Tag Archives: knitting

THE sweater (done!)

knitting, ,

After way too many months, a whole lot of beer and a soupçon of profanity, the husband sweater is finally done! Drum roll, please…

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It seems so simple now… still not sure what took me so long. Though, I will say that there were a couple points that held me up because I was nervous about dealing with them – in particular I procrastinated forever before I finally worked up the courage to tackle button holes, and then I ended up knitting about twenty holes to get the five finalists you see above. (Button holes provoke so many questions for me: How do you get them evenly spaced? How do you prevent that weird stray stitch cutting through the middle? How can knitting empty space be SO IMPOSSIBLY HARD? Why couldn’t Redbeard have asked for a zipper?) But, more than that – the pattern also spooked me a few times. It was supposedly for beginners, and really good in some ways. But, I guess I am too beginner for even beginner status, because it would also throw out strange, uninterpretable instructions, too. With a scarf or hat, I would just roll with it – because honestly, how bad can it go wrong with a scarf or a hat? But, in the high stakes world of sweater knitting, where I might not even understand how badly I’d screwed up until I went to sew it all together? Not able to just bull ahead.

In fact, for the sleeves – I actually rewrote all of instructions into something comprehensible for me. That way, I only had to divine the meaning of the instructions *once* – with coffee in hand – and translate them into something a mere pre-beginner like me could understand, even when drinking beer instead of coffee several hours later.

But, all worth it in the end! In fact, there must be something wrong with my brain, because I hadn’t even finished sewing on the last button before I started thinking about what sort of sweater I’d like to knit next…

 

Mittens (and beer)

Beer, knitting,

It’s dropped down into the low 30s here (or -4/-2 C, which sounds so much more alarming), and so I experienced some increased pressure to finish the mittens. (Especially because my son was resisting going outside for recess.)

Here they are:

I started to move my beer and its stray bottle cap out of the way, and then thought “Well, it is Knittles and BEER after all…” and so here we see the mittens, plus the beer that helped me finish them last night.

For once my second copy was better than the first, thought I did have to frog my first attempt at the second mitten. The pattern is actually meant for a two-color mitten, with columns of a different color in the cuffs. My son was not at all interested in this, so I just stuck with “silver”, but now I think I understand the basic logic of slipping stitches to do multi-color patterns. So, that’s my lesson for this project. 🙂

Also, I’m not so happy with the length of the cuffs. I did what the pattern called for, but they seem too short to me. My son seems to agree- he kept trying to pull his coat sleeves over them all the way to school. I may try to lengthen them after the fact with just a simple ribbed pattern.

I’m sure it will be useful someday

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I finally finished that darn felted bag that I started ages ago. I have to show you a sideways pictures because I can’t get the computer to save the rotated version (No matter how I point my camera, WordPress always shows the picture sideways. At least it normally lets me change the orientation, but today it likes it sideways. This bag is cursed. And sideways.)

The important thing – the really important thing, and I can’t stress this enough – is that it is finished.

 

Christmas knitting revealed

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At long last, I can reveal some projects that I made as gifts.

First up – a scarf and hat combination that I made for my sister:

The scarf was incredibly fun to make – I bought the orange yarn, but otherwise used yarns that I had remaining from other projects. The stitch is stockinette, with the occasional garter thrown in. This meant I also wanted to block it because the edges really, really wanted to curl in and make the scarf a tube. It was a little trickier finding space than usual because it’s so long. But, there’s always a solution, and this one was a small runner rug with towel thrown over it:

Hurricane hat

knitting,

I thought I had just about wrapped up my Christmas knitting plans (not the actual projects, mind you, just the plans), when I came across this pattern for a hat. A hurricane hat. I always try to get my (wonderful and joking) step-grandfather something quirky for Christmas, and this was too good to resist. (For next year I’m thinking of this.)

Why? Well, when Irene hit Vermont earlier in the year, my mom and I had to pause and consider the sheer weirdness of talking about hurricane damage to places where she lived. Truly all that was normal in the world had been turned upside down when her Florida-dwelling daughter was sympathetically listening to the list of (thankfully largely minor!) damage in Vermont.

So, I couldn’t resist making my step-grandfather a hurricane hat, to commemorate this strange, strange year. And help keep is head warm. Here it is!

Button holes, smutton holes

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I just finished the manly-button scarf! I’m not sure that I did the cast-on part correctly (in fact, I’m certain that I did not do it the way that I was instructed to), but  even still I am shocked at how easy it actually was in the end. After some poking around online, I went with this set of instructions, and all went smoothly, almost.

My mother once told me that she would gladly do whatever was necessary to not have to parallel park, even if that meant walking five miles in the snow up hill both ways. I never quite understood this until yesterday, when I realized that I feel the exact same way about casting on. I know exactly one way to cast on (long-tail). And, I’m really, really happy with this cast-on. I will go to great lengths (ha ha) to use this cast on, even when asked to cast on 100+ stitches.

Looking at how to do the “required” cable cast on for this particular button hole has not changed my mind. I spent a fair amount of time saying “oh, no no no” as I watched the instructions unfold. Then, I spent way too long trying to figure out how to use a long-tail cast on. In the end, defeated, I sort of flailed around with the needles in a way that is sort of like a cable cast on – I didn’t make a slip knot, but just took the next stitch, knitted into it, then pulled that stitch onto the left needle, knit into it, slipped it back on, etc. I don’t think it would work for very many stitches, but it worked for the 4 that I needed!

I don’t have a good picture of the button hole itself, but I’m pretty happy with it. Here’s a picture of the final scarf, folded up and ready to wrap!

Button scarf

knitting,

As I mentioned before, almost all of my projects are currently gift-related and so I’m reluctant to say too much about them. That said, the “beer” tag is threatening to overshadow the “knitting” tag, which I simply can’t allow to happen. I’m thinking that of the likely gift-recipients who might read this, the men-folk in my life are probably lower in the rankings. But, just in case, anyone of the grandpa persuasion who might be reading this in New York needs to stop now.

[…]

[…]

I mean it.

[…]

Okay, I’ve started working on another scarf of my own design, this time a manly scarf that’s short, with a button to keep it fixed in place. That means I have, looming large on my horizon… button holes (cue thunder and lightning and lone wolf howl). In meantime, I’m bopping along, seemingly oblivious and quite happy with my little pattern:

I’ll let you know how the button hole turns out. I think there is 100% certainty that I will learn a lesson or two.

Why I need to do two socks at a time

knitting,

Christmas knitting season is upon me and so I may have to go dark with reports on knitting projects, since almost all of them are Christmas projects. But, I do have at least once more recent project that I can talk about.

I recently finished a pair of “wristers” for my daughter, in her favorite color:

These are from a pattern in 60 Quick Knits. Can you pick which one I did first? Here’s the funny part (and a turning point for me, I think): I did better with the first one. I just lost steam on the second, and then lost count of my rows, and then just kept on going because I needed to finish. There was at least one hole big enough to cause comment from my daughter (on the increases for the thumb gusset) – so I just patched it up with some extra yarn.

Lessons learned:
(1) I’m not ready for prime-time cabling yet.
(2) I am developing strong opinions about increases.
(3)  I need to knit socks in tandem or I will have a lot of orphan socks.

Hat improvement

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Don’t let all of Redbeard’s posts about beer fool you – there is also knitting going on. (Okay, mostly along side the drinking – in fact, right now I’m looking longingly over at some lovely roving that I got from Earth Guild while drinking a Pumking as part of a pumpkin beer tasting that Redbeard and I decided to do tonight.)

I finished another Elf hat. This one is for the son of a good friend of mine (and novice knitter, another one joins the fold!). I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of joining the sides. I’m not sure I’m doing a mattress stitch, but I’ve decided that I don’t care. Here’s a close up of the seam:

Not exactly seamless, but then I don’t think it can be with this pattern. Even with the strange join, I still really like this pattern.

Another Earth Guild purchase that portends more knitting:  Melissa Morgan-Oakes Toe-Up 2-at-a-Time Socks. I’ve been interesting in knitting socks for awhile, and there is something really, really appealing about (a) starting with the hard part first, and (b) doing both socks at once. So… now I just need some sock yarn. Yay – field trip to my LYS!

 

I know what a LOT of people are getting for Christmas this year…

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I am trying my best to show a little restraint when it comes to this hat pattern a friend gave me. But, oh sweet knitting gods, it is hard.

This hat is so cute and knits up insanely fast because you knit flat and then sew it into shape. What’s not to love?

Oh, that’s right, here is what is not love:

Way down at the bottom of the pattern, looking innocent, is the instruction to “mattress” stitch the ends together. I’m not sure why it’s called mattress stitching, though my current theory is because it makes you want to go lie down after you try it. Good thing this first hat (because oh yes there will be more, bed-related stitching or not) is for my daughter, who is not yet discerning enough to care about what a complete hash her mother has made of the mattress stitching on her new hat.

Of course, it doesn’t help that this first attempt is on a diagonal (the tutorials only show horizontal and vertical… how dare they not envision every possible orientation?). I’m making my son one next… it will give me another chance to see if I can work out how to join these things together.