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So I’m knitting another sweater, making my total for the year 14 once this one’s done. To be fair, some of those were tank tops. So maybe I’ll go through what I’ve done and let you know when I’ve done 12 legit sweaters, long sleeves and all. Actually, I’ve only done a handful of those… We’ll stick with 14.
Anyway, I’m knitting owls by Kate Davies, everyone’s favorite bulky yarn sweater. I’m modifying mine into a cardigan because I’ll wear it more. Right now, I have the body done up to the short rows and the sleeves both knit. I started this on Sunday. There’s a good chance this sweater will be done before the week is out. Or at the very least, not much more than a week.
So the sleeves of this thing are knit in the round, from the wrist to the armpit. Upon embarking on this sweater, it didn’t occur to me to check to make sure I had the right needles. Except for the ribbing, the pattern calls for 6.5 mm needles (I know, they’re fucking huge). I have 6 mm dpns, so that’s what the sleeves are knit on. But check out these needles:
THEY’RE SO LONG (that’s what she said; tee hee). Seriously. They’re like a foot long. They’re some plastic Susan Bates nonsense that came from a garage sale back when I first started knitting. I mean, they’re pretty smooth and work well with the wool yarn, but still. Huge.
As I said in my last post, I finished Watermelon, so I’ll have pictures of that soon, probably in a couple of days. So that will happen. Stay tuned for knitting. And maybe some other crafts if I feel like it (probably not).
(Sorry for the shitty night pictures.)
Pattern: Foliage by Emilee Mooney
Yarn: Lion Wool Solid in Cadet Blue
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm dpns and circs
Mods: …None. Astonishing.
So my hat came out too large, which was unfortunate. Not that I needed another tight-fitting beanie-style hat. So I blocked it taller so it came out as more of a beret. I’m not sure how I feel about it on my head, but at the very least, it looks cute on the Styrofoam head. The ribbing also came out too big, but that was fixed with a crochet bow. *shrug* I’ll probably wear it a bit. Maybe I’ll gift it. We shall see.
In other knitting news: I finished Watermelon, ends woven in and buttons sewn on and everything. So that will happen soon. I’m also working on (yet another) sweater, and seeing as it’s in bulky yarn (Cascade Eco) on 6.5 mm needles, it’s going pretty fast. I suspect I’ll be done by the end of next week.
Unfortunately, knitting is really all I have time for, thanks to school. That would also be the cause of my rather erratic posting schedule. My apologies about that, but I am trying to post more frequently. Probably not frequently enough for NaBloPoMo (post a blog post every day), but more frequently none the less. Knitting will happen. Crafts will happen. Stay tuned!
So I’m still truckin’ on the Watermelon cardigan. It looks like this now:
Why yes, I do knit like a fiend. I tried it on, and thought it’s a bit smaller than I would have liked, it’s super comfy and fantastic. I hope to have it done this weekend (but who knows if that will happen).
I’ve also off and on been working on a spinning project:
That would be an ounce of random wool I got with the spindle I’m spinning it on. It’s probably going to stay a single, and I’ll make some sort of cowl or something with it. Only sort of related: light-fingering weight yarn spins up SO SLOWLY on a spindle. I want a wheel. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to put it, so for right now, I’m delegated to spindling.
Speaking of spindles: I want a lighter one for spinning lace-weight. Any suggestions? I want a fairly inexpensive one because A, I’m cheap as hell and B, I’m a poor college student that just spent $60 on yarn from WEBS.
FO’s, that is. One I finished rather a while ago, and the other is something I whipped up during a movie because my current project was too complicated for movie knitting.
Pattern: None, just a chart of a design I made up.
Yarn: Random scraps of acrylic yarn
Needles: US 8/5 mm I think
This was a present for my friend Sarah, whose birthday was in early June. I spent a week frantically knitting it and sent it off to her in time for her birthday, but I forgot to snap a picture. Fortunately, she is my roommate at school this year, so I snapped one for Ravelry and for the blog.
Pattern: Calorimetry
Yarn: My handspun!
Needles: US 8/5mm straights
Mods: Cast on 88, did far fewer row 5 repeats
My first FO with my handspun!
This pattern is perfect for just a little bit of yarn, which is exactly what I had. I actually have a fair amount of yarn left over, though I’m not sure what to do with it. Perhaps it can be a stripe on a crazy handspun hat. The barber-poling of the colors looks great, but kind of obscures the ribbing. I don’t really care though; it still looks awesome. And I made it! From wool to yarn to dyed yarn to FO. : ) I will definitely be getting a lot of wear out of it come winter because it’ll add a bright splash of color to my winter wardrobe and so I can brag that I made both the Calorimetry and the yarn itself. WIN.
Coming soon to a blog near you: Inchies. Beatles things (part of which is SO FUCKIN’ COOL I can’t stand it), and more knitting. I started an awesome cardigan and scrapped a project I’d been working on for a few days (it just wasn’t working out). Stay tuned!
Pattern: My own, based on the idea for Soft Mit-Gloves. I wanted to make them but didn’t have/want to knit with sport weight yarn, so I improvised based on my tried and true mitten method.
Yarn: Lion Wool, almost certainly less than a skein.
Needles: US 6/4 mm nickle plated dpns.
I’d been thinking for a while about what to make my friend Jon for his birthday, and after much browsing on Ravelry, I found the Cigarette gloves mentioned above and knew they would be perfect. A while back, I made Jon some fingerless mitts for him to wear at the shooting range to keep his hands warm in the cold Pennsylvania winters. I thought a nice pair of wool mittens would do the trick nicely. This way, his index finger is free to pull the trigger, and the other fingers stay nice and warm, nestled in the mitten side. The left one is just a regular mitten cause you don’t need individual fingers on that hand.
Increasingly, I’m finding that worsted weight is a little too thick and awkward for mittens and gloves. I think these will work just fine, but in the future, I think I may have to reduce the weight of yarn I use for this sort of thing, or at least use yarn with more drape. A tighter gauge might also help, much as I dislike knitting at tight gauges.
Coming soon: inchies. More Beatles. Post Secret. Other knitting things. Stay tuned!
I finished another spinning project today:
The color is a bit darker than it appears on my (admittedly light) moniter. Sort of a brick red, which is why this colorway is called “In the Clay Pits”. I dyed an ounce of roving with one packet of black cherry and one packet of grape kool aide. I was hoping for a darker, purply color, but I shall have to try that again later with some grape.
I was going to do a two-ply, but the single came out so balanced I just left it as such. I’d say it’s about a fingering/light sport weight with some minor variation. I’m still working on keeping my tension even, but this is certainly a marked improvement. I’m quite happy with it. 🙂 It’s still a little rope-like (I definitely have a problem with over-spinning), but the texture is rather nice nonetheless.
I’m not sure how much I have here though. It’s an ounce, so I would guess there’s around a hundred yards, though I could be mistaken. I think this might make a nice lace cowl though.
In other craft news: I am planning for the Beatles swap and have done most of the inchie backgrounds. I also signed up for another round of Post Secret, so I have to make those secrets. The shorts from last post are almost done, and the scarf I mentioned will just have to wait. Stay tuned!
Pattern: My own! A stockinette triangle with a wave lace pattern and a simple edging. I’d love to share it, but I fudged most of the numbers to make the lace fit, so it would be difficult to write directions.
Yarn: Red Heart Heart and Sole, about a ball and a half in “Spring Stripes”
Needles: US 7/4.5 mm Knit Picks Options circ
(It’s really not wonky, I just arranged it oddly on Elizabeth. It’s not crooked, I promise.)
I LOVE this shawl. It’s light but still warm, perfect for overzealous air conditioning. The colors and bright and lovely. I LOVE how the lace came out. It’s a simple pattern but because of the stripes in the yarn, it makes the colors pop and they don’t obscure the pattern tooooo much. The points didn’t block out as much as I’d hoped, but they’re pointy enough. All in all, the shawl came out almost exactly as I wanted it to.
Here are some more pictures (I really like macro mode):
Currently being crafty: Inchie swap. Soon to be another swap. A cool knitting project. And a super secret project that I won’t be able to talk about in detail until December. Don’t worry though, I’ll have plenty of other things to show you until then. Stay tuned!
For my latest spinning adventure, I intended to spin enough to actually make something with. Here’s what I came up with:
I estimated the yardage at about 80 at a worsted weight, so enough to make something small, like a hat or a cowl. I say it’s perfect for winter: something to keep me warm while adding a bright splash of color to my usually dark winter wardrobe. Which is why I called the yarn/color “A Splash of Citrus”.
I spun the singles, then dyed them, and then plied them. I probably should have dyed the roving as I ended up with a bunch of the yellow left over, but I may use that to practice chain plying. I won’t be able to make anything out of it, which is unfortunate, but maybe I can over-dye it and add it to some other yarn.
The pictures came out lovely, don’t you think? Perfect for summer.
So the other day, my sister and I went to a midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Because Harry Potter has been in our lives for so many years (and because I’m crafty and slightly obsessed), we dressed up. She went as Tonks and I went as Luna:
(The photo of me is terrible, I know. My brother took it in the crappy lighting of my kitchen.)
Siarra/Tonks costume was pretty simple and mostly consisted of found items: a black lacy shirt from the thrift store, a shawl of mine, black jeans, and purple hair spray, choker, and animal nose from party city.
Mine was considerably more crafty. I found a too-big v-neck at the thrift store and made it smaller to fit me. Also got the tie there. Black skirt, dowel wand behind the ear, and my favorite (and the most crafty) part:
Needlefelted radish earrings! Mine are slightly different from the ones Luna has in the movie, but we’ll say I was going from the book. : ) I recently took up needlefelting (I got a kit from a swap) and have already made a couple of things (a sheep and a butterfly). Pictures of those will happen… sometime. Maybe.
I’ve also started a new spinning/dyeing project and am knitting away on a couple of things. Plus another swap. You know, it’s the summer, and apart from work, what else am I going to do with my time besides craft? : )
Here’s a bunch of non-knitting things I’ve been working on lately:
I made a couple of notecards (the first one of which I sent off to the boyfriend) out of stuff around the house. I love cardmaking but sadly have few occasions to use them. At least I’ll have lots of lovely ones for including in swaps.
A little notebook out of a pad of post its and some cardboard. If anyone’s interested in a tutorial for this, let me know! It was pretty simple but I know I would have appreciated a tut for notebook making that didn’t require sewing or making signatures.
I made yarn! It’s about 30 yards, according to my rudimentary measuring system (find book about a foot tall, wind yarn around book, count strands on one side, multiply by two, divide by three). Two ply, pretty thick and thin but loads better than my previous attempts. It goes between a fingering weight to a bulky weight, though it mostly sticks to worsted-ish. I think I’m going to try to make a calorimetry or some sort of headband/earwarmer type thing.
I made more yarn! I dyed this with kool-aid as roving, then spun it as a fingering weight-ish single. It’s overspun, but that’ll get better the more I practice.
I’ve found I really enjoy spinning, so I will definitely be doing more of it. Now I just need to find a good place (probably online) to get roving, preferably already dyed and for a reasonable (read: cheap) price. Or maybe I’ll just dye it myself. Knit Picks has some nice dyes available…
Stitch, Brinn, Stitch! 