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So I mentioned the other day (and possibly last week) that I was working on a lace shrug, and I finally finished knitting it and got it blocked and photographed.
Pattern: My own, which I’m working on writing up. It’s currently unnamed, so if you’ve got a suggestion, send it along! There might be a free pattern in it for you. : )
Yarn: Abundant Dyeworks Naturally Dyed Merino Sock (one skein, Scarecrow)
Needles: US 6/4 mm
So I originally meant to knit this on size four needles and then I grabbed the wrong ones to cast on, and now it’s on sixes. No matter, I rather like how the lace pattern opened up on the sixes. I think the shrug turned out pretty well-it was simple to knit but a really interesting looking result, and it will be a perfect layering piece for chilly summer nights or over-air conditioned office buildings. Stays on better than a shawl and looks cute to boot. : )
I really like the yarn I chose for this (though I admit it was mostly out of necessity; I didn’t have a lot that would work). It’s a two-ply superwash merino (so I wasn’t going to use it for socks) that I got from a WWFY trade–for the Manly Aran socks, actually. It’s soft and looks like it’ll hold up pretty well, so I think I’m going to recommend it for use in the pattern. I don’t usually specify a yarn (and really, any fingering weight wool or cotton blend would work), but this one is not too difficult to obtain and I really like it. Plus, what will be the smallest size of the pattern (the one I knit) can be made with one skein of yarn. It was close, but I made it, crochet border and all.
I’m going to list the pattern on Free Pattern Testers on Ravelry later today if you’d like to test. Or, I’ll announce here when the pattern is available.
In other knitting news, I recently cast on for a pair of shorts in Hobby Lobby I Love This Cotton (it’s so soft). And no, knitted shorts are not weird. People think they are but they’re so comfortable. I wear the last pair I made all the time and they don’t sag or bunch at all. They’re super cute. This pair will be knit in pure cotton as opposed to cotton/acrylic, but we’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and in case you’re still wondering, I am still working on the Leah vest pattern. I don’t have the FO with me so I can’t measure length to finish it up, but I hope to get that written and out to testers within a week of my returning to Virginia Beach (I’m leaving DC on Thursday).
I finished the socks I started just the other day, possibly because I used a larger needle than I usually knit socks with.
Pattern: It’s a cuff-down sock. Regular toe, flap/gusset heel.
Yarn: Yarnbee Walk Away, colorway “For Kicks”
Needles: US *2*, a circular I bought at the Yarn Club, a new LYS in Virginia Beach
So these socks are knit a bit loose than I usually knit socks but the yarn is also very thick for sock yarn–it’s almost like a light sport weight. The socks are pretty comfortable and I suspect that once I toss them in the washing machine and dryer, they’ll tighten up a bit. They fit pretty well and the yarn is soft enough.
Knitting with the yarn was kind of a PITA though. It’s kind of like corespun–it’s wooly on the outside, but there’s a core thread of elastic/nylon and the two fibers stretch at different rates, so the wooly bit kept getting bunched up on the core thread. That was annoying. Also, the core shows through in a couple of spots.
On the whole, I’m pretty happy with the socks though. The color is quite lovely and I even got them to match! (Mostly–one is about a row ahead of the other.) I’m sure they will get lots of wear this winter when it is cool enough to wear mid-calf-high wool socks. Now I have three pairs like that!
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on something of a sock kick lately. Currently I have another pair of footies (for flats) on the needles (from the Ravenclaw yarn). I’m also about halfway through a shrug I’m designing (and hoping to finish with 380 yards–it’s gonna be close). Got some real work done on grown-up things yesterday and tonight I’m off to a pedicure with my boyfriend’s mother and sister (which is lovelier than it might sound–I quite like them). Still have to figure out how I’m getting back to Virginia Beach next week, but right now, I’m just going to relax and try not to kick some poor woman in the face when she inevitably tickles my very ticklish feet.
So apparently I forgot to blog about this hat I made, which is sad because it’s totally awesome and I wear it all the time.
Pattern: Wind and Sea from “Knitting in the Sun” (preview on Amazon)
Yarn: Recycled Linen/Cotton blend
Needle: US 6/4mm
Mods: None, actually. I knit exactly as written.
Like I said, I completely adore this hat. It’s lightweight, blocks the sun and looks SUPER cute. It is really light so it tends to blow off of my head unless I hold it down if there’s a breeze, but I found that putting a stretchy headband (I have a Goody one) around my head over the hat keeps it in place (I didn’t figure that out until after the photoshooot).
The construction is quite interesting–it’s knit from the outside in and then millinery wire (or 18 gauge jewelry wire, which is what I used) is crocheted into the brim by sandwiching it in the channel of the crochet stitch. It was pretty awkward to do, but it basically blocks the hat for you, so I’ll take it.
I definitely love this hat, and I might make some more in different colors and also in thicker yarn. The yarn I used, a linen/cotton blend from a thrift store sweater, was thinner than the called-for worsted weight, so the spaces in the stitches are larger than they should be. I might try to make this again with kitchen cotton stripes since it knits up so fast (that way if the Sugar ‘N’ Cream doesn’t work and is too heavy I won’t be out a lot of time. I’m definitely going to try again though, perhaps in a thicker linen/cotton (or this yarn held double), but dyed a different color.
In other knitting news, I just finished the gusset of my most recent socks and am currently motoring down the foot. Good pictures are going to be difficult when I finish since it has literally been raining all week and will probably continue. I’m going to the zoo with Joe and a friend of ours on Monday though, so I hope the weather’s nice for that. I’d also like to get out to Lake Accotink before I leave (probably next Thursday, probably by train), but I’m not sure if the weather will cooperate. Though really what I need to do is buckle down and find a damn job so I can move up here permanently. Wish me luck (on the job thing and also the weather).
As promised, here is an FO post!
Pattern: They’re toe-up socks. Short-row heel.
Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll, Shoreline Twist (blue and brown)
Needles: US 1
There isn’t a tremendous amount to say about these socks. They fit pretty well and used surprisingly little yarn–I have about 40g left over, which is enough to make an entire pair of anklets at least. This is possibly because I didn’t make them as tall as I could have, but there comes a point where I get tired of knitting the legs of socks and decide they’re done. This is why I should knit socks cuff down–In the beginning of the socks, my knitting mojo isn’t spent knitting the foot and I can knit plain round rows longer. Then there’s the heel (fun) and then the foot has to be so long so my foot fits in it–there’s no halfway.
So that’s my sock philosophy, so to speak. Plus I haven’t quite figured out the toe-up flap/gusset heel, which I think fits a lot better than the short row heel I put into toe-up socks. Clearly I need to make more of Wendy Johnson’s patterns, which are usually toe-up and include a flap heel.
I’ve just recently started another pair of plain socks, this time cuff-down. More on that later. And in case you were wondering, I’ve made it to DC and to my boyfriend’s and have successfully packed most of the things away in my house in Virginia Beach. Still have to find a job and an apartment so I can get the hell out of dodge, but I’m working on that. Sort of. : )
Let me tell you guys, I am having a hell of a week. I’ve been out of college for less than a week and I have a ton of stuff to get rid of, to put away until I move out of my house, and a job to find PLUS I came back to Virginia Beach to find I had jury duty for June despite that I have no car, the court house is on the other side of town, and I’m planning to move out sometime in June. So yeah. It’s been a hell of a week.
Anyway, I’m going back out of town on Saturday (back up to DC where my boyfriend lives to look for apartments and jobs and other stuff), so I have to get everything out of the cars and the living room and into the attic and my bedroom PLUS pack for my week or two out of town.
All this to say (besides that like, I like to tell you guys about my life) that I have been doing some very very simple knitting:
Just a pair of vanilla socks in Knit Picks Stroll (blue and brown, like Ravenclaw colors). Nice and simple so I don’t kill anyone while I’m doing all of my packing and stuff. I also frogged the chunky cashmere sweater but I have to rewash the yarn, so I can’t use it yet. It is nice though. I think it’ll be a scarf or something.
Anyway, I’ll be back in a couple of days with an update if I haven’t been crushed by all of my stuff.
So I have finished up a couple of knitted things this week because, like I said, it’s dead week/senior week, so all the soon-to-be graduates are chilling on campus for a week before graduation, partying, sleeping in, and generally laying about. I have been knitting, my boyfriend Joe has been putting together a self-published album of his orchestral/piano compositions (he’s good; I promise) and together we’ve been watching Stargate: Atlantis on Netflix (which is delightful, by the way. We’re about halfway into season two and I LOVE IT).
Anyway, during the many episode of SGA we’ve been watching, I’ve gotten a lot of knitting done. Like the shorter version of my Leah vest.
Pattern: Leah, which I am currently working on writing up.
Yarn: Reynold’s Tiara, three skeins I’ve had as long as I’ve been crocheting (ie, a long damn time), probably from a yard sale or something.
Needles: US 6/4 mm
So guys? I TOTALLY LOVE THIS VEST. I really didn’t think I would care for the cropped version but OMG it is so cute. It looks great over blouses and I think it’ll look good over some dresses and t-shirts too. LOVE LOVE LOVE. The points came out exactly how I wanted (just under the bust) and the neckline is perfect. I originally tried to put in too many buttons/button holes but when I reduced them from five to three, it came out perfectly. Seriously LOVE.
Also the photo shoot was fun. My camera guy (Joe) is great and I love him.
As for the yarn: It was just a bit thinner than I would have liked. Ravelry says worsted, but it’s more like a dk. Anyway, it’s discontinued, so I won’t be recommending it for the pattern (probably I’ll just say a cotton or rayon blend worsted weight). Tiara is rayon and silk and the rayon was very splitty and the silk very pilly. The finished vest is quite pretty, but I wouldn’t recommend this yarn to anyone, especially if it’s been sitting on the bottom of your yarn bin for several years. It is a pretty color though and I did use up just about all of it, so it’s out of my stash.
I believe I mentioned before I was working on a cotton summer hat — I’ve finished that too and will have some details/pictures in the next post. Suffice it to say that it’s awesome and basically the best hat ever. That post will not be tomorrow as tonight is Cinco de Mayo and I will be drinking tequila. Yes.
(insert high kick)
Anyway, yes I’ve been doing some knitting, as I mentioned. I started a small project to have on me and I finished it up in just a couple of days.
Pattern: I made them up as I went. The second is better fitting that the first. They’re toe up and a short row heel.
Yarn: The Sanguine Gryphon Bugga! left over from a batch of WWFY knitting.
Needles: US 1, the same sock needles I use for all socks.
Like I said, the second one fits way better than the first, which is a touch too long and a touch too wide–I accidentally did too many toe increases. I’m pretty happy with the fit, though I did have to sew the ends of the back of the heel to the border on the foot so they’d be tight enough.
I’m not really sure how to remedy that without the sewing. I wanted to do a flap/gusset heel but I also was feeling iffy about the stripes (I had very little of the green to work with, so that’s why they don’t match) and I like toe up socks, so I just did them that way. I think this sort of sock is a great way to use up sock yarn scraps (and in fact, I’m planning another pair from the remainder of the Manly Aran socks) as well as being very functional–I wear open topped flats a lot and my commercially knit socks for them are wearing a bit thin. Plus I only have like, three pairs anyway.
Since finishing these, I’ve started working on a shorter version off my Leah vest to work out the shaping (and cause I wanted a shorter one). I’m using Reynold’s Tiara, a rayon/silk blend I’ve had in my stash basically since I learned to crochet (I got it at a yard sale). Glad to have a purpose for it (or some of it at least). But more on that later.
So I finished knitting the second pair of Manly Arans which means I can MAIL THESE SUCKERS OFF AND KNIT FOR ME ME ME ME!!!!!! (Okay, I have some OWS stuff, but it’s little things.)
Ahem. I’m pleased, in case you couldn’t tell.
Pattern: Manly Aran Socks by Wendy Johnson
Yarn: Cascade Heritage Paints
Needles: US 1, 40″ (for magic loop)
Mods: None.
They are more or less exactly like the other pair. I knit the cuff as long as I thought I could (turns out I was a little off and I have a tiny bit left over). They are too big on my feet (obviously), but they are DONE DONE DONE. They just have to be mailed off.
I have since cast on for a pair of sockettes (socks for wearing inside flats) and see it as a marker of self control that I haven’t cast on approximately a billion things.
It’s finals week! Boo! I had two finals today and I have one on Wednesday and two on Thursday, plus a final paper due on Thursday. Basically, this week is full of the suck. The finals I had today were Women in Opera and What is Time?, the latter of which is relevant to this blog.
Basically, the final was to create a project that was interactive/could be experienced in some way and explored the concepts of time we discussed in the class (the class being exactly what it says on the tin). Being the knitterly sort, I chose to involve knitting in my project. I knit a hat, photographed it along the way, and strung the photos together into a stop-motion video. This is the hat I made:
Pattern: Aaron’s Hat
Yarn: Paton’s Rumor
Needles: US 8/5 mm
I steamed the hat as it came out a little short (and Rumor is mostly acrylic with a touch of alpaca). It turned out pretty well and will either go into the gift pile or warm my head next winter. One of those. Rumor, incidentally, is a metric fuckton softer than the similar blend Bernat Alpaca blend, which is scratchy and full of guard hairs. Rumor is nice and soft, though it did shed everywhere.
Sorry for the quality of the photos in the video; I had to take a lot of them. Here is my finished product:
The numbers:
I took a photo after every dpn (4 per round)
The hat has 36 rounds.
That’s 144 photos total (plus extras when the photos were blurry or my camera strap got in the way)
Under normal circumstances, this hat would have taken one hour to knit.
Knitting and photographing took approximately five hours.
It’s all condensed into just over one minute.
It was a huge pain in the ass, but I’m pretty pleased with how it came out (even though the pictures are crap). I think it was fairly well received.
Also, in case you were wondering, the music was composed by wonderful boyfriend, who would like me to mention that he threw it together in a couple of minutes cause he’s great (okay, that last part was me).
I finished the vest I started the other day! Like I said, it was a super quick knit. I (by which I mean my boyfriend, Joe) took approximately nine bajillion photos of roughly the same composition. Also, I apparently feel the need to tilt my head to the side in ALL POSED PHOTOS. I tried really hard not to this time, but it still crept in. Enjoy!
Pattern: My own, which I’m currently writing up.
Yarn: Linen/Cotton blend from a thrift store sweater
Needles: US 6/4 mm
So I posted my original sketch of this design on Ravelry, but I thought when I finished the fronts that it wasn’t going to look a whole lot like that. I wasn’t sure how well-defined the points would be after I did the trim, the armholes were looking wonky and I was thinking it was going to turn out to be a u-neck instead of a v-neck.
Actually, it turns out that picking up stitches around the neckline and armholes cures a multitude of knitting sins and instead it turned out pretty much how I envisioned it. Dudes? I LOVE THIS VEST.
There are a couple of issues. It’s a wee bit snug which means the buttons gape a little and the yarn I used is a little itchy thanks to the constant shedding of little cotton bits (which by the way were a HUGE pain in the ass when I was frogging the original sweater). Also, while the arm holes worked out all right on the BACK and I could probably write it up as-is, the decreases for the neckline and armholes for the fronts are… wonky. Well, you saw the picture of the fronts.
Fortunately, I plan to correct these flaws in the pattern by knitting another version of the vest. Hopefully. I want to do a shorter version where the points end just under the bust (kind of like this one, but knitted obviously and a bit shorter). I don’t know that I have the yarn for it currently in-stash, but it’s possible I have a cotton-blend in a sweater I have yet to frog. And then I can just dye it whatever color. Or I suppose I could just knit it in wool.
Incidentally, the reason this design is called Leah (pronounced like the Alderaan (my boyfriend insists that this should be “Alderaanian”; he is a huge Star Wars nerd) princess) is for my friend of the same name, who has a super cute cropped vest like the one described above and a generally great fashion sense. Also, I like her. And apparently I am on a “name designs after my friends” kick.
Anyway, yes. Wonderful vest. Design plans for future. Now back to the man socks. *shakes fist*
Stitch, Brinn, Stitch! 