Josephine in her flying machine

It's almost ready to share, readers!  I've been plowing through my Home Alone hat this week to get a pattern produced, because 1) I want to get my feet wet with pattern writing, and 2) I want to wear this hat.

I've taken serious notes while I did my knitting, and I'll be sitting down to write out a formal pattern to share with y'all this week.  The hat is 95% done, and here's what it looks like:

The bottom is quite long, because I plan to tuck it up inside the hat for double warmth.  If you stare long enough at a screen shot of the hat in the movie, you will notice that there is a smooth, unbroken edge of knitting that goes up inside the hat.  I wanted to make my version of the hat as true to the original as possible, so I tried out a few ways to accomplish that.  Originally, I cast on and knit some extra rounds to be tucked inside, then a purl round, then got going with the hat, and I didn't like the little ridge the purl round created at the edge of the hat.  I know this makes for a natural folding line in the world of tucking up a lining inside a hat, but I didn't like the effect.  Also, the way I started it involved knitting the cast on edge together with a round of live stitches (to avoid sewing it in place later), and I hated how obvious that round of stitches became.  So I ripped it out and started again.

The hat you see in the picture above was started with a provisional cast on, so now that the hat is complete, I've gone back to pick up those stitches and make the lining.  I have far more red yarn left than the grey at this point, so after a few rounds, I switched to red to make a fun contrasting lining.  And when I say lining, I actually mean that I'll be going as far as the backs of the reindeer, to fully cover the wearer's ears.  Again, if you stare intently at a screen shot of the hat on Kevin's head, you can see a slight line at the top of the reindeer's back where the lining ends. 

In good progress news, the chart worked out beautifully in the round, as I had only ever done the chart as a test knitted flat, which sucks for colourwork.  I played around with my gauge to fit my mammoth woman head (I'm a solid 22" around, just like a man), and the pattern will be written to fit a larger head size.  My next post will be just the pattern for the hat, and if I can figure it out, I'll link it to Ravelry so others can find the pattern.

And since it's been eons since I posted, let's recap all my knits since July:

I finished Slim Jim's reindeer legwarmers.  For the final chart repeat, I added an extra stitch between each reindeer repeat around to account for the calf (craftily hidden in the white space between the reindeer).  When I got to the ribbing at the top, I snuck in a few extra stitches again, for extra stretchiness.

I made a pair of octopus socks, featuring yarn from Woolverine in downtown Kitchener:

Stash's Christmas socks are complete, in a handsome pattern called It's a Guy Thing.  This puppies are folded up and waiting on my gift wrapping table to be wrapped for Christmas.  Fuzzyhead was the foot model for this picture.

From my trip to the Knitters' Frolic in April, I impulse purchased this skein of purple sock yarn because it had a cat on the label.  I earmarked it for a pair of socks for my non-knitting cat-loving coworker (I know, I know, that's a risky move, but she has said more than once that she LOVES hand knitted socks)

The socks were a great mindless knit over the summer, and I really hammered home the cat thing with a pattern called Paw Tracks.  The gift will be presented with the tag so that the cat connection is very obvious.

My current socks project is Hermione's Everyday Sock, also made from sock yarn I scored at the Frolic.  This Sweet Georgia deeply discounted yarn translates beautifully into fun stripey socks.

These are still a WIP, and they're a perfect thing to bring along to knit night or in the car.

I made use of the last half a ball of heavyweight sock yarn I bought at Rhinebeck in 2013.  I made a pair of fingerless gloves for Fuzzyhead earlier this year, and there was still so much of the yarn left that I needed to do something with it, so I made a hat.  Since the yarn was more like a sock yarn than anything else, I knitted with two strands held together to make Jason's Tweed Hat, as it calls for a chunky weight yarn.  Once I finished the folded over ribbed section to cover the ears, I was running seriously low on yarn, so I cut it back to a single strand and finished the hat.  From a distance, you can't even tell, and all the warmth anyone cares about is around the ears, so no harm done.

I finished Rockefeller, and I love it.  The picture on the left is when it was almost done, and the one on the right is the shawl all blocked and beautiful.  It's such a nice piece to wear all bundled up around your neck and shoulders.  I wear it with a shawl pin to hold the ends in.

I ran out of the blue/green yarn as I was starting the second wing, so I started to taper off the blue and increase the number of orange rows.  Then I started running out of orange, so I said "screw it" and I made the second wing shorter and round than the first (which is long and skinny and goes to a fine point like a triangular shawl wing).  It really makes no difference when I wear it, because I put the shorter end down first and wrap everything over top of it. 

I made a pair of Northman Mittens to replace my tired looking red Olympic mittens from 2010.  I wore those things down to grubby, filthy nubs, and I darned and patched them more times that I care to admit.  These mittens are my new deep winter double-thick mitts.  They are glorious.

I made them with worsted weight yarn knit on 2.25mm needles, which makes for this deliciously thick fabric.  Even without the lining, these would have been fine for cold winter needs, but the lining cleans up the inside and makes for a fun surprise when you peak inside.  I severely modified the lining mitten to make it fit inside.  When I followed the pattern as it was written, it was so cramped and crowded inside the mitten that it gave my hand a headache.  I ended up ripping it back and redoing the lining three times before I got it right.  My inner mitten has a lot fewer stitches, and I began the decreases for the finger tip area a lot sooner.  If you pulled out the inner lining and looked at it, it's quite pointy and ugly, but it fits beautifully inside the mitt.

I hammered out a pair of tweed cabled socks in a delectable golden hue.  These are Fall Mystery Socks, knitted up in my very first tweed yarn purchase from Rhinebeck.

Fuzzyhead's friend had her stomach removed because of cancer this year, so I made her a fox cowl hood so she could keep warm and toasty this winter.  This is an awesome pattern, and a quick knit.  All I want to do is knit these for every small child I know (which is none, I don't know any small children).  I knit this up in Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick, and I used every last scrap of yarn from two balls to make this.  Every.  Last.  Scrap.  I had 10" of yarn left to sew on both foxy ears, and that was a struggle.

 I started and finished a shawl for Slim Jim using the yarn I won at the 2012 Adjudicated Show.  This lovely ombre yarn was calling for a delicate lacy shawl, and that is was I gave her.  Enter, Out of Darkness. 

I included beads, because why not?  I purchased four little tubes of 6/0 glass seed beads from Michaels and only had to go back once to get more (I needed almost exactly 5 tubes to finish, with less than 20 beads leftover).  I blocked this beauty on the back of my purple couch (even if the day ever comes to get rid of that couch, I'm going to keep it for blocking purposes).

I used almost all of my pins to block all those pointy point points.  I finished the shawl quite late one night, and even though I was pumped to get it blocked and finished, I couldn't bare the idea of pinning all those points when I was anything but perky and well rested.  Slim Jim will likely receive the shawl next year, maybe for her birthday.

I made a Ninja Bike Mask, perfectly fitted to my face shape.  I used worsted weight yarn (in crappy acrylic, because I intend to wash this a lot, because, you know, sweating) and the instructions were clear and easy to follow for modifying.  It was really written more as a set of guidelines than as a formal pattern, which I appreciated for making it with whatever yarn I had lying around.

 

I got my entrelac on with this quick little knit, which helped me use up some Noro Silk Garden Sock.  This handsome little fellow is Grey Gardens, and it's super cute when my hair is up.

And finally, my other current work in progress is the Honey Cowl, featuring sweet sweet discounted Briar Rose DK yarn from Shall We Knit? in Waterloo.

This will be a gift for my other coworker, and it's also a lovely mindless knit for knits when I don't want to think. 

Up next for this kid, trying my hand at writing a pattern, and asking nicely that a few people try it out and tell me what you think.  Stay tuned!

Double screen computers

It's been a couple weeks of knitting intensity over here, my lovelies.  I've plowed through the Polar Bear Chullo (I finished it yesterday and it's mostly dry from the blocking it received), I started a new portable sock project, and last night I started work on reindeer leg warmers.  Wanna see?

Fuzzyhead is modeling the hat, but it's a gift for Slim Jim (stop reading now, Slim, otherwise you're spoiling your birfday surprise).  I'm really pleased with how it turned out, the patterned sections are all slightly different and they look really nice and smooth.  The polar bears are adorable, but it was tricky to maintain even tension over those areas, and they're the ones that turned out a little wonky.  Blocking helped a bit, but they're still not perfect.  Oh well.  I know I much prefer colourwork projects with nice even sections of colour, where I don't have to twist the colours every few stitches. 

But, despite knowing that, I've picked up another colourwork project where the floats are not all perfectly nice and even.  Enter the reindeer socks, which I am knitting as leg warmers.

To get them a little larger and slouchier, I am knitting them with fingering weight yarn (Knit Picks Palette in Cream and Hollyberry) and using 2.75mm needles.  The needle size choice was mostly because both of my 2.25mm sets are currently in use (hexipuff blanket and my latest sock project), and my 2.5mm are being used for my one row at a time socks.  I think I might need another pair of 2.25mm needles, but for now I am actually pleased with the size and tension the 2.75s are giving me.  It's nice a loose, with lots of stretch for pulling up over ankles and calves. 

As I was working on the polar bear hat with a side of hexipuffs, I realized I was lacking a portable simple project to take to knit nights.  There were too many colours and colour changing, and too much chart-following with the polar bear hat to make it a good talk-while-you-knit project, and the hexipuffs are fiddley and require that I travel with a small handful of stuffing in my knitting bag.  I also recently found out that Slim Jim's boyfriend, Stash, would love and cherish a pair of hand knitted socks.  Huh.  I had no idea.  I think every knitter needs her/his friends and family to proclaim their interest in receiving knitted items.  I would never knit something for anyone if I wasn't sure they would love it and appreciate it, but if you don't speak up, how do I know?  So I dug through my sock yarn bin and pulled out this little beauty from my original Rhinebeck trip in 2012.

This is Sock82Me in Bronze.  Slim Jim told me Stash would appreciate any sock-type item in a brown colour since that is the colour he wears most often. 

The pattern I chose is a simple boy-approved pattern called It's a Guy Thing, and I started the socks some time two weeks ago, in time to bring them out to a knit night.

The socks can be made in pretty much any size, from itty bitty kid size to XL adult man.  The pattern is simple and easy to remember, but more interesting than straight stockinette or basic ribbing.  The seed stitch panels are separated by thin two-stitch cables, which are done in a different way from how I've ever done cables before.  Instead of doing the cables with a cable needle, or even doing the cable motion without the needle itself, these cables are formed by knitting the two stitches together, and then knitting the left stitch again before dropping both stitches off the needle.  It looks just like I did traditional cables, but it's a little more seamless in the knitting process than stopping to move stitches around for cables.  Neat.

I've also hammered out some rows on the One Row a Day socks today while scrolling through pinterest and watching my stories.

Here's the March 5 update I should have done on March 5:

And the March 12 update:

And don't forget, I've still got yarn floating around from the Knit Picks order for a pair of Nordic mittens, and I have yarn from my Rhinebeck trip in October for a shawl.  I may need to pick up a large project to keep on the go, but for now I'm pleased to have something colourwork-y and something super simple.

Onward,

vrock

New Year's Rockin' Eve

Welcome to the end of year round up, readers!  I've been cramming in a bunch of final projects all this week as 2013 comes to a close, and I've even started and finished a project or two.  As of today, December 31, here's what's kicking around my house.

Norie was started and finished in two days, because I'm a dork and if I'm not at work, my fingers will find knitting.  It's a compulsion.

This is only my second ever hat for myself, and I feel like I should have made more by now, but I haven't.  I chose this pattern so I could have a pretty and delicate hat to wear when I need to not look like a grub.  The only other hat I have was made so long ago, I don't even have a picture of it.  It's super warm, but looks very rustic, and turns whatever hair I'm sporting into a wicked batch of hat hair.  Now when I walk my dog in the morning, I'll look like a lady.

I also started and finished a single fingerless mitt yesterday.  I borrowed Son of Stitch n' Bitch from the library to get the pattern, Beer Gloves, and the yarn was from my Rhinebeck adventure this year.  The yarn is from The Fold, and it's Socks that Rock Mill Ends in a camouflage-ish colour.  Very manly for Fuzzyhead.  It's a heavy sock weight, which really is knitting up like DK, which is perfect for these mitts.  I also renting me up a movie from the library, and while I watched Gatsby, I made a mitten.  

I also got to learn a new bind-off, which looks perfect for all the little fingers.  This pattern calls for an invisible bind-off of your choice, and since I had never done one before, I went looking for something on the internet. Here's a little link-love for the invisible bind-off tutorial I found that was very helpful. 

The palm of the mitt has a textured portion, which I think is meant for twisting open beer bottle caps.  Fuzzyhead will find it very useful, I'm sure.  

The mitten mate for this one might be started and finished tonight as we wait for the ball to drop, who knows!  The first one was a very quick knit, and I'm eager to get them done so Fuzzyhead can start wearing them and keep his little fingies warm.

Here's the progress report for the TARDIS socks:

One whole sock is done with ends woven in, and the second sock is at the heel flap.  I'm coming in to a nice stretch of mindless knitting for the foot, so I'll be glad to keep this one on hand for on-the-go knitting.

I also started a very long-haul project this week, a knitted quilt with many tiny hexagons, made from all of my sock yarn scraps.  Considering I make socks like they're going out of style, I think this blanket will still take me years to finished.  Each little hexipuff is only about 2 inches across, and estimates on Ravelry say it takes upwards of 150 of these guys to make anything substantial.  So far I've made three, and I've got loads of scraps to use up.  I've been keeping all my yarn scrap balls in clear glass jars as decoration in my office, but now they will have a more useful purpose.

Now how about some finished projects from 2013 that may have been missed on the blog?  I've been terrible for updating this year, but I've got a plan to remedy this for 2014.  Keep reading to find out more.

In the meantime, here's the finished project round-up:

Big chunky cowl, I wear this almost every day

Maeva socks.  Despite what this picture shows, they are done.

Turtle shell and hat set for Steph's little Hannah.  

Paulie.  Bam!  Sweater that fits, and I look great in it.

I took a bit of a knitting hiatus over the summer when we moved, and when I came back to it, this was the first little thing I finished.  A nut, for my chipper co-worker.

Plain and simple stripey socks, featuring Miss Babs yarn from Catherine.

Itty bitty socks for a co-worker's baby.

Annis shawl, keeping my office chair cozy, and quite often keeps my neck warm.

Hemlock Ring Blanket.  I banged this one out in about a month, and it was so much easier than I thought it would be.  Can you do feather and fan?  Of course you can.  You can make this blanket.

I've also taken to wearing it as a cape, because we keep the temp of our house at a nippy 18 degrees C.

And my Christmas socks, hung on the mantle.  SO CUTE.

And while I reflect on all my knitting wonders from 2013, I'm already planning for a year-long knitting project.  Catherine and I are doing a knit-a-long of socks.  We're making the Harvest Dew pattern, and we're making it last all year by only knitting one row a day.  In a more likely scenario, I will knit 7 rows per week when I sit down to do it, but we are forbidden from finishing before December 31, 2014.

This is the yarn that Catherine got me for Christmas:

She has the same yarn in a different colour, and we both searched for a while to find a pattern that would showcase the variegated yarns.  Harvest Dew was a top choice for both of us before we compared notes, and we had a "get out of my head!" moment when we revealed out top pattern pick. 

And as I mentioned above, I'll also be posting more in 2014 because I'll be doing weekly updates on the progress of the socks.  We're doing cuff-down, one at a time, so you can check in each week and watch it grow.

Happy New Year!

Onward,

vrock

Look at the size of that nut!

I like a good knitting challenge, readers.  Here's the back story: I work at a museum, and we have traveling exhibits that come in for 4-8 months at a time.  Currently we have a trees exhibit, which is aimed at families and small children, and one of my coworkers asked if I could make her an acorn to use during demonstrations with the kids.  Of course I could.

I rooted around on Ravelry to find a pattern I could modify.  The knitted options didn't look that great, and I know you can make odd shapes more easily with crochet, so I resigned myself to the fact that I would be moving away from the needles and picking up a hook.

The pattern I liked the best was the one that met the scale requirements for the project.  We needed something that would be a plush version of an acorn, that kids could toss around and play with.  I was aiming for something that was about 8-10" tall, and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth to take a 2" acorn pattern and make it ten times the size.

Enter the Little Acorn Project Bag by Brigitte Read.  This was exactly what I was looking for, and it was free, and it looked easy enough for my limited crochet skills.

Her version was meant to be a project bag, as the name indicates, but it was a simple step to not include the button closures and just stuff it and sew it up.

I was so happy with how this turned out.  It was easy peasy to make, and I had it done in a few nights.  AND, I was able to use up some of my leftover scraps of acrylic yarn from various projects.  No one really likes acrylic, but it made the most sense for this project because it would be man-handled by grubby little kid fingers all day, and now it can just be tossed in the wash.

Also, it was a very cute little fall project to work on, and it makes me want to make a series of crocheted and felted acorns for decorating my dining table.  At Rhinebeck, there were some really adorable needle felting kits for pumpkins and the like, and I want to try my hand it that eventually.  I realize now that I had the cash on hand to buy one of the kits, but I was holding on to my cash for our food stops on the way home, which didn't end up happening.  Oh well.  I'll put it on my list for next time, and it's one more craft to add to my list of things to do.

Onward,

vrock