On the Needles

In an effort to bolster my own confidence, because I'd really like me to just work away on these things instead of finding new projects to start, here's all I have on the needles at the moment:

• Willem's fisherman's sweater.
  Someday, I want to make one with much more intricate, braided cables, but I thought that for a first effort I should keep the pattern a bit more manageable on the theory that this way I might actually finish it. I can't remember when I casted on; around the end of January, call it the 30th. So, if it took a month for the front, then I should finish the whole thing by.... May? I hope.
  
  


• Nisa's scarf. Started last Sunday, 2/18. I'd guess I'm about 1/6 of the way done, give or take a bit. I plan on just knitting to the end of the yarn, unless that creates a 10-foot-long scarf. I'm following this pattern, but with much finer yarn, so it's on small needles and coming out narrower. Very soft and snuggly... I will give it to her, honest and truly, I will...
  
  The front:
  
  The back:
  
  
  
• And another version of the same scarf, which has sort of stalled, largely because I don't know who I'll give it to and the coloring isn't good for me (I can't get away with olive green, unless the motif I'm going for is Early Jaundice). Maybe if I had a target in mind, I'd get fired up about it.
  
  I love that this pattern has such different appearances on the front and back:
  

A Frenzy of Finished Items

Well, or, at least, mostly finished. I found myself getting very antsy and uncomfortable last night - apparently, I can handle three works-in-progress at once, but four is beyond my capacity and makes me itchy. So I finished off a dishcloth for here:


A pair of dishcloths for my father and his girlfriend (eek!) at their new place (eek again!):


And Mary's bag... not entirely finished, true, because I need to get buttons and a zipper for it, but it's moving along. This is the before-felting version:



I'm not 100% thrilled with the felting, only because it made one spot narrow, along the top of the bag, that I would prefer not to have shrunk that way. Not sure how I might possibly have prevented it, though - and once it's in use it shouldn't be too obvious. Anyway, here's the post-felted bag... it's still pretty, though I'm not sure I'll be felting much else in the future. I think I liked the pre-felted fabric better, though admittedly this will be much more practical and use-able.

Awwwwwwww...

A baby. And oh, yeah, by the way, there's a sweater on her!

I made the sweater based very loosely on some pattern or other - maybe this one - but only used it for the basic length/width measurements. Knitted with a soft 100% acrylic, which is not my favorite but with babies it has to be machine-washable! I wanted something simple, with cables, and baby-appropriate, and this is what I ended up with: (The sweater. Someone else made the baby.)


I also made a simple garter-stitch scarf for the lovely Lisa in Australia, for her February birthday. It's far too warm for her NOW, but with luck she'll get some use out of it while we're all sweating through another New England summer. I used a ribbon yarn and a fine mohair held together, which made a very pretty fabric that is totally unlike either of the component yarns. Isn't yarn great?

Long-Tail Cast-On Trick

This may seem self-evident, but I didn't figure it out on my own after a few years of a lot of inaccurate casting on...

If you're not great at eying how much yarn you should use for a long-tail cast-on, then, starting an inch or three from the end, wrap the yarn around your needle the requisite number of times. Tie your slip knot after the end of the last wrap, then unwrap it all and cast on. I'm paranoid and give it a few extra inches (because, really, who couldn't use a few extra inches now and then?) but this has been idiot-proof, or at least Kate-proof, since I heard someone else suggest it.

On the Needles

Note to self: Figure out how to take better pictures. I have a really nice camera, I just can't take consistently good pictures of my projects. Kids, sure. Projects, not so much.

Current projects:

• Mary's messenger bag, not from a pattern. With my favorite yarn ever. Love the colors, love the texture. It's about 90% done, just need to mess around with the straps... it's meant to be worn over her shoulder, but also needs a second strap to allow it to hang on the back of her wheelchair... when we're in PARIS. In May. Yeah, I'm excited. Anyway, I also plan to felt it, which will be a first for me. But it's a bit big, so felting will shrink it - plus felting makes it waterproof-ish, or so I'm told, which is a good quality for a bag to have, if it can arrange to do so.


• An Aran fisherman's sweater for Willem. Off-white wool, very soft. It's not like anything he's ever owned or worn before, so I really hope he likes it... but if nothing else, it's good practice with cables. It's another Lion Brand pattern, but NOT raglan sleeves. Perhaps 20% finished... but it's coming along faster now that I've learned the cabling/stitch pattern, and I plan to do the back in mock ribbing, so that should be faster.


• The Candle Flame scarf from Firebrunette Knitting. The yarn I have is handspun and hand-dyed from exotic New Jersey, somewhat similar to the photo but not exact. I'm planning on changing the pattern a bit, by knitting close to the end and then decreasing, instead of making two halves and joining in the middle... because I don't know exactly how long the yarn is and it was a nightmare to untangle and wrap into a ball (my own fault for not hooking the original hank onto a chair or something to unwind) so I am NOT willing to unroll it all to measure. It's about 40% done.

February 2007

What did I do in January? Well, I started a lot of projects and didn't finish them till February. I feel like I'm missing something, like I made something and forgot to take a picture (this happens far too often), but such is life.

Oh, yes! I remember! I completely frogged - tore apart, to those of you not in the know - two different sweaters, because I screwed up the cables on the first one and the second one streeeeeeeetched out to knee-length before I was half-finished (it was knit hem-to-hem, vertically instead of horizontally). Same exact yarn both times. I frogged it, wrapped it up, and sent it to my sister, in hopes that the yarn hates me but is not cursed in general. We also had a second bathroom put in. So I was busy. I feel better now.

Aside from all that, I got creative - tried different styles of knitting and different materials and generally got all brave and stuff.

First came a bathmat - I bought three yards of white flannel, tore it into roughly 1/2" strips, tied it together, and knitted it on big fat needles. And ended up with this:




Then, with great sneakiness and subterfuge, I got my friend Lisa to send me a photo of her dog, and then used this program to create a knitting chart. It's not perfect, but it gets the idea across, and just in time... Lisa is due with her second baby very soon! I lined the back with off-white flannel, all washable... and put buttons for the eyes, and went properly paranoid to attach those suckers babyproofly firm.



Next came Willem's scarf, inspired by the Skinny Scarf on Knitty Gritty (a show I love with a name I hate) a few weeks ago. I used bulkier wool... he asked for black and purple, he got black and purple. It's knit-slipped on the front and slipped-purled on the back, creating a sort of knit/woven effect. I like it, and plan on stealing it soon.




And, last for today... it's not knitting, but it's still all crafty and crunchy (literally, I suppose, though I didn't check) so I'm posting it anyway... the kids made their Valentine's cards over the weekend. I've always used Valentine's cards and Halloween costumes as my benchmark - if I'm too busy to help make them at home, then I'm too busy, period.

So, here's a photo of Emily's cards (Jacob's are similar, but have his last name and I don't feel like Photoshopping) and the heart-stamps - yes, those are potatoes! (With my $35 Kitchenaid mixer in the background... I love that, too.) Martha Stewart's got nothing on me.

December 2006 - The Snowflake Sweater

Emily specifically asked for a snowflake sweater, so I broke out the old raglan pattern again BUT got fancy with Fair Isle technique - holding two strands of yarn but only knitting with one at a time, to create color patterns. Looking at pictures now, I want to narrow the shoulders down quite a bit... but I'll leave that one alone and start practicing more fitted sleeves in the future. Honest.

November 2006 - Back to the Raglan, and Another Blanket

Seriously, it was a problem, I think. Now that I see them all lined up, one after another... ah, well. They came out cute, anyway.


And a close-up of the snowflake pattern.


My friend Jennifer chose the month before Christmas to have a second baby, which cramped my knitting ability... but I managed to squeeze out a little wool blanket, anyway...

September 2006 - Two New Sweater Pattern! Hooray!

Audrey got a new baby sister, AND I finally broke out of my raglan-rut, and tried the Accordian pattern, from Knitty. I love that website. Deeply.


Ava ended up with another Knitty pattern, Anouk. Though, I must admit, while I understand it makes more sense to make baby clothes out of acrylic, it haunts me. It came out nice and soft, and is fully washable... but by this point I was realizing that yarn comes from more places than Walmart. Not a regret, exactly, just a realization that I should try working with some, you know, natural fibers sometime, too...

August 2006 - Toddler Projects

In August 2006, I met three dear friends in Niagara Falls for a weekend. All of us initially met via a message board based on similar sex lives in 2003... we all have children born in July 2004. They were all accosted with new projects from me; it's just a dangerous thing to spend time around a knitting enthusiast, especially if you have cute children with bodies. That can wear things. Knitted things.

Alena's poncho is from the same basic pattern as below.


Charlotte in another raglan sweater - this time with cables thrown in to change it up a bit.



Daniel got a hooded sweatshirt-style sweater, another Lion Brand pattern. (I'm not linking to the Lion Brand patterns here because you need to register for the site to see them anyway. It's free, but still.)

July 2006 - Mary's Sweater

You may notice a theme, coming up here... more variations on the same raglan-style sweater as Jacob's. I consider it a stick-with-what-you-know theme, which I'm starting to break out of.

June 2006 - Poncho

I actually made a pair of ponchos, but forgot to take a picture of the other one. It's probably in pristine condition still in a bag somewhere, if not discarded, because I didn't think it through... I wanted to send a thank-you gift to a friend in Panama, recognized that it was hot there almost all the time, and thought maybe a poncho in light material would be helpful, just something to throw on when it dips below 70. The first attempt came out FAR too big, so I made two and sent both, thinking mother-and-daughter. It didn't go over so well... ah, well.

This is Emily, modeling a 2T poncho based on this pattern.

April 2006 - Jacob's Sweater

Apologies for the poor photo quality... my camera went on hiatus for a while, and I was reduced to disposible cameras. Then I got a digital video recorder, with the capacity to take still photos if your subject was well-lit and willing to sit still for at least 5 seconds.

Toddlers aren't known for the sitting-still thing.

Anyway, straight out of a Lion Brand Homespun wrapper, right down to the colors - my first effort at following a pattern. I've since made a bunch of these for various toddlers in my life...

March 2006 - The Blanket

People have varying reactions to The Blanket, but they typically fall into one of two camps: they are either delighted by the kitschiness and gawdiness of it all, or they are appalled. Either reaction is fine by me... it's my new comfort object. Who needs a teddy bear, anyway?

My Knitting Story

Because we all need a story, right?

Mine starts way back in the '80s, when I spent part of each summer with my great-grandmother at "Camp" (our family term for a summer place in the Adirondacks) in upstate New York. I was the only great-grandchild for several years, so I got a lot of Grandma O time to myself. She was about 70 years older than me, and we got along just fine. She taught me to crochet, to make soup out of random ingredients when you think there's nothing for dinner, to build a fire, to enjoy a week or three straight with no television. She told stories, and did crafts, and just seemed to have a pretty good life, and I loved her.

In 2002, when my daughter was two and I hadn't done summers with Grandma O in many years, she had the first of a series of TIAs, mini-strokes that slowly robbed her of her ability to drive, move with confidence, and, eventually, live alone. She moved into a nursing home, and I finally had the horrible realization that she wasn't going to live forever. After spending some time thinking about, "What would I regret not doing?" I realized that the big thing was learning to knit. I'd always loved watching her do it, and just somehow never bothered to learn during my summertime visits, and knew I needed to grab my chance while I could.

So I packed up my daughter, Emily, gathered a bag of toys and a big plastic-lined tablecloth, bought a skein of yarn and some needles, any old size, and I headed to New York. I spread the tablecloth out on the floor of the nursing home, set Emily up with her toys (and, later, just to be safe, I also dipped my baby girl in bleach to get rid of whatever germs she may have picked up), sat down with Grandma O and learned to knit and purl. Just the very basics, nothing complicated. Casted on and bound off a few times, and then set to work on a scarf.

For the next several months, I was still a full-time grad student and mom and wife and other causes for insanity and busyness, and I rarely picked up the knitting. Once a month or less, just to make sure I still remembered how to do it. Like falling off a bicycle, only with fewer skinned knees; it came back easily every time... once I'd learned it in the first place.

It started off as a scarf, and then I just kept going - decided to make it part of a blanket instead, and knitted the whole skein into a seven-foot-long strip. Then I decided my next step was to continue practicing just those simple knit/purl stitches, on the theory that it would be easier to branch out into patterns if I waited until I was very comfortable with the basics. So I bought random yarn, based solely on liking individual colors and textures, without a single thought to how the whole thing might look, and I made rectangles. Many many rectangles.

And when the little voice in my head finally spoke loud enough for me to hear it, I had to agree: "YOU HAVE ENOUGH. STOP MAKING RECTANGLES." So I stitched them all together, and the result was a wonderful-horrible blanket, very snuggly and comfortable and clashing like all get-out.

My first sweater attempt was for my son, and I finished it in April 2006. I've done a handful more child-sized sweaters, a couple of adult ones, and somehow over the past year this has moved from an occasional hobby to a full-grown obsession. I don't leave the house without my knitting. I read about it. I dream about it. I figure, sure, it's an obsession, and any obsession can be dangerous - but this one makes pretty things and won't land me in jail (especially because I don't think I'd be allowed knitting needles in jail. I'd go insane!).

I want to show off, I want to have a running display of my knitting, but it doesn't really fit into either of my other blogs - I have a family photos blog, mostly viewed by grandmas and friends, and a more traditional blog characterized by my ramblings and thoughts and rantings and whatever else. So this one is for yarn, and knitting, and all things related.