Category Archives: finished

1:44 pm - March 30, 2013 - AngelaH

Seafoam socks

Et, voila! After four months on the needles, my Seafoam socks are finished.

The colours are a little washed out here (sorry), but the yarn is shades of blue, green, and purple. I really like how, although it’s random, the colours managed to stripe without pooling.

Really, these are just boring 3×1 ribbed socks and there is no good excuse for them having taken so long, but there are a few reasons I would like to put forward:
1. I started these right after finishing my Spruce Jaywalkers and, honestly, I just wanted them to be Jaywalkers too. Why then, didn’t I cast on for Jaywalkers? I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to knit the same pair of socks twice in a row or something, which is dumb, since I spent the entire first sock (knit the first week in November) wishing I was knitting something else.
2. Christmas came along and since I wasn’t sure I liked these socks anyway, it was very easy to set them aside and knit other things, including, as it turned out, two other pairs of socks for myself, as well as many gifts.
3. I have no great love for ribbing. I don’t find it difficult or anything, just tedious. Ribbed socks are practical and I will wear them a lot, but I don’t know, next time I feel the urge to knit ribbed socks I’ll kick it up a notch and knit Stepping-Stones, which are like ribbing, but more interesting.
4. I wasn’t sure I liked the colour. This seems crazy to me now, because I love this yarn, but at first the colours seemed very, very vibrant, and I was worried the socks might look a little Care Bears Ahoy! when they were finished. I should have had more faith.

For all these reasons (and likely more) these socks sat around unfinished for a while, which is why I decided to bring them on holiday. They’re easy and plain, which makes for good social knitting, and I really did want them finished and on my feet, so it seemed win-win. I hadn’t actually realized how well they’d match the colours of everything around us, though. I had the first sock done and literally nothing but the cast-on for the second sock, but I started it after finishing my mum’s socks and finished in time for a photo shoot on the water the last evening we were there. I wore them on the plane coming home and, silly as it sounds, felt like I was bringing some of the island’s vibrancy home with me.

I do wish I'd not been so lazy with the first pair and knit a 1x1 rib for the cuff, but oh well.

I do wish I’d not been so lazy with the first pair and knit a 1×1 rib for the cuff, but oh well.

Pattern-wise I just improvised these (they’re Ravelled here). They’re knit in Fleece Artist BFL Sock, in the Seafoam colourway. I don’t know why I chose to knit them on 2.75mm needles (I guess I wanted them to be quick – hah!) but the result is socks that are a little less dense than usual and thus, perfect for spring. And, since my gauge was still 8.5 stitches to the inch, they should wear pretty well despite the lighter fabric. I also have about 100 yards left, so I might whip up a pair of bright baby booties with the leftovers.

Finishing two pairs of sock in a week left me on kind of a sock kick, and when I got home I cast on another pair (Hummingbird, from the Knitter’s Book of Socks) and they are flying! (So many unintended puns in there, sorry.) I’m going to be good, though, and buckle down on my Woodstove Season cardigan this weekend. I keep putting it down for smaller projects, but I really want it finished and it’s getting to be the perfect time of year for sweaters to be jackets, which would show it off nicely. So, expect a progress report next week.

Are you knitting anything fun this Easter weekend?

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Eleuthra, socks

8:58 am - March 22, 2013 - AngelaH

Snow on re-entry

Time flies when you’re in the sun. We got back to Toronto last night, and it was snowing. Snowing! When we left Eleuthra yesterday morning it was still cool (we left the house before the sun was up) but it was still probably 17 or 18C, and then we landed in snow. Boo.

Nevertheless, we had a fantastic holiday. I will do a proper post about it in a day or two, but before then I have to go through the many photos and unpack, and deal with all the things that didn’t get dealt with while we were away, and also cuddle Ganymede, who spent the week in an empty apartment (don’t worry, though, a friend of ours visited regularly to check on her).

So, in the absence of real holiday pictures, lets talk socks – apparently I need to start wearing them again.

Finished Stepping-Stones.

I finished the Stepping-Stone Socks last Friday, the day after we arrived. I had the cuff finished before we left, and the leg finished by the time we landed in Nassau and the heel turned by the time we boarded our teeny plane for Eleuthra (it sat 18, including the pilots, and I didn’t knit on it). Even with swimming and walking and reading and eating and drinking, it was a breeze to finish the foot on Friday, and L obliged me with some lovely photos.

This one is less lovely, but he thought a behind-the-scenes shot would be hilarious, so…

Certainly one of the reasons these socks were so quick to knit was because they are knit in worsted weight. Man, what a difference that makes! Besides the heavier yarn, though, these socks have a delightfully fluid and quick stitch pattern that only takes two rows to memorize. Honestly, I will knit these socks again and again, and because it’s a six-stitch repeat, it’s an easy pattern to adjust for size and yarn weight. All that being said, I found the subtle change from leg to instep pattern weirdly hard to adjust to; it just didn’t flow as well for me. The instep is just a little less intuitive (it also involved more counting) and while I like how it looks, I think the next time I make these I’ll continue the leg pattern down the foot and see how it looks.

I knit these socks over two weeks, but actual knitting time was only about four days, so these would make an excellent last-minute gift. My mum requested that the socks be a little taller than the ones I knit for myself, so I knit the legs to 7 inches. She also has slightly longer feet than I do. Those two factors meant I needed just a bit more than 100g to knit these, but you could easily make them from one 100g skein. I now have 82g of red yarn leftover, but I might just whip that up into another Puerperium Cardigan (our friends had a baby girl last night!), so I’m not annoyed in the least that I needed that little bit of extra.

Details
Pattern: Stepping-Stones by Clara Parkes (from The Knitter’s Books of Socks, but also available for free on Ravelry!)
Yarn: Malabrigo Rios in Ravelry Red
Needles: 3.5mm
Modifications: First of all, I changed the needle size. I thought the large size would be too big for my mum, so I just adjusted the small. They knit up perfectly to fit a size-10 foot (9-ish inches in circumference). I also changed the heel. Since I went up a needle size I was worried that the one in the pattern would be too thick/bulky for a comfortable fit, so I just went with my normal slip-stitch heel (also saving me extra ends to weave in). Other than that, I knit it exactly as written. (My socks are Ravelled here, if you’re curious.)

I also finished another pair of socks while away, but I’ll save them for another post.

Categories: finished, Knitting, Out and about Tags: Bahamas, Eleuthra, Malabrigo, socks

10:02 am - March 11, 2013 - AngelaH

A hat too late

This weekend, it was spring. I don’t know if it’s going to stick around (being from Nova Scotia, I’m programed to expect a big storm in March), but for now, it feels great. I spent a good chunk of Saturday just walking around the city and enjoying being perfectly dressed for the first time in months. It was gorgeous.

Finished just in time to not need it! This is how people who don’t wear hats plan hat knitting I guess.

It stands to reason, then, that I would finish my winter hat just a week before this warm weather rolled into town. I haven’t blogged about the hat because, even though a month passed between when I cast on and when I cast off, I really never felt like I was knitting it. I am not, generally speaking, a hat person. I am that idiot on a cold day who’s turtled deep into a scarf and bareheaded. I don’t know why, but hats never occur to me. This was a cold winter, though, and when February rolled around and it became clear it wasn’t going to warm up, I decided to cast on. (I do, I should say, have a hat, a nice hat even, but I’ve never knit one for myself and I decided it was time.)

I guess there was too much halo for the cables. I still think this yarn will make a toasty hat.

I chose Scrollwork, by Irina Dmitrieva (from Brooklyn Tweed’s Wool People 4) and, very responsibly, paired it with some stash yarn. I got to the first bit of cabling and realized I’d made a bad choice. The yarn I was working with (this yarn, a wool/alpaca blend that would have made for a soft and lovely hat) was just not going to show off those cables to their advantage. And after the work I was about to put in, that would suck. So, I ripped back and started over with some of the Shelter I bought in New York.

Let me preface this by saying I didn’t swatch. This may be the first hat I’ve knit for myself, but it isn’t the first hat I’ve ever knit, and I know that 112 stitches on a 4.5mm needle will fit my head just fine. So I cast on and went with it. This is a demanding hat. The cables twist and turn and don’t think about trying to watch anything while knitting them because, well, you’ll be hitting pause a lot. I loved the knitting. For the few hours at a time that I spent with the hat, I enjoyed every stitch (well, almost every stitch – I also worry my post-cable purls are too loose) and there’s nothing like working complex cables to make you feel smart.

Right around here I started to wonder if maybe it wasn’t looking a little short.

What will quickly make you feel less smart, however, is after finishing your fancy hat and realizing it’s small. In the photos, there is quite a generous slouch, which is partly why I wasn’t worried about fit. I ought to have been. I don’t know if my hat just didn’t grow as much, or if my cables were tighter or what, but not only does my hat not have that slouch, but it is almost too small. I can wear it, but it doesn’t quite cover my earlobes, and a cold day, that’s dumb.

This is a very good representation of the colour. Photo taken before it was spring.

On the upside, I enjoyed knitting it so much I might just knit another one! I am also probably going to have a go at the cowl too, since that would both be fun and give me a winter set. But maybe next year, since it’s spring now.

Details
Pattern: Scrollwork, by Irina Dmitrieva
Yarn: Brooklyn Tweed Shelter in Plume
Needles: 3.75mm for the ribbing, 4.5mm for the rest
Modifications: I knit this exactly as written, except I switched to the larger needle in my last row of ribbing, which made the increase row a little easier to work. Also, of course, I started twice.

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Brooklyn Tweed, cables, hat

10:10 am - March 4, 2013 - AngelaH

Opposite socks

These socks knit up so fast that I didn’t even have time to blog about them. I bought the yarn a couple of weeks ago after reshelving skein upon skein of this yarn in the shop. I thought I could resist – goodness knows, I didn’t need more yarn – but after squishing so many skeins, and seeing all the colours, my resolve wore down. I actually thought the yarn was just going to be a variegated blue/green/grey, but after winding it an seeing the colours line up neatly into concentric circles, I got too excited about the striping possibilities not to cast on pretty much right away.

Zitron Unisono sport weight in colourway 1220. Weirdly, those parts that photographed as purple were definitely not purple when knit up. It’s kind of a shame, really.

Well, it sure striped. The funny thing is, they striped in almost exactly the opposite order. I spent most of the first sock wondering when the heck I was going to get to the fun bright colours, which mostly ended up on the foot, and then the second sock started out fun and got progressively darker. But! The very end of the skein was bright colours again, so even if I had knit the first sock from the inside of the skein out, and the second from the outside in, they still wouldn’t have matched!

L was away this weekend, so these will have to do. You can kind of see the opposite-ness, though.

I think it’s okay, though, since they’re clearly a pair. Part of that comes from the surprise toes, which I realized I was going to need when I weighed the ball part-way through the first foot and saw I was dangerously close to half my yardage already. By that point, I was already entirely smitten with this yarn, so I had (against my better judgement) purchased two more solid skeins for another pair of (more regularly) striped socks. I knit the first sock until I had about 53 grams of the yarn left, and then switched to the dark grey. I wrote down the measurement of the foot at that point and then copied it for the second sock (even though, at that point, I had just enough yarn to finish the whole sock). There’s something about matching toes that makes these look more like a pair, I think. (Details about what I did, etc. are ravelled here.)

The pair took less than two weeks to knit, and I swear they pretty much knit themselves. The yarn, Zitron Unisono, is 100% merino and infused with aloe and jojoba and feels amazing on your hands. It is so tightly twisted that it’s downright sproingy, and it knits up into a firm but soft fabric that is warm and stretchy. For speedy socks, this might be my new go-to yarn (as long as I have some extra for the toes) and although I have to be good and knit some other things beforehand, I am pretty excited to cast on my next pair.

With these socks finished, as well as a hat done and blocking, my weekend was pretty productive. How was yours? Any signs of spring where you are? (It remains cold here, so I could use some vicarious spring if you’ve got it.)

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: socks, unisono

9:07 am - February 27, 2013 - AngelaH

Cute because it’s tiny?

There is something about baby-sized knits that gets me cooing and sighing and smiling before they’re even finished, which is really saying something because they’re so darn quick to knit up! (That being said, they also manage to take longer than I think they will, so what does that say?)

Ta da! this photo really doesn’t represent how little this sweater is.

I finished the Puerperium Cardigan yesterday morning, buttons and all, and I am very pleased indeed. It seems like all our friends are having babies right now (this will be the fourth in six months) and that has given me an excuse to knit up lots of adorable little garments. This little sweater, though, might be my favourite (which is saying something because, remember the pumpkin hat?)

Anyway, this cardigan is a super, super quick knit. Even if you zone out the first time you start and forget to knit the button bands in garter stitch and have to re-start. Ahem. As it turns out, I could have just kept going with that sweater and then knit an whole new one with garter stich button bands and decided which one I liked better because, and I can hardly believe this, the finished sweater only required 81 yards. That’s less than a third of the skein. That’s crazy, is what it is. Babies are so little!

I have buttoned and unbuttoned this cardigan several times, and the star points are not as annoying as I feared.

You may recall that I was worried about the way the colours were turning out and, while I still worry it’s a little baby-camo (not a look I would normally go for), I kind of love the colours. I was going to take Holly‘s suggestion in the comments and buy two sets of buttons – one girly, one more boyish – and then wait until the baby came along to sew them on and send this off, but when I saw the star buttons I decided they were whimsical and unisex enough to counteract the camo. The stars are also perfect, since the dad-to-be and L were housemates during undergrad and L studies aerospace engineering (with emphasis on space), and thus the stars sort of represent L making this a gift that is clearly from the both of us. I know that seems like a roundabout justification for star buttons, but trust me, they’ll get it.

Can I also just say that I loved knitting with this yarn? Oh my goodness it is soft. It’s 100% superwash merino, so I knew it would be nice, but holy. It makes other soft yarns seem coarse in comparison, and even for babies I wouldn’t hesitate to say it’s good for next-to-skin wear. It also bloomed every so slightly when I blocked it, and I know it will get lots of use. (I am seriously considering stocking up on this yarn, since more babies seem inevitable.)

I think it’s the black-ish bits that make me think camo. Otherwise, it’s all soft and shifting teals and purples, which I love.

Details
Pattern: Puerperium Cardigan by Kelly Brooker
Yarn: Indigodragonfly DK Superwash in Fringe Over Troubled Water
Needles: 4mm
Modifications: To be honest, I basically knit this pattern as written. I did one extra garter ridge on the bottom, and I shortened the sleeves (details Ravelled here), but otherwise, this is a tidy little pattern and I didn’t change a thing. The reason I shortened the sleeves is because this is a March baby, and while March can be cold, it’s also a tricky month, and I thought shorter sleeves would be more versatile for layering (also, if it’s a girl, little pink or yellow or whatever coloured shirts and poke out) and will maybe keep this fitting for a little longer. I also suspect it’ll be easier to thread tiny sausage arms through short sleeves, but that’s just me.

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: baby, gift knitting, Indigodragonfly

2:49 pm - February 18, 2013 - AngelaH

New sock day!

One of the reasons being a knitter is so awesome is because it offers the opportunity for fairly frequent joy. Oh yes, there’s usually an equal measure of frustration, but it’s those little joys that stand out. Today, that joy is putting on the brand new socks I finished yesterday. (Also, that joy is getting to cast on for another pair, which I obviously did, but that’s for another post.)

These are pretty simple socks, and I will knit them again because they’re just a little bit more interesting to knit than plain stockinette without really requiring much more focus. I knit these in the car, on the subway, and during many episodes of The Wire. Basically, they were just what I wanted them to be, and even though I was starting to dream of other socks by the end there, this pretty flickering green kept my attention from wandering too much. And, speaking of the colour, this is a great one for winter knitting. It has been pretty wintry in Toronto in the past few weeks, and getting to look at this bright colour on a regular basis was very nice indeed.

Details
Pattern: Hermione’s Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder (it’s a free one)
Yarn: Tosh Sock in Jade
Needles: 2.25mm
Modifications: Very few (and detailed here). I opted to do my normal slip-stitch heel instead of the garter-stitch edged one in the pattern. I also opted to do twisted ribbing at the top, which looks nice and is very elastic, but also annoyingly time consuming (I swear the ribbing took me almost as long as the entire leg.)

Now, I know the responsible thing to do would be to go finish the second sock from this pair, and I really was going to do that, but then this other yarn caught my eye and before I knew what was happening I was finished the ribbing and into the leg on new socks. I couldn’t help it. I mean, look at this yarn! Sigh.

Zitron Unisono sport weight in colourway 1220. This yarn is so springy and soft it is not to be believed. Also, it has aloe and jojoba in it. And it’s going to stripe. How was I supposed to resist that?

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Madeline Tosh, socks, unisono

2:13 pm - February 5, 2013 - AngelaH

Effing magestic

The moose gloves are done. They’ve actually been done for a week, but we had to wait until the weekend for a proper photo shoot, but L wore them for the first time two weeks after his birthday and proclaimed them quite warm, but not wind proof. He is quite pleased with the moose.

I still can’t believe how much they look like moose.

These gloves were basically a year in the making – it was around this time last year that L first saw the pattern and I first said I would knit them for him if he bought me the book, which he did – and in a way they cap off a lot of what I’ve learned about knitting stranded colourwork, including a decent understanding of yarn dominance (that is, that the colour stranded along the bottom will pop the most), tension, and pattern modification. Although, that being said, of all the patterns I’ve knit out of this book so far, this is the one I altered the least.

This is my first proper finished project of 2013, and I think my year is off to an auspicious start. There’s something nice about knowing my first project was a gift, and that it involved trying something new (I’d never knit fingers before). It makes me quite excited to see where the rest of the year takes me.

Details
Pattern: The Moose at Sundown by Annemor Sundbo
Yarn: Harrisville Designs Shetland in Red and Charcoal
Needles: 2.75mm for the cuff and 3.25mm for everything else (I used a magic loop)
Modifications: Not too many, really. I knit these in a wooly fingering weight yarn instead of the sport weight the pattern called for, and also went up several needle sizes to achieve the right size (although, I probably could have gotten away with a 3mm needle for the hands, but oh well). The Harrisville Shetland was lovely to work with and I am seriously considering ordering a whole bunch more – it’s wooly and sticky, making it perfect for stranded colourwork with longish floats, but when washed it softens up and blooms, becoming more like a sport weight. I loved it.
Design-wise, I added seven rows of length to the hand (on the back of the hand: an additional plain row, three rows of alternating red/grey, like in the cuff chart, and then an additional three plain rows; on the palm I just continued in pattern). I also doubled the length of the ribbing and added an extra plain row between the cuff and the hand charts.
All the details are Ravelled here.

*If you’re wondering about the title for this post, it’s from this comic (not a moose, but it was still L’s reaction).

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: fair isle, gloves, moose gloves

1:22 pm - January 1, 2013 - AngelaH

The year in knitting

I’m just popping in quickly because L and I are hosting a New Year’s dinner party tonight and I’ve been instructed to take a break. So far our main course is chilling in the fridge, the soup is half-finished (the other half all has to happen mere moments before serving) and the cake is in the oven. I am no feeling so confident that I’m blogging instead of getting dressed (I have showered, though).

Anyway, it’s Dec. 31 and that means it’s time for some sort of end-of-year list. I’m not going to rehash everything, but here’s how 2012 played out for me knitting-wise:

My Colour Affection is probably my most commented-on knit. I am seriously contemplating knitting another one (maybe in laceweight) because it gets so much mileage.

Hats: 5 (two were for babies)
Pairs of socks: 9 (that is way more socks than I realized)
Pairs of Mittens: 7 (three were fingerless)
Shawls/scarves: 4
Baby Sweaters: 2
Tea cozies: 2

That makes 27 finished projects, assuming I’m not forgetting something – I wasn’t so good at Ravelry this time last year. In fact, this time last year I was just finishing my second pair of socks and had never attempted a cable or lace or fair isle, which makes 2012 a pretty huge learning year for me. This was the year that I went from muddling through little projects on my own to throwing myself at new things with confident abandon. I taught myself cables, lace, and fair isle, then started actually teaching knitting, and amassed a rather unwieldy stash. I am also a much quicker knitter now, which isn’t something I realized was happening, but considering I went from needing a month to knit a pair of socks to knitting my Cranberry Biscotti socks in a week, I’d say I picked up speed.

These were my first cables, and considering I designed the socks myself, I'd say they worked out pretty well. They are probably my most-worn pair, and I love everything about them.

These took me a month to knit and were my first cables. Considering I designed the socks myself, I’d say they worked out pretty well. They are probably my most-worn pair, and I love everything about them.

(So, people started arriving and I had to go get dressed and whatnot and didn’t manage to finish on time. Rather than rewriting the top, I’m just going to keep going… Happy New Year!)

I didn’t manage to finish everything I started last year, but I’m not doing too badly. The Seafoam socks are half finished, and I’ll wrap those up pretty soon. My Lonely Tree Shawl is also pretty close to finished, and I still like both the pattern and the yarn, and am starting to feel a lace itch coming on, so I suspect that won’t take long to finish either. I ripped out my Woodstove Cardigan (as you know) and then got distracted by Christmas and didn’t get back to it until Saturday. It’s moving along now, though, and I’m guessing it’ll be finished sometime in February (there are a few knits due to various people in the meantime that will take priority). My albatross, though, is Buckwheat. It only needs a sleeve and a half, but it’s been languishing because all the plain stockinette made me want to poke my eyes out. I do want it finished, though, so I’m going to buckle down in the next few months and get it done.

My last finished project of 2012 was my Cranberry Biscotti Socks, and since they didn’t get a post of their own, I’m going to add those details here. I read through some other pattern notes before starting and people mentioned that the stitch pattern wasn’t very stretchy, so I decided to go with a 2.5 mm needle and not change the stitch count. Honestly, I could easily have both decreased the stitch count and gone down a needle size, but oh well, they fit and they’re comfortable and warm, so I’m not really complaining.

Matchy matchy, and I like it that way.

Details
Pattern: Cranberry Biscotti by Elizabeth Sullivan
Yarn: Koigu KPM in #1180 (red), #2403 (grey), and #1305 (brown)
Needle: 2.5 mm dpns
Modifications: No major ones. I misread the pattern at the top of my first sock (only one wide band of grey) and then repeated that on the second sock so they would match. I also changed my last pattern repeat slightly so I wouldn’t end up with the last four inches of the sock all in red, and then repeated that on the second sock so they match. In a way, this pattern is kind of like knitting with a self-patterning yarn, except you do all the work. It was a great knit though, and because it takes relatively small amount of each colour (the secondary colours used about 30 grams each and the main colour used only about 70 grams) it’s a good pattern for using fingering weight yarn that might be leftover after a shawl or something. It would have been perfect, for example, for my Colour Affection leftovers.

I kind of wish I’d gone with white instead of grey (I waffled on it in the shop), but maybe the grey makes them less Christmasy? Also, I think it’s weird how the slipped stitch texture makes them look like chenille instead of wool. Weird, right?

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Koigu, socks, year in knitting

3:30 pm - December 30, 2012 - AngelaH

What I knit this Christmas

You’ve heard about it all of it, but a parade of finished and gifted knits is excellent closure. Plus, I didn’t really publish any proper shots of the finished pieces in case there were spies, so now you can see everything in its glory.

First up, the Daphne socks (a Cookie A. pattern) I knit for Jenny using Indigodragonfly Merino Silk 4-ply sock in Don’t You Have an Elsewhere to Be?. They were the first gift I finished and, weirdly, the first to be opened. They fit her very well and she says she can’t wait to go to a party where she can show them off.

I am going to have to knit myself a pair of these very soon I think.

Actually, technically speaking, L’s hat was the first gift to be opened, but that’s because we don’t spend Christmas day together, and instead exchange gifts on our anniversary the week before. I knit him a hat for his birthday in January (I was about to say last year, but that’s not quite true), and it has been well worn to the point of extreme fuzzy-ness. Thus, a new hat was in order. He requested dark grey, I obliged with Misti Alpaca Tonos Worsted, a gorgeous hand painted alpaca/wool blend in Marcasite. (The pattern is Horatio by Kristin Hanley Cardozo and I will almost certainly knit it again – it’s an excellent man hat.)

L has proclaimed this hat “very warm.”

My dad’s hat was something I half-planned for a while and then executed at the last minute. Initially, my plan was to design a fair isle hat in subtle greys, but I didn’t do it and then ran out of time, so things changed. I picked up some SweetGeorgia Superwash Worsted in Slate from the shop and, after a quick browse on Ravelry, settled on the Men’s Mock Aran Men’s Hat by Heather Tucker. It was basic enough to be an everyday hat for my dad, but interesting enough that I didn’t resent it during the knitting.

Next time I knit this, I’m charting it.

After starting a pair of mittens for Connie and then deciding that both pattern and yarn were wrong, I switched to these Lily Mittens by Annemor Sundbo. I ended up using some Louet Gems from my stash (in Willow and Navy) and, honestly, I couldn’t be happier. The Louet was really nice to work with and the finished mittens fit perfectly.

The back of the thumbs are surprise stripes! (The thumbs are also made up because I forgot the chart at home.)

Finally, the tea cozy. What a friggin’ saga. I finished it in good time and then sewed in all the ends and then went to the workroom and sewed a lining before I left. I did think it looked a little big, but my mum’s tea pot is enormous, so I didn’t think much of it. I tried it on the tea pot when I got to my parents’ and wouldn’t you know, it was enormous. Luckily, I had not yet sewn in the lining, so I threw the tea cozy in the washing machine for a little felting action and, when it got about as small as I could make it without risking over-felting, I cut and re-sewed the lining and then sewed it in. Phew. It’s still a little big, but my mum is thrilled anyway because it’s the first tea cozy that’s ever actually covered the entire tea pot.

I don’t know why the colours came out like this in the photo. They’re much more accurate here.

(I think where I went wrong was that, when I took my original measurements, I added in some positive ease when I wrote down the number. When I went to knit the thing, though, I forgot that and added more ease. That’ll teach me to keep better notes.)

I don’t really have pictures of the mittens I gave my grandmother (besides those you’ve already seen) or the foot tubes, because I didn’t have my camera on me when they opened them. The mittens were a perfect fit, and I’ve heard nothing at all about the bed socks, so that’s anyone’s guess. The main thing, though, was that I managed to finish everything on time without going crazy (or becoming a shut-in) in the meantime.

How did your holiday knitting go?

Categories: finished, Knitting Tags: Christmas, gift knitting, hats, mittens, socks, tea cozy

11:24 am - December 19, 2012 - AngelaH

I can see the finish line

Standard Holiday Warning: If you are a member of my family, I love you, but if you read any further do so knowing that you will ruin Christmas.

Tomorrow, I get on a plane and head east to spend the holidays with my family. My original knitting plan was to be done everything today, so that tomorrow I could cast on my holiday socks knowing that everyone else was taken care of. Strictly speaking, that isn’t what’s going to happen, but I’m so close I can feel it.

Often with this blog absences indicate low knitting activity. I’m not working on much, or what I am knitting is boring to photograph repeatedly, so I don’t blog because I don’t want to bore. These last two weeks have been the opposite. There has been no time to blog because I have been knitting like a crazy person. For a while, I actually had an open cut on my left index finger because of the near constant pressure of the needle tip (this makes for painful knitting, and is not recommended).

On Friday, I finished L’s hat (I gave it to him on Sunday and it was very well received). On Saturday I finished the foot tubes. On Sunday I finished the first of my sister’s re-started mittens (minus the thumb, of course, since thumbs are last). I cast on for the second mitten on Sunday and am only 20 rows from finished (and since 15 of those rows are the decreases, that’s a quick 20 rows).

So close!

I don’t know what it says about me that I always like the palm side of fair-isle mittens the best.

I cast on for my dad’s hat on Monday, and am trucking right along (I’m knitting this one, in case you were also looking for a speedy man’s hat). If I didn’t have to work and pack and run last-minute errands today, I would totally be done everything before getting on the plane tomorrow. That’s a lot of ifs, I know, but still, all things considered I’m feeling okay about this. (I also still have to sew the lining into my mum’s tea cozy, but since the lining itself is done, that seems like no big deal. It’s no big deal, right?)

My new plan for tomorrow is to finish the hat and mitten on the plane. I’ll do the thumbs and tea cozy at night, and then I’ll be done! And then what, you ask? Well, as a treat for myself I’m going to knit these Cranberry Biscotti socks. I picked up some Koigu at the shop last week, and it’s all wound and in a project bag and ready to go. I may not quite be casting on on the plane, but it’ll be darn close, and that’s still okay with me.

*I promise proper FO photos after everything has been gifted, and in the meantime apologize for the crappy quality of the photos. It’s hard to get good shots when you’re trying to be both quick and sneaky.

Categories: finished, in progress, Knitting Tags: Christmas, gift knits, hat, mittens