Let's study some more naughty UFOs

I've ripped the Airplane Sock, so we're all set there… just need to find something else to knit with that yarn. I'm not all that keen on the yarn, to be honest. Ordered it by mail and it's a bit scratchy. I have a lot of sock yarn so it can go in the back of the bin.

Years back, I ordered yarn for two Mosaic Tees and I thought I'd start with the least pleasing color combo first. Why do I do these things? The problem with this is that the green and lavender were too close in value, so there's insufficient contrast. I either needed to get some white instead of pale green for the background, or get a kickier color in place of the lavender. The yarn I chose (Cascade Cotton Club) isn't made anymore because I waited too long — but a little Googling showed me that Rowan All Seasons Cotton was pretty similar. So I tried ordering a kind of coral pink in place of the lavendar — loud, but something exciting was needed.

I can't quite decide if this is the right amount of exciting, or whether the contrast between the green and warmish pink is too great. Will have a think (and finish swatching).

Rob's socks really make me sad. I made the first sock, it fit like a dream, I knit the leg of the second one. And then I lost my notes. And I was making changes to the pattern, so the notes were kind of important, at least in a world where you want two vaguely identical socks. I tried a couple of times to figure it out, but failed (to the point of having to rip a messed-up gusset back), even though I'm half-decent at reading my own knitting. I need to spend some more time poring over the two socks until I can understand what needs to be done to line this pattern up properly and knit a decent gusset.

And these Jaywalkers... pretty pretty Jaywalkers... I can't tell whether I've messed up the pattern or what, but the stitch count is off. I should just rip them back and start over at this point. But I might need a stiff drink first.

Of course, staring at all these messed up socks made me have to cast on socks again. Embossed Leaves pattern this time....

Best FO of 2014. Seriously.

No matter how many other things I knit this year, these (Morehouse Design) hedgehog mitts I finished for my dear friend Kathryn cannot be topped. They took me two months to finish (wasn't working on them non-stop) and they were very annoying to knit, so do not ask me to knit you a pair because I shan't.

Seriously, though. I squee just looking at them. This Morehouse Designs original is available as a kit, as I bought it, and I recommend it even though it is a total pain in the rump to knit.

So yeah. Best FO of 2014, except maybe for this baby one that I made for a friend's daughter...

Good patterns ennoble bad yarn

It doesn't always work, but it did this time.

 I had a skein of very strange yarn (apologies if it was a gift from anyone reading this!). It was laceweight, grey, clearly wool, with tweedy flecks of gold, warm pinky-red, white, and warm green. I felt I should use it for something but I just didn't love it — I do like grey, but my taste runs to cooler-toned colors. And I thought tweed was a bit odd in lace.

Then I saw Anne Kuo Lukito's Weekend Shawl pattern, and thought, why not? It looked like a pretty simple pattern which wouldn't overwhelm the tweedy yarn — and I could always use a little wrap. I had no idea how much yarn I had, so I chose the Medium Lace size. As it turned out, I could have knit the large size and still had yarn left over, but who knew?

I discovered towards the end of the Saturday Lace section that I had tons of yarn, so I knit a few extra repeats of each of the lace patterns. I bound off last night, basically when I got tired. I still have a lot of yarn left, but I wasn't going to rip back and knit more stockinette, so it's done :-) And very warm and cozy indeed.

Shall we glance at some FOs?

I really do finish things sometimes. Here are a few of my recent finished objects. This next photo looks like a pair of underpants at first but look closer…

I knit this beauty for my friend Pat when she passed the bar last year. It's the Forget-Me-Not Shawl by Shui Kuen Kozinski and I found it pleasingly geometric, yet super classy. I knit it in elann's Peruvian Baby Silk, which I can heartily recommend — it's a light fingering weight alpaca/silk blend, and knits into something light as air and surprisingly warm. The perfect summer evening shawl. So pleased.

Also really happy with this afghan I knit for my cousin Cindy's wedding to Owen.

It's Lion Brand's Nature in Natural afghan, with a few twists to make it come out neater and prettier, and a little extra yarn to make it longer (Cindy & Owen are very tall!).

It took five months for me to get this done — I thought I'd do it in a month. Oops. I have enough yarn to knit another one for myself, because I really fell in love with the pattern. I think my yarn is light blue though.

Here I seem to be again.

I know no one's reading this. But for some reason, maybe because of endless unresolvable stressors in my head doing an incessant tramp through my brain cells, I'm feeling the urge to blog again.

I've got the habit of having a number of things on my needles at once, but right now it's out of hand. I'm fighting the urge to cast on yet again. Let's review a few of the items on my Ravelry list, shall we?

The Vandyke cardigan was a design I was making based on the pretty Vandyke lace stitch. But making a design takes thinking, dontcha know. Plus a healthy dose of having an idea. So a partial front panel and some notes on index cards it remains.

The Catkin Stole is part of a KnitPicks Estonian lace kit. Which is great, but I don't know why I picked the ugly pink stole to start with, because all I really wanted to knit was the lavender-grey wrap.


The Noro bag is going to be beautiful if I ever get back in the mood to work on it.

Bear Tracks. WHY IS THIS NOT FINISHED?  All it needs is having the ears sewn on!?!?

Honestly. I'm seriously finishing that this weekend. Even though it hasn't got a recipient planned out.

I'm ripping back the Airplane Socks. Or sock. Or really just part of a leg. It was only to entertain me on one airplane trip, and it turns out to be the circumference of my thighs rather than my leg. So.

The @#$(*@*#$(#@!(@#@*!(!! Corgi needs to be sewn together. SEWN. I'm a knitter, people. I hate sewing. So yes, this stupid tiny thing is going to take me years to finish because I hate it with all the hate of hating.

Ysolda's Cotton Reels mitts is a great pattern. I was using it to try to use up some sock scraps and practice my colorwork. Unfortunately, I was going to run out of yarn in the middle of the first mitt, so I stopped. I thought maybe I'd find some friendly similar colors for the next one, but the project just wasn't compelling enough without yarn I was in love with. I probably need to start over with colors that make me happy. Reality: I'm never going to use up my sock scraps.

I'll stop here and give you a chance to digest before I go on with the excitement of my UFOs. I'm determined to either finish or rip the lot of them sometime in 2014. You heard it here first, folks.

What's your knit?

What kind of knitting do you like best?

Over the last six years of knitting, I've learned that I love cables, and I like lace (but not, yet, in laceweight yarn). I like ribbing, too, and eyelets and fagoting.

I don't like colorwork much yet, probably because I'm still fairly lousy at Fairisle, and I hate the twisting involved in intarsia. Mosaic is just 'ok'.

And stripes.

I hate stripes.

Now, this isn't because I hate weaving in ends. I don't. I actually find it comforting and calming, and if I really want to avoid it there are often ways to do that. But when the edge is going to show, you do not want to carry the yarn up, and sometimes even when it won't, that will add bulk in the wrong place. So you have to clip. And I think my hatred of stripes is really a hatred of being tickled, because what I don't like about stripes…

… are all those darned tickly, wiggly, iggly bits of yarn that tickle my arm and knee while I'm knitting.

Really I'm just silly.
 *keeps knitting*

!(*$#(@*$#(@%&#@(@#($@#

I am really not enjoying sewing up this dadburned corgi.

Whew - almost had two posts in a month there!

Missed it by [<- this ->] much... ;-)

Managed to finish up these little fingerless gloves. It's a good basic pattern, though it doesn't have gusseted thumbs, which I prefer. But it's easy and straightforward. I knit double-length cuffs and fingers for warmth, as these are for a friend who has autoimmune problems and a lot of hand pain at times.

This is Phildar Preface, a basic jeans-color sock yarn, for the trim and Mini Mochi for the body of the gloves. I used the same skein for both gloves, as I thought it would be fun to get different parts of the long colorway, and one is much lighter than the other. To me it looks like sunrise and sunset. I love it.

So of course I can't resist having 15 projects going at once, so I cast on for another — I started a baby sweater for Rob's cousin's new son. No photos yet, but the baby blanket I was blocking a few weeks back is now in the arms of its new owners, so here are some photos of that — I am really happy with it even though it took me literally YEARS and lots of frogging:

(Sorry I forgot to rotate that last photo and I'm too lazy to fix it :-) )

Hope you're all having a good summer. It's still hot here!

At rather long last

Well — I haven't posted because I haven't accomplished much. Near-constant house guests and social activities don't combine well with projects that have all reached the "need to do math" phase. I have about 16 projects going, and they were all at that stage. That's what happens when you start a new project every time you hit that point. It's possible I have too much social life.

One option when you need an easy project that won't add to your 16 is to knit a washcloth. Or Tunisian honeycomb stitch one, as I did in this case. I've been using these washcloths for years to wash my face, they have just a little bit of nice friction without being too scrubby. I normally knit them from dishcloth cotton, which gets boardy and smelly over the years (I think it dries too slowly, so mildew occurs). Now I'm trying a cotton-nylon blend which I'm liking quite a bit.

On the plus side, I had a little bit of down time and I finally did the math to sew the border on this puppy!

It's a baby blanket, originally intended for a child born four years ago, now intended for one that was born in May. I need to sew in the ends and block it, but chances are good it'll be done and actually shipped to the recipient in the next two weeks. WHEW. A pretty, pretty pattern but a pain in the neck for me — I had to reknit the first third of it several times. Though, oddly, the border went like clockwork.

This was another project that needed ripping back:

Fingerless gloves for my friend Josie. She has narrow fingers, so I started knitting it with two sizes down of needle instead of the usual one. But it was awful going. The yarn was splitting, the fabric was uneven, I couldn't keep my tension right. I finally gave up, ripped and reknit in the larger needle. I didn't change the pattern. She has big palms, just slim fingers, so I'm hoping that by knitting the wrist and fingers in the two-size-down needle it'll come out all right. One glove finally done except the thumb!

How are you all? Is anyone still out there?

Happy summer!

Slow but steady

There's not much point in posting another photo of the lace edging for the baby blanket, but it's going pretty well. I need a total of 4 corners and 72 lace repeats; I've completed 1 corner and 29 repeats. It's going to take a while and I'm sure the baby will be born before it's done, but it's not impossible!

I did block the hoodies, and I have even bought buttons for them! Maybe I'll finish sewing buttons on one of them today. In the meantime, here is a teaser photo of one of them blocking...

Do those colors pop or what? I'm delighted!

I may or may not have mentioned I've also started some fingerless gloves for my lovely friend Josie. I'm not 100% sure of the color choice now that I've started it, but I'll go on and finish and if I don't like them, I'll make another pair. I'm using 00 needles because she has slender hands, and I couldn't find a small enough pattern.

The blue is the 'trim' and the multi is the body. I'm just not sure. This is a 1x1 rib so it looks a bit odd close up like this. You have to remember how small it really is.

Nice thing about knitting is you can always redo or start over. All it costs is yarn. And heaven knows I have plenty of that...