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

Thinking jug

 Hello readers!  It's been too long, but I haven't just been sitting around, oh no!  I've been knitting my way through many of my Rhinebeck purchases, which was exactly what I wanted to do when I dropped a couple hundred dollars on yarn in one weekend in October.  The last thing I wanted was for that delicious yarn to sit around and collect dust while I lusted for new and exciting yarn.  Here's what I've been working on:

This one was a quick and simple knit, made for my hairdresser who just had a baby in December.  I searched high and low at Rhinebeck for the perfect bulky weight superwash yarn for a baby-tastic little item.  I chose a baby sack (some of you may call this a bunting bag, BORING), and she loved it.  At my last hair cut (which I had to wait 2 months for because of the previously mentioned newborn baby), she mentioned that she'd already washed it a few times (phew! it passed the washing test), and it's the perfect little thing to slip on baby Abigail when she's in her crib.  That's all a gifter/knitter wants in life, to know that my gift is enjoyed.  Ah, satisfaction.

 I also had enough yarn to knit up a quick little baby hat.  I love the wooden buttons I found, since I didn't need to actually make button holes for them.  I wrapped the whole package up in bright green tissue and wrapped a shoe box in brown craft paper and butcher twine.  I win at presents.

 I also started and finished a non-Rhinebeck item that I had my eye on for a while.  I bought 3 pillow forms from Ikea in the summer, and I finally found a reasonably priced roving-style wool for this project - I had looked everywhere at Rhinebeck, but considering I needed 4 normal skeins for one pillow, I wasn't really down with spending $80+ on a single throw pillow.  I ended up buying Bernat's Roving wool from Len's Mills Store in Cambridge, and spent a total of about $40 on the yarn for the project.  Score. 

 Quick and simple knit.  I panicked a few times during the production of the pieces about how they would fit the pillow form, but I blocked the pieces out to the correct measurements before sewing them together.

Trinity stitch pattern.

Also in the pile of non-Rhinebeck FO, please welcome Momma's Christmas socks (finished January 19).  These were made with one of the sock yarns from my indigodragonfly shopping splurge in June last year.

 Nutkin pattern, and the yarn is Merino Sock by indigodragonfly in "We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero"

Back to Rhinebeck projects - hello big chunky delicious cowl!  I had my eye on a big thick cowl when I saw them featured in Vogue knitting holiday 2009, and while I originally bought this yarn to make the baby sack above, I decided on a cowl for me because of the 60/40 alpaca/wool blend. 

 Fun fact: the yarn I bought did not have a dye lot, and one of the skeins definitely had more of grey-speckle going on, while the other one had lighter yellow and white splotches.  I decided to alternate each skein every row throughout the piece to evenly distribute the variety of non-yellow colours.  It was a mild pain in the ass to juggle two balls of yarn at the same time, but I'm very happy with the result.

 Horseshoe cable (made without a cable needle), twisted rib, and bobbles of knit stitches on patches of purling.

 Hello pretty!  Wearing a coat and cowl in my kitchen.

First socks from the Rhinebeck stash:

 This is Maeva, knit in The Periwinkle Sheep, Oh So Fine! sock yarn in "Memories of Summer".  From the lovelies at The Periwinkle Sheep, I really wanted to buy their "Rhinebeck 2012" yarn, but I hesitated on day 1 and when I came back on day 2, they were all out.  Sad face.

And finally, my pride and joy, my new baby, my 2013 sweater: paulie.  He doesn't look like much yet, but he will be glorious.  I'm swatching like a mad woman to make sure I have the right gauge, and then I'll be blocking everything and hanging it to test for gravity-effectedness.  No one wants a saggy sweater.  Paulie will be my go-to work cardigan to wear over my uniform.  And then for once, when someone knows I'm a knitter and asks if I made my sweater, I can say YES.  It will be a great day.

This is Blue Moon Fiber Arts, BFL Sport in "Manly yes, but I like it too", which will be joined by his contrasting colour friend "Tumbleweed".

 In knitting-related news, I'm officially a professional knitting instructor.  The programming coordinator at my museum learned that I was an avid knitter, and asked me to put together some knitting workshops to teach in the winter.  I suggested 7 different workshops that I would be comfortable teaching, and she agreed to all of them.  You can find the full schedule and pricing for the upcoming workshops here, just scroll through and look for anything with "Knitting" in the title.  I've already taught my very first class, Knitting 101 (shout out to my two brand new knitters!), and I'm looking forward to the next few months of teaching.  My upcoming workshops, in order, include Knitting 102 (the "next steps" class after Knitting 101), Learn to Knit for Kids, Knitting Lace, Knitting Cables, Colourwork Knitting, and Knitting Socks.  If you know a knitter who wants to learn a new skill, send them my way.

I'm off for the day now, readers, happy knitting!

Onward, 

vrock

Charging all my batteries at once

Quiet weekend at home this Thanksgiving my loving readers, I will be enjoying some time to knit for sure.  I've managed to bring the usual run-around of Thanksgivings down to one, by only going to one this year (clever, huh?).  Fuzzyhead's family Thanksgiving is on Sunday, and true to form, my family made a last-minute decision to have our dinner on the same night.  I'm eager for a home cooked Momma meal, so I chose my own family's dinner, and Fuzzyhead will go to St. Catharines with his family, a perfect compromise.  No run-around, and plenty of guilt-free time to knit.

Let's start the recap:

  Hello Namaste Zuma bag, I love you.  Ordered with my most recent KnitPicks order, it was kind of an impulse buy.  I had been looking for a cheap Namaste bag, but it doesn't even come up on a local Kijiji search, and eBay only seems to have the "buy now" option for them, which means it's just an online shop selling them at essentially retail prices.  I bit the bullet and bought one through KnitPicks, it wasn't a bad price considering I didn't have to drive to my LYS to find the one I wanted.  In the end, I chose the Zuma bag, because of its look.  I have already taken this bag out and about as a regular purse, with a substantial haul of knitting inside.  There are also no zippers on the main pocket for yarn to get snagged on - I hadn't even thought of this as a selling feature, but I love it.

The yarn for Fuzzyhead's sweater, all 22 balls of it. 

So pretty!  I really love the colour, I'm glad I chose something light, to show off the cables.

Speaking of cables - my gauge swatch!  I did a very generous gauge swatch, I think it ended up being 6 or 7 inches square.  My tension was pretty bang on, 27 stitches over 4 inches, but my row tension was wonky.  I decided that was OK since all of the pieces are measured in total inches rather than in numbers of rows.  This little beauty used up most of the first ball of yarn, I'm very glad I over-bought (at least at this point I think I bought too much).

The work in progress, in its pretty little Zuma bag.

The first few inches!  As of today, I'm at about 10 inches.  This piece is the back and the sides of the cardigan, all in one piece.  At 18 inches I start to do some shaping, but I've got a ways to go before that fun.  For now I'm perfectly happy to be doing some straight boring knitting.  It's nice to have an easy project to fall back to, something I can bring with me anywhere without needing to look at a pattern.

Also, I've chosen a pattern for my next sock project for myself, using that tasty blue Viola Fibers sock yarn I got at the Knitters Fair.  First off, a quick refresher:

Viola Sock in "Sea Storm"

And the pretty little socks that caught my attention:

Kalajoki pattern by Tiina Seppala, a free Ravelry download (score!)

And to round out this post, I couldn't overlook a glimpse at my latest Suzy Homemaker creation:

Pumpkin spice cupcakes with brown sugar cinnamon cream cheese icing.  I made these on Thursday night so I could take a small batch to work on Friday before the long weekend and hand them out to my favourite co-workers (aka my family plus a few special extras).  They were truly excellent, the cupcake part especially.  I didn't even use a boxed cake mix for them, totally from scratch yo!  The cupcake recipe is apparently by Martha Stewart, but I found the cupcake and icing recipe on a blog - check it out here. 

 Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Onward,

vrock

Can’t read a book without cracking the spine

We begin, dear readers, with a garden update, as promised:

The patchy grass is coming in nicely, the seeds starting sprouting about a week ago, and every day it looks a little more green.  One major problem still: Oscar.  The large brown-only patch of dirt is courtesy of my little doggy destroyer, who took it on himself to dig a nice cool patch of dirt to lie in.  Thanks Oscar.

Sad scene in the herb pots, the basil looks like he won’t make it.  We’ve had buckets of rain for the last two weeks, so I think he may have drowned.  The other herbs are all doing fine, but basil bit the bullet.  I’ll be digging his sorry ass out of the planter this week and taking him back for an exchange.  The garden centre guarantees their plants for the season.

More grass, slowly but surely filling in.  I haven’t mowed any of it yet, it seems cruel to cut down the fresh young grass, they’ve never been cut before.

Tomatoes are coming in strong now.  Soon I’ll have to play god and choose which ones live and die.  The package told me to plant two seeds in each hole, and then weed out the weenie ones so that only the strongest plants grow.  It’s too soon to tell, but enjoy this last picture of them all alive and happy.

The pretty plants have been planted in the side garden.  I left them in their planter pots for another week after I planted the vegetables because I thought it was too cold for them.  They seem to be doing well so far.  Oscar pees in this patch of garden each morning, then traipses over my plants.  They’ll be a strong and hardy stock by the end of the summer.

Veggie garden updates!  These are the only two things I can tell for sure are growing.  The picture on the left is my patch of radishes, in two nice neat rows.  I’ll have to thin them back in the next few weeks to let the strong ones grow.  The picture on the right is the beginnings of my carrots, they’re the thin wispy green shoots right in the centre. 

A better close-up of the grass action.  It’s still patchy, but some of the seed must have started growing ahead of the rest. 

Moving on to knitting, I’ve been a busy little knitting bee working away on a baby sweater for Fuzzyhead’s cousin and his wife, who are expecting a baby girl in August.  I borrowed a pattern for a cable owl vest from Catherine, and combined it with a pattern from Vintage Baby Knits, a simple garter stitch and stockinette stitch raglan sweater for a 3 to 6 month old baby.  The patterns meshed well together, I used an acrylic/nylon DK weight baby yarn from Shall We Knit, and both patterns used a similar gauge.  Here’s the real kicker – I’m short by about 2 inches on the second sleeve.  I originally bought yarn for a vest, not a sweater with full length sleeves, and I didn’t quite have enough.  Sugar.  It’s on the back burner this week until I can zip to Waterloo for a third ball of the yarn.

Immediately after I completed Fuzzyhead’s teatime socks (pictures coming eventually), I raced to start that baby sweater, and to pick up a new sock project.  This is from the small stash of yarn I bought form KnitPicks, the first yarn I’ve ever bought online.  It looks and feels good so far, and I’m hoping it will be enough for two pairs of yoga socks.  Buying yarn online for yoga socks is much more economical than buying the nice stuff at my LYS and spending just as much time knitting it up.  I’ve decided to keep my yoga sock patterns down to 3 or 4, rather than scrounging for a new and exciting (and also time consuming) pattern.  I’ve made this pattern before for a pair of yoga socks, it’s got some simple lacework up the front, with small cables running up either side of the foot.

Happy long weekend my readers!
Onward,
vrock