Just in time for the thaw (it got up to a balmy 35 degrees today), I made Redbeard a hat:
It’s a criminally soft yarn (an alpaca cotton blend) that he chose himself while dutifully accompanying me to the yarn store as we made the rounds of shopping errands. Positive reinforcement is a good thing.
No lessons this time – it went remarkably smoothly and as expected.
Well, I ran out of yarn right at the end, but managed to bind off the fingers. However, I was still left with thumb holes. Faced with the choice of waiting until I could get back to the yarn store and having mittens right now, but with different colored thumbs, my daughter decided color contrast was good.
The end result is funky, but sort of cute. I had just a couple options, since I left the vast majority of my stash back in Florida.
The interesting this here is that this white yarn (that my daughter picked) is actually some that I spun myself, and this is the first time that I have put any yarn I’ve spun to real use. The mitten yarn is DK weight, but the homespun is…. thick. The end result, after a lot of cursing while trying to knit 2 stitches together over and over (I actually bent one of my needles a little – those puny size 3s just couldn’t handle my fearsome yarn!) was having really thick, dense mitten thumbs. I’m going to spin this as a good thing – extra protection against the cold while making snow balls!
Lessons learned: You CAN switch up a needle size (or two… or four) in the middle of a project if your needles are too small. For the thumbs, once I switched up to size 7, things went much better. Plus, at least in this case, you can’t tell when I made the switch. My other lesson? Sadly, I think it is “Always buy an extra skein” – I am going to be able to make a heck of a scrap blanket very soon, I suspect!
My mom came to visit this weekend – which was fantastic. We did indeed go to the yarn store (among many other activities), and I stocked up for three, no four projects, with expert help from my mom.
No doubt I’ll be outlining the victories and setbacks in these projects in the days and weeks to come, but here’s a preview:
(1) Alligator scarf (with pattern)
(2) Felted tote bag (without pattern)
(3) Stuffed owl doll (with pattern)
(4) Shawl/Wrap (with hand-crafted pattern from my mom)
Will post more with links to patterns and pictures soon… I’ve already made a lot of progress on the alligator scarf, avoided the 8-stitch double-pointed needle start in one project (the tote bag), only to have to do not one, but TWO 6-stitch DPN starts for another (the owl). I guess I’d better learn to like doing this – so many projects I’d like to do involve starting to knit in the round from 6-8 stitches. If only there was a way to grow two extra pairs of hands…
Here’s the pre-felted final bag in all its non-felted glory:
The bottom looks only mildly screwy, especially from a comfortable distance:
The pattern actually deliberately causes those raised stitches. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it – and in this case it’s actually true!)
I learned a bunch with this pattern – I learned the wrong way to roll a ball of yarn (unless you like unpicking wooly knots), I learned that knitting in the round mostly means not having to purl (I like knitting in the round), and I learned the ssk stitch. All very cool. But the best thing, bar none, was I learned the kitchener stitch:
Redbeard swears I actually said out loud “Holy crap – it works!”
Now, I get to go learn how to felt in a front-loading washing machine. After some googling, I’ve decided to follow this set of instructions that appear highly rated by other felters. So, as much as it kills me – I’m not felting yet until I make a test patch.
So close!