Sardines on toast

First of all, news: my sister is having a baby.  There's a petit nugget proofing inside her as I type this, and my future niece/nephew is going to get ALL of the knitted things.  I already spoke of this in my previous post, but there were no names named.  Well, now there are.  Tam Tam, you have been called out as someone who is slow-roasting a person inside of her.  The news hit facebook officially this week, so now I can share with whomever I please. 

Back to the knits.  I took my double knitting striped set idea and made it into a thing, but I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out. 

I bought yarn at Shall We Knit? in January, and I was pleased as punch to find clearance baby yarn in exactly the colours I was looking for.  Mega score!  When I took my purchases to the counter, I was informed that the yarns were on clearance because some people experienced bleeding in the dyes after washing.  I took the chance, and I was diligent about making a swatch and test washing it.  I had no bleeding colours at all, and I set out on my adventure to make the pieces. 

I started with the little baby mitts, following some rough pattern guidelines from a few different patterns.  I cast on 24 stitches, worked ribbing for 8 rows, and then began my double knitting.  The mitts were quick. and I worked a simple heart chart into the mix beginning in the second stripe.

The hat was a similar story, where I followed a basic baby hat pattern and adjusted for my double knitting gauge (which is a whole lot looser than my usual gauge).  I used the same heart chart and also started the chart in the second stripe of colour to keep it consistent with the mitts.

After finishing both of those, I had a ton of yarn leftover, but not enough for the blanket I first envisioned as part of the set.  I went with a striped sweater instead, not double knitted, and added a heart detail later with duplicate stitch.  The pattern I followed for the sweater was DROPS Design "Rubin", which had a sweet stranded colourwork thing going on that I chose to completely ignore.  I liked the shape and construction of the sweater, and I followed the general knitting directions without following any of the charts, I just did mine with stripes. 

Behold!  The finished set, modeled by Ms. Bear:

They look lovely!  From a distance...

The red lining the inside of the double knitting heart bled like crazy.  So much for swatching and testing.  I'm really not happy with it, so I will re-knit the hat and do the heart in duplicate stitch like the sweater.  There was no bleeding on the sweater at all, and just the tiniest bit on the mitts, but not enough to care.  It's for a baby after all, he/she doesn't care and won't notice.

I have also produced some newborn baby hats and the teeniest tiniest little baby booties you ever did see.

A simple, uncomplicated baby hat, knit in some baby yarn I bought YEARS ago.  These were some of the first yarns I wound when I got my ball winder too, and of course I didn't keep the ball bands, so I have no idea what yarn this is.

Same goes for hat number two, which I'm quite certain is made from the same yarn in a different colour.  This is a basic ribbed baby hat.  Ooooo, the variety!

And a pair of chaussons mignons:

The little slipper/booties will only be appropriate for, like, a day, when the baby is first born.  Anything older than the newest of newborns won't fit into them.  These are made from Estelle 100% silk, which I bought at the same time as the other yarns and wound without keeping the ball band, except I remembered what the yarn was. 

I also made a baby coat.  This is Latte Baby Coat in Cascade Ecological Wool (these pictures are before I blocked it):

 

This one features a delightful basketweave button band, and can be made with or without the hood.  I have yet to buy buttons for it, and I'm still deciding if I want to add the optional pockets to the front.

I will also use this opportunity to share my fun with my new yarn salad spinner.  Yes, that's right. The box says so.

No longer do I need to squeeze excess water of my blocked knits by hand!  I can spin them dry!  I added this to my listed of knitting wants late last year, and on a birthday shopping outing with my mom, came across one and remembered I wanted to get one of those.  I got an OXO brand salad spinner with spinning top/pump action, rather than the handle you have to turn.  The handle pops out when slide the little black latch on the right.

I soaked my little coat in the sink, drained the water, and squeezed out some by hand, so it wasn't dripping anymore.  I moved the coat into the spinner and arranged it carefully in the colander portion. 

 Let the spinning begin!

This was an action shot, but even if you can't see that, appreciate all the water pouring out of that sweater!

I spun it three times, and got about this much water out of it each time before it was dry enough to take out. 

 I highly recommend it for your blocking, or even just to speed up your weekly hand washing of knitted socks. 

And one more quick one while I have your attention.  I finished my Hermione socks and tried them on today.  Oscar approves.   

I'm diving into the work of knitted diaper covers/soakers next.  And also maybe knitted baby pants?

Blood work and black coffee

Happy Friday, dear readers!  I finished a sweater, today is a glorious day!  Let's start off with pictures of the finished specimen, and then we will dissect its inner workings and talk about the process.

Squeeeeee!  Here's paulie:

Isn't she lovely?  I'm really pleased with the colour combination and the fit.  All my swatching paid off!

It's a gloomy day outside, so I wandered around my house trying to find some reasonable light to take a few selfies.  

Look at how she nips in perfectly around the boobs, I love her already!  She still needs buttons, but as we all know, a cardigan is very wearable without buttons.

The perfect length too!

So now the knitty gritty about how paulie came to be.  The journey started with a complete ripping back of the collar and shoulder section after I misread the pattern and increased far more often than I was supposed to, right up to the end of the garter stitch section when I was going to start the stripes and get into the body of the sweater.  I ripped it back all the way to the first few rows and started again, and thankfully that was the only major setback of the whole project.

I mostly kept to the directions on the pattern, I didn't need a lot of modifications because my measurements lined up more or less with the medium size.  I added a couple extra stitches around the upper arms, and I added an extra decrease or two to the sleeves.

The shawl collar deserves its own paragraph.  I had no trouble with the length of any other section of garter stitch edging (the cuffs, the bottom of the sweater), so I went merrily along with the directions for short rows for the shawl collar.  When it was done, I completed the i-cord bind off in the contrasting colour, and everything looked lovely.  When I tried it on (before blocking), there was no way the shawl collar would fold back on itself and stay there.  It kept popping up and looking like a douchey cardigan-style popped collar.  I thought it was either that the collar itself wasn't wide enough to give enough room to fold it back, or the edging was too tight and forcing it to go against my wishes.  I toyed with the idea of ripping out the i-cord bind off and doing it again, much looser, but I figured blocking might cure what ails me.

I made sure to block the collar folded back on itself, and it sat for 3 days drying in my mud room.  Annnnnnnddddd, the result is still kind of the same, but it's smoothed out a lot more so I'm very ok with the collar staying flat.  Whatever.

Next up, selecting buttons!  I hear that Shall We Knit? has a new fancy pants button selection, so I may check them out next month when I'm in Waterloo for the Guild meeting.  My go-to place for buttons is Lens Mill, but I think paulie deserves something nice.  The official wearing of paulie has started already, so buttons or no buttons, she's now a part of my wardrobe.  Her ceremonial debut is this evening, at a friend of Fuzzyhead's birthday party in Dundas.

And I'm back to sock knitting!  Paulie was my one and only project for the last two months, and I've been neglecting Maeva.  I picked these up again on Monday night knitting at Margot's, and I've finished all of the cabling work for this first sock.  The leg of the sock is just panels of Stockinette with seed stitch columns - simple, but with a bit of interest.

I'm also itching to pick up some lace work for spring, I'm thinking Annis will get her time in the sun with my indigodragonfly singles lace.  Annis is nice and simple, and I've got her pegged for such a fun and bright colour, I'm looking forward to it.

In non-knitting news, I'm engaged to be wed to Fuzzyhead.  The facebook status update was released on Monday night, and we watched all of the "likes" come in fast and furious.  People love us. 

Happy knitting!

Onward,

vrock

Microwaved day old coffee

Hello lovelies.  I've been re-energized with knitting power in the last few weeks, and I have visions of many new projects dancing around in my head.  Let's kick things off with a re-cap:

 I made a sweet little turtle shell cape for a baby-to-be that belongs to a gal who works for my mom.  She showed my sister a picture of this baby photo prop last year and asked if she could make her one.  My sister's knitting and crochet skills are there, but she doesn't really knit much anymore, so I took it on myself to create this little beauty.  I bought the pattern on Ravelry for $6 and I made it in one afternoon.  The pattern called for Vanna's Choice acrylic yarn, which made my heart sad, but I used the same yarn anyway for the sake of new mamma being able to easily wash it.  I hear babies dribble all sorts of gross liquids in their first few months.  Gross.

 I've been teaching some knitting workshops at my museum this season, and I dragged out my project planning book to show my newbie knitters.  The page for paulie is one of the more intense entries I did for a project because I was so determined to make something right so it would actually be wearable.  I followed the guidelines from Little Red in the City for taking my measurements, and then I made two generous sized swatches to check my gauge.  I got stitch and row gauge for once in my life, and I'm a happy little camper.

 This is paulie's progress report as of this morning.  That's me, modeling in my pj's (it's my day off and I have no intentions of getting dressed, deal with it).

The body is completely finished, and I'm 3/4 of the way finished sleeve #1.  I'm constantly checking for sleeve length, which involves whipping off whatever sweater I have on so I can freeze ever so slightly for a few minutes since it's bare arm town on the other side right now.  I'll be glad when my house will be consistently above 18 degrees soon.  Come on spring!

Paulie's body, before sleeves.  Look how pretty!

I also owe you a stash update, readers.  The following yarns have been added to my collection as of September, and I only just got around to taking pictures and officially adding them to my Ravelry stash.

Zen Yarn Garden Serenity 20, my draw prize for being a volunteer with the KW Knitters' Fair this year.  It's got 20% cashmere, so I'm thinking really hard about what to make with it that is worthy of the luxury.

My Christmas 2012 gift from dearest Catherine, and also my very first 'tosh, believe it or not.  The handsome rusty orange will be a fine pair of socks for either me or Fuzzyhead.

Birthday sock yarn from Catherine!  This is Miss Babs "Yummy" hand-painted sock and baby yarn, 2 ply superwash.  She ordered 2 different skeins online and let me choose the one I wanted.  I'm a sucker for greens and any natural-ish colours, so this one was a clear winner.  

I taught my first lace knitting workshop yesterday to one attendee (who knew quite a bit about lace already, despite being a brand new knitter as of December 2012), and I've been jonesing to pick up a lace project.  Here are the next two on my list:

Say hello, this is Annis.  I love her.  She will be made out of this:

My single lace from indigodragonfly that I bought at World Wide Knit in Public Day in June 2012. 

The other lovely on my list is this elegant lady:

This is Triangular Summer Shawl by Nancy Bush with a beautiful lily of the valley pattern.  I'm leaning towards this as the yarn:

I'm hesitant about the long colour change and if that will blur the pretty pattern.  I've been madly looking through the Ravelry projects for this pattern to see if anyone else used a striping yarn, and I saw one, but it wasn't the ombre style that I have with this yarn.  I'm still thinking on it some more.

That's full time for me this morning, happy Monday to you!

Onward,

vrock

Sunday afternoon swears

I've been in a knitting slump for the last few weeks, with no new yarn tickling my fancy, and no really great projects I'm itching to start.  I've been determined to work through the yarn I bought at the 2011 Knitters' Fair, partly because it seems silly to buy more when I was so excited about the new yarns I bought last year, and partly because I shouldn't be spending money on yarn when I have real things to pay for.  I finished off the last of the sock yarn I had stashed with my Laurel socks, and now I am officially without back-burner knitting.  I used to be a die-hard one-project-at-a-timer, but I graduated to keeping two or three on the go, and now I'm feeling a little lost.  I went to Thursday knit night this week without any real project to work on!  I spent my night swatching a swatch that got way too big for what it was, and left early because I ran out of things to do.  Here's the low down on where I stand project-wise: 

 

 Laurel socks: DONE.  Finished these puppies about a week ago, and I've already worn them twice.  I've never had such a lacey pair of handknit socks, and I was worried that I would feel the stitches too much, but I really like them.  Slim Jim has a deep, deep problem with handknit socks because she can feel the individual stitches on the bottoms of her feet (she has texture issues), and I must admit, I have a wee bit of this problem too.  When my feet get sweaty (get over it, everyone gets sweaty feet and I'm sure I'm not the first one to mention it), I can really feel the stitches and it starts to bother me.  This is true of any pair of handknit socks I own, BUT, the lacework on the tops of my footsies and up the leg don't bother me in the least, hurrah!

 Don't think it's this side, but I made one mistake (that I'm aware of) in the back-and-forth baby twisted stitches up the side, but other than that, they are perfection.

 It's been a rainy weekend and these socks are too cute next to my rubber boots.  Sadly, these boots are only a prop for the socks since they're a year old and have already sprouted leaks - the rubber split on the outside edge of both boots, and they're not that great at keeping my feet dry anymore.

 

 The fingerless mitts in my lovely Viola fingering in "Bruised Plum" are complete!  Here is my left hand next to the too-big swatch I made at knit night for the coordinating neckwarmer.  I'm still playing around with needle sizes for the nicest drape of the fabric, and any way I slice it, I don't have the correct circular needle size for the project.  A quick sidebar on my needle inventory: I have a set of interchangeable plastic needles which include every needle combination I could ever need, except the little ones.  The smallest size I have is 3.75mm, and from my swatching, I need either a 3.0mm or 2.75mm for my neckwarmer.  KnitPicks doesn't seem to have an interchangeable circular set with smaller gauge needles either - is this a thing?  I am firmly against buying a fixed circular needle in one size and length, is there such a thing as an itty bitty interchangeable needle set?

 

Both hands together, thanks Fuzzyhead for taking this picture!  The twists really evened out after blocking, they're so much smoother and relaxed.  The pattern called for me to soak the mitts for an hour (!), and since I regularly forget about things I've left in the sink to soak, this would have happened anyway.  Not sure if an hour of soaking is what really made the difference, but I love them!

After humming and hawing for weeks about which shawl pattern to use for my last skein of luscious Viola yarn, I had narrowed it down to Rock Island or Annis.  I liked the idea of having a challenging project on the go, so I chose Rock Island and bought the pattern last night.  I've adopted a wind-on-demand system for all of my new yarns after winding for hours when I first got my ball winder (and releasing clouds and clouds of dust and yarn fibre into the air causing me to sneeze for days), and it was a big exciting moment to unwrap the skein for the first time.  I sat down to wind with the yarn on my swift just after letting the dog outside, and when I got nerve-y about how it had been a little too long since I last saw Oscar outside and thought the gate might have been blown open, I dropped my ball winder.  Bad news bears - plastic ball winders aren't designed to stand up to repeated winding and dropping (this was not the first time I dropped it...).  The handle snapped clean off, somewhat inside the winder, making it useless and unfixable.  Ugh.  I was only about a third of the way through winding the skein and had to finish winding by hand.  As you can see from the picture below, this makes for an ugly and somewhat tightly wound little ball.  New ball winder is going on my list of things to buy with my next KnitPicks order.

The first four rows of the border edging, next to an ugly ball of yarn.  I did a garter stitch swatch first, which is nestled inside my project book.  I did my first swatch with my favourite (and only) Addi 3.75mm 32" circular fixed needles, but they were too small.  I ripped out the swatch and did it again with a 4.0mm and I was happy with the sizing and the way the fabric looked. 

 The edging pattern when it is stretched out a little bit.  I'm loving the YO loops at the top for picking up stitches later - Brooklyn Tweed gets my stamp of approval so far.

Next project on my list is a set of throw pillows for my living room, from the Winter 2011/2012 Vogue Knitting.  This will be my mindless knitting project to take wherever my knitting takes me, and I already bought the pillow forms from Ikea.  No word on colour choices yet since I will need to go yarn shopping for this one, but I'm thinking soft neutrals.  Our living room includes a purple couch, yellow-green chair with elephants, and brown, green, and blue accents.  Suggestions?

 One of the stitch patterns for the pillows, with a front and back view.

 My living room, from two different angles.  This is an old set of pictures, from when we first moved in - the rug is no more (Oscar ripped open a can of sardines in tomato sauce over it, thanks dog), and there are different accent pieces in the room now.  Some greys wouldn't be a bad idea since the curtain in the room is grey, but I would like some colour too.

Until we meet again,

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