slipstitch

I finished the mitts last night and I am really pleased with them:


My friends like them too, I have requests to make three pairs already!

I was really happy with the way the thumb gussets turned out. I'm excited to make some more and perfect the pattern... it's easy, but I like the thumb opening way better than the traditional easy armwarmer that just leaves a hole in the seam for your thumb.

Poor dear blog. You have been so long neglected that I've shyed away from posting lately out of a sense of guilt and shame. But I'm back now. I should be posting with more frequency.

Why the neglect? I have been super busy with work. A new part of my job at the library since I started getting paid, rather than interning, is managing people! This is not my strong suit and it's taken a lot of energy and time to get accustomed to. The stress, along with camera issues and being in-between projects when this happened, led to a break in knitting. Yes, my sweet knitblog, I know you are thinking... "But knitting soothes you! Why not knit to help with the stress?" I was thinking that too. But everytime I tried to knit, I just got stressed out trying to figure out a new project or design or where I was with an old complicated project.

But this weekend, I actually picked up the needles again and made something new. Well, half of something... I designed a set of simple cabled wristers with a shaped thumb gussest. And my DH fixed the digital camera, so I'll post a picture when I finish up the other one.

Sorry to Tabbytuxedo and Erica and my secret pal for not posting in forever!

This is a very good website for learning new things. I spent some time on the web last night trying to learn how to do paired increases and I couldn't figure out from any of the instructions where I should put my needles... the back bar two down from the last knit stitch on you left needle... yarg!

But knittinghelp.com has streaming videos! Just SHOW me where to stick my needles (yeah, that sounds like a bad pun, I know!) and I can learn it in a second. Deciphering written instructions, though, I might nevre get it right. So this place totally won me over with their videos. It's laid out very well too & they have videos of both continental and English style knitting of each technique!

I started the top-down raglan yesterday and I wanted to incorporate cables into the raglan shaping to match a cable/rib pattern that I wanted to do for the bottom band & cuffs. This is easy as pie if you are knitting each piece individually, but a little tough to conceptualize in the round... I had to rip out and start over, so I decided just to try paired increases. I have used double yarnover increases with two stitches between them before because I really like the way this looks, but for this particular sweater, I'm not going for the lacy look... but heaven's sake! It was difficult to figure out. I don't like k1 f&b or m1 for paired increasing, they look uneven, but I couldn't wrap my mind around the lifting up of the other stitch... it's different than a m1 because it's actually the stitch below and not the ladder in between the stitches... "bar" "ladder" &tc. it gets really confusing without adequate pictures. So yay for knittinghelp.com!

ps: This is the particular video that taught me what I needed to know.

YAY! I got a present from my knitty secret pal today! She is awesome! Super-extra awesome too because she was so patient with me when we discovered that I had given her my old address in the survey instead of the new one (I can be a real ding-a-ling sometimes!) She had to resend my package... and she was still nice!

So anyhow, I got some great things that I love & I am, AGAIN!, so sad not to have a camera because I want to show them. Cool cd's, beautiful beaded necklace & stitchmarkers in the shape of STARS! These are so so so cool! I have never seen stitch markers like these & I love stars too. Very cool :) And also a ton of yarn recycled from a sweater. It's a lovely marled color combination of purples, lavender, indigo that is actually 8 small strands of different solid threads together. It's not really plyed, but it knits up suprisingly easily and looks very pretty. (Yes, I already knit a swatch at my lunchbreak! In fact, I knit a swatch and then cast on to make a top-down raglan cardigan!)

Thank you so much, Amberly!

On a side note about top-down raglans... they are so fun & easy! I just made the variation of uber-natural that I mentioned in my last post and this new sweater will be my 4th top-down raglan... all inspired by glampyre. I first made the 'boob-holder' and then a stripy short-sleeved cardigan inspired by the mini-sweater, then the last project & now this one. I love how there are no seams and it's a nice project to have for spacy times when you're on the go or you just want to watch tv or talk to people and still knit something. It's also so flexible... you just have to get a gauge you're pleased with, figure out how big you want the neck band (easy if you measure an exisiting sweater) and then go! Everything else is adjusted as you knit and you're free to add any pattern/texture/colors that you want. You can even use garter stitch edges and not have to make a button band or collar, if you want... or you can pick up stitches and rib for a traditional button band.
She has a guide to it here, but it involves a steek and grafting the sleeves, which is more trouble than necessary. Once you make any of her top-down patterns like uber-natural, the mini-sweater, or even the OSW, you can also see how to design your own with any yarn/gauge you like... and you can use the magic loop method so you don't even have to seam the sleeves, if you are clever. (This is my next great experiment) They are great! And that is the end of my ode to top-down sweaters.

I'm almost done with the handspun demi-cardi. I have finished all the knitting and seaming... I just have to sew the button holes together and locate some silk ribbon to finish it off. I sorely wish my camera was in order because the sweater is lovely & I'm dying to show someone!

I used the ubernatural pattern from Magknits. It's designed by the amazing Stepahie Japel of Glampyre Knits. I was really doubtful that I could make this pattern work because it called for 800 yd for the medium and I only had about 250 in matching gauge yarns (the two handspuns), but I just cast on and started hashing things out. I wanted to make a cropped sweater but lengthen the sleeve... miraculously it worked!

I made the size small and only knit 12 rows of ribbing at the bottom instead of 20, staying on the size 15 needles rather than switching to 11. I also knit 12 rows of stockinette before doing 12 rows of ribbing for the sleeves, decreasing 2 on the 7th and 11th rows. The body is in sublty variagated blues/purlples/pinks & the ribbing is all in a periwinkle blue.

I was planning to use some buttons that I already had... but none seemed quite right. The only ones I liked were to small or too heavy. So for an alternate closure, I want to weave a fat satin silk ribbon right under the bust where it switches colors/stitch patterns and also around the switch on the sleeves & ties into a bow for decoration. I have to do some ribbon hunting, as you can't just buy 2" silk ribbon at Joann's... but I have some leads. There are few places online that sell what I want by the yard... but the shipping would be more than the cost of the ribbon, so I want to see if I can't find some around here. There is a needlepoint store that sells lots of ribbons & a high-end fabric store that may have some. Plus they do sell Hannah silk ribbon at my LYS. I was a solid satiny ribbon, if I can find it though.

Oh! I just remembered that I have two bone clasps... I may have to experiment with those too.

Arg! I am a project whore!
I was just getting going with the cable sweater from VK and then when I went over to my parents' for Labor Day, they gave be this skein of yarn that my aunt and uncle had bought for me while visiting Vancouver BC. It's super thick handspun, handdyed wool in subtle shades of lavender and periwinkle. It's gorgeous and just calling out to be knit into something... anything! So I was putting away some craft things yesterday, while cleaning my apartment & I keep my stash in these cupboards above my closet. I open the cupboard and guess what falls on my head... a ball of super thick handdspun pale tuquoise/periwinkle/lavender yarn that I traded this spring with Midnight Sky Fibers and it matches perfectly! Now I have about 250 yd of these two combined and some Rowan variagated Big Wool and some heathery sky blue bulky wool/mohair that all desparately want to be made into a little cropped sweater or shrug or something. What to do?

I'm going to try to get a bit further along with the cables before I cheat on them with the super chunky handspuns... but they are awfully tempting. Maybe just a gauge swatch or two?!

Oh and I mentioned that I wanted to donate my baby hats to craftstersunited... but I got really confused with how to do it & then discovered that you have to have manage the selling yourself and just donate the $. They are also really swamped with donations right now. Since my camera is broken right now and I don't already have an etsy.com store, this was looking very complicated. So, as a solution I decided to try to do something more complicated! I e-mailed the student fiber guild here to see if they would like to help me to organize a booth at the street fair that kicks off the beginning of school to sell art and hand-made crafts locally and then donate the $ to the Red Cross or some other organization. (People are a little down on the Red Cross at times, but it seems like the bigger organizations like RC are better able to respond to disasters of this magnitude.)

I'm still waiting to hear from them, but I think it would be awesome. I just got the idea while waling to work this morning and I'm still thinking up ideas on how to make it work.

Another idea would be to contact some of the downtown arts org. folks to see if I could 'rent' (for free) an empty storefront downtown. Often when a store is empty, the owners let the arts folks set up galleries or installation pieces in the windows... so maybe they would let me put up a display of crafts & art for auction somewhere downtown. If I can get this organized, then I could go to the papers in town for publicity. They love arts stuff & philanthropy stuff... so art philathropy is sure to be popular. Hopefully I can actually make a difference!

I've got pictures!

I went over to my parents' house yesterday and used the washer to felt my fairisle bag.


Here's a close up:

This is my first (intentional) felting project ever and I am very pleased. This is the second version of this pattern that I have made. I forgot to take the first one over to snap a picture of, but it's not felted. I made it with vairous shades of green/blue (some noro kureyon) and the burgundy tweed that I used on the second one. It was so fun to watch the bag take shape and I love how it shrunk more on the fairisle band in the middle to create a sort of kicky organic shape. Now I have to figure out how I want to do the handles, felt them if I decide to make knitted handles and add a zipper to keep all my stuff in place. I also kind of want to add some pom-poms like this bag that posted on knitty as inspiration for fall. I love the leather trim & was trying to figure out how I could make a leather strap for it. I had a brown suede purse from target that crapped out a while ago and I held onto it for abouta year before sending it off to goodwill last month when we moved. I wish I had it now to salvage some suede for a strap... but you can't keep everything. So I'll have to come up with another solution.

Also photographed my progress on #14 form fall VK.


Here's an up-close of the cable pattern. You can see how mine all twist in the same direction, rather than opposites. Oh well. :(


And finally... some unfinished business with that shrug that I made last month. It's a Debbie Bliss pattern from summer interweave that I converted from size 5 needles to size 8, so I could knit it with 2 skeins of Noro Silk Garden that my mom gave me for my birthday. It's trimmed with black baby alpaca.





I used up all but about 18" of the silk garden & the shrug fits smaller than the pattern calls for, but it's cute. I've gotten compliments on it each time I've worn it. It goes with everything too!

I'd like to make another version following the pattern for the correct bust size, so I could have a roomier one too. A girl I know that works at my LYS knit it with the really Debbie Bliss yarn in a larger size and I see her wearing it all the time; it looks so comfy and cute. I'll tack in onto my infinitely long to-do list!

I'm going to do this:

Craft Revolution

I have about 30 baby hats that I made last fall to try to sell, but never found a good place to sell them. I had been thinking of posting them on etsy already, but now I can donate them. My heart is breaking because I want to send money but I don't have any until the 30th. This is a good thing to do until then, though.