand, knits up quickly on size 9 needles, and makes a lovely product.

A mighty swatch

Okay, remind me not to get creative.

I had these grand visions of a really cool sock. It involved entwining cables, and working them around the increases in a way that I thought would be cool. My first obstacle was charting these entwining cables. But then I saw the Ribbed Lace Pullover in A Gathering of Lace. The perfect entwined cables, all charted out for me!

The next obstacle came when I had to fit my gauge to the pattern. At a gauge of 6.5 spi (stiches per inch), with a pattern repeat of TWENTY-FOUR stitches, I was looking at a sock that was either 48 stitches around, measuring about 7" circumference, or 72 stitches around, measuring 11" circumference. At first this seemed completely undoable, but then I recalled that the recipient has very chunky heels, and socks must be generously stretchy to even pull on. I also recalled that the cables will pull in tightly. And lastly, as it's all knit in 2x2 ribbing, with cables, it would not measure 11" around, but be pulled in quite a bit. So I decided to proceed with 72" stitches around, and see how it fit. I only knit one sock, instead of the customary two, so I could see how it went.



Thus I knit a very large swatch. In trying it on him, I found that around the ankles it was very loose, but if I made the sock tall enough to go up his leg, as was my intention, it fit okay. It wasn't perfect, really, but I proceeded.

Then I noticed how little yarn was remaining in the ball. I got out my handy-dandy scale and measured what remained. 29 grams. Seeing as this is a 50 gram ball (Second ball actually weighs 46 grams), this means I'd used nearly half and hadn't even gotten close to starting the increases. I would probably need 100 grams to finish this sock. Ain't happening.

Ribbit.

Playing with rags

This is my idea of a good time.

We start with a thrift store t-shirt.



And pretty soon we have a fetching skirt.



This one was pretty easy. I sliced up another t-shirt to make the waistband, which isn't visible in these pictures.



And then the real tricky part comes with chopping up the tiny leftovers to make some doll clothes.

Onion dome hat--Finished object

On Thursday, I was looking through my yarns, contemplating my next project(s). It occurred to me that I was two days away from meeting with our knitting group, and didn't have anything to donate. I grabbed a remnant ball of yarn (from my wavy socks) and started knitting, top down.



I probably should have done a few less increases, because I ran out of yarn before the hat looked finished. The first time I looked at my stash, I couldn't find anything that looked harmonious with this yarn. But when my coworker was amazed that this yarn was NOT the yarn I used for Jeanie, I realized I had the perfect complementary yarn.



I knit like mad, but I was still working on it at the knitting circle today. And while I finished it there, it was TIME TO GO and I still had to weave in the ends. So I'll hand it over for donation a little later.

Farewell, Jeanie

Tonight I delivered Jeanie to my liaison. Jeanie will be on auction this weekend at a grand event that benefits the school where my children attend. It's very difficult to send her off like that. I hope that she is well loved, appreciated, and cared for in her new life.

Acquisitions

So there was this incident last week in which I blanked out. This has, I'm afraid, happened before. The trigger was looking at a particular picture on the Sock A Month blog. After that, it's all rather blank. So fast-forward to today when this lovely package arrived:



Inside the package were two juicy skeins of Lovesticks. The colourways are Caramel Apple and Day of the Dead. Yeah, this is a symptom of my serious thing for striped yarns.

A picture says a thousand words

Broadripple Stripeages

It's no secret that I'm awfully fond of striping yarn, and my knitting buddies all know I'm terribly fussy about my multicolour yarns. I love stripes, but totally dislike spotty bits and jacquard, which eliminates a large percentage of the striped yarns commercially available. For example, I wanted to love the Harry Potter yarn, but it just represented everything I dislike in striping yarns.

When I knit with striped yarns, I'm always torn between just doing plain knitting, and enjoying the stripes, or doing a fancy stitch that highlights and harmonizes with the stripes. Sometimes I do chevrons. Sometimes I just let the stripes shine.

I've been wanting to explore my sKnitches Carnival yarn that's been lurking in my stash. And I recently saw a pattern for a broadripple sock that really plays well for stripes. Time to bring the two together!



I started this pair last night. I was immediately concerned that the garter ridge band wouldn't look nice with the changing colours. I pondered my alternatives. I could knit the cuff in a contrasting colour, but this would require more yarn. I couldn't think of any stash sock yarn that would contrast well, and I wasn't thrilled about the idea of buying another ball of yarn, just for contrast. So I knitted on. Then this morning, when I was finishing the cuff, I decided I totally didn't like the way the colour changes looked in garter stitch. I also remembered I had some Knit Picks' essentials in some similar colours. So I ripped out the cuffs and started over.



Broadripple socks, version two, are coming along nicely. They're a handsome pair of socks, I do declare! I even swatched before beginning and got gauge. Unfortunately, the socks are too tight. I've decided to proceed, and make them for my daughter. They fit her just perfectly, and they'll be very cute on her.

Red Fetching, finished

In my previous post about the fetching, Priscilla asked about the bindoff. (and thank you, I adore the colour, too.) This is a very appropriate question, as the original pattern calls for a picot bindoff, but few knitters seem to like that bindoff. In my previous attempt, I used a normal bindoff, and was rather unhappy with the final results.

So I did several modifications to the pattern, many similar to the ones described by Ina on Ravelry. To do the bindoff, I added a cable repeat, like she did, extending the length of the fetching a little. I then did one decrease in the middle of each group of four. You do a k2tog for the glove with the right-leaning cables, and a ssk for the left-leaning cables. Then I did an Elizabeth Zimmerman sewn bindoff. The results are much neater than my previous pair. Unfortunately, the upper edge still curls a little, but not much when you're wearing them.

Pattern: fetching
Yarn: Peruvian yarn, an unspecified blend of wool, alpaca, and cotton
Needle: Size 6
Notes: Let me spell it out for myself...

I cast on, knit 3 rows in 4x1. Pattern says 4, this was a mistake, but I let it rest.

Did four cable repeats

Knit 26 rows of 4x1 rib.

On row 11, 13, 15, an 17, I increased twice in the first column of knit stitches. (Right leaning on right edge, left leaning on left edge.) This made a thumb gusset of 12 stitches.

After 26 rows, I moved the 12 stitches of the thumb gusset onto a separate needle.

Using 2 more size six needles and another ball of yarn, I cast on 4 stitches using a figure 8 cast on. Using the original ball, I knitted across the four stitches and on through the row. Using the new ball, I continued from the 4 stitches and knit around the thumb. I knit around about 5 times and cast off using the EZ cast off.

I knit four more rows, then 2 cable rows. Then I knitted 3 more rows. On the fourth, I decreased once in each group, then did an EZ sewn bindoff