Waiting room knitting

These aren't going to be socks to wear in waiting rooms — they are socks to knit there.

I spend at least an hour a week at a doctor's office (at minimum, allergy shots). Waiting room knitting requires fairly simple projects that meet these criteria:

1. Don't need me to keep track of where I am in a complex pattern
2. Can be interrupted and set down at any point by the nurse calling me
3. Don't take up too much space (elbow room can be at a premium)
4. Are quite washable (you know. Because yuck.)

I recently finished the simple lace scarf that was my go-to, so even though I had 12 (count 'em!) other things on the needles, I started these socks last week. Why two at once? Because when I get to the gusset, I have to think, and so I saved the gusset on the first sock for the weekend and started a fresh sock. Fortunately I have a bunch of size 0 DPNs!

Finally this little bear cub has buttons!

I've been working on this little bear cub cardigan for a year now. I meant it for my husband's cousin, but Toby has now grown too big for this to fit, so I will find another toddler on whom to bestow it. This was fiddly to knit, and I had to talk myself through the colorwork (which I still don't love) and the confusing ears (which turn out to do a great job of standing up by themselves, but I had no idea what I was doing during the knitting and various sewing parts!). And then I had to sew on the pockets. Finally, I had to get the buttons selected, purchased, and sewn on. I can be SO lazy.

I used a half-acrylic, half-wool yarn for this, Filati's Oslo, and I really enjoyed working with it. Has the feel of a soft, high-quality yarn, but the acrylic adds washability and durability which is a must in a child's garment. I liked the nature-oriented color selection too. It's saturated without being garish, and it's a bit different than the usual child's primaries or pastels.

I selected orange buttons for this, and I'm happy with them. They have a small toggle-closure motif, which didn't particularly capture me, but the color is perfect, and they're washable (again, super important in a child's garment).

I have a bag where I put finished objects for which I haven't yet got a recipient selected. I'll put this in there along with the green socks I posted a couple weeks back. Yes, I know I could frog back the socks, stop the pattern earlier and close off the toes, but it wouldn't have the graceful pattern ending it does now, and I'm lazy. I think I could make a new pair of socks just as fast :-)

Finished some secret yarnination!

Happy to finally have these done so that I can show you. These are the Wood Elves Gloves I knit for my friend Nikki (of Everything and the Kitchen Sink podcast fame). They're knit in some lovely Sundara sock yarn in colorway "Cedars" which I adore. The yarn itself is so soft and squishy (washable merino) and the colors are so perfectly woodland.

I enjoyed this knit, but the pattern has a lot of errors. Some are translation errors (I think), but some are just error errors. I need to try to write them all up for my Ravelry notes. If you can work past the errors, the knitting is quite pleasant and the pattern very satisfying. I particularly like the unusual slip-stitch ribbing and the way the motif angles up the back of the hand.

The pattern is for full gloves, but I made half-fingers, as you see. I tried to calculate them so they'd hit just under the first knuckle of a normal length woman's finger (my fingers are quite short) and I think I did all right. Each fingers is a slightly different length for this reason.