Look, a thumb

These are my first fingerless gloves, made from (which turns out to be not so bad) alpaca/silk DK4ply and a pattern from my LYS newsletter, and look, that green waste yarn? Totally a thumb-to-be.

Go me.

Quatro Hat

So I finished the purple quatro hat last weekend. It was pretty un-exciting. Next time I'll probably use smaller needles for my ribbing, it ended up more poofy than I would have liked.

The pompom maker in the bottom of the shot is the most annoying thing I've ever used. It did make a very nice, professional pompom, but it also took me 45 minutes and way more hassle than needed because it is a solid circle with a very small hole that was difficult to get all the yarn through.

It is the first hat I've blocked, which helped with the poofyness at the top from the decreases, and made it even longer for my roommate Megan who apparently wants her hats to keep her chin warm as well as her head.

A Sock!

I made a sock! I made a sock with this pattern from a knitty issue, and a little help from this site when things got confusing. I didn't graph the toe, the pattern called to decrease to 8st and then just pull yarn through. Next time I'm going to try and graph so that the toe doesn't come out quite so pointy. The lovely sock model is Megan's Seahawk Monkey (who was banned from all Seahawks games because he is bad luck), stolen quietly while she was sleeping off a fever. This sock probably would have worked pretty well for a 9month-ish baby and showed off the shape of the sock better but since I didn't have one of those on hand, monkey.

The one side is pretty wonky from where I picked up stitches on the side of the heel flap. I slipped all my stitches knitwise and then when it came time to pick them back up thought maybe i shouldn't have done that.

The other side is better but it has a ridge on the inside where I think I probably picked up one too many rows in.



But it's a sock, and look, it has a heel and everything. I am so proud.

FO - Manos Earflap hat

I finally figured out the mechanics of the now infamous Ear Flap Hat and thanks to the very patient Julie (who answered several of my very silly questions) and my LYS employee, Cassie, (who answered even more) it's finished tonight.

Yarn: Manos Del Uruguay color 114 (Bramble)

Pattern: Julie's Ear flap hat

Let me start by saying I love this yarn. Every time I am in a yarn store, I gravitate toward it. I squish samples, finger skeins, and when I finally brought some home I visited it often in my stash, bemoaning the fact that I didn't know how to make ear flap hats. Since I'm picky, I scoured the internet for a ear flap hat pattern that's ear flaps weren't too triangle-y near the bottom, wasn't too difficult to follow, was free, and for which I would be able to get gauge with my limited needle supply and iron clad yarn choice. I found Julie's ear flap hat and then started trying to teach myself increases using the internet and waste yarn. It was slow going. Snail paced. And frustrating. What sort of slack jawed knitter am I that I can't handle basic increases for a self proclaimed BASIC hat?!

This morning I sat and tried to get my KFB increases to work, again. I kept getting the same results - left side super, right side wonky. I tried the M1R and L that Julie suggested but I wasn't sure it looked the way it was supposed to. I was ready to break all my DPN's when I finally threw the whole thing into my knitting bag, put my shoes on, and headed for my LYS.

Enter Cassie, the nicest, friendliest, most rad yarn store employee ever. She tried her best to figure out my wonky KFB and when she couldn't, she offered to make a nice yarn cake out of my waste yarn, and even look at my M1R + L. She gave me the go ahead for those and then we chatted for a little while about spinning, what sort of spindle she thought I should use, and the wonderfulness of Manos. Things got pretty busy so I left her to her yarn type work and headed back home, ear flaps on my mind.

Since Cassie had been so helpful, and I had all of Julies advice to fall back on, things went fairly quickly and by 10 or so tonight after working on and off today I was ready to start decreases. I somehow ended up with 73 stitches instead of the 70 called for in the pattern even though I had K2tog the 4 times I was supposed to - to snug up the ear flaps. As usual, I noticed this way too late and instead of frogging, I just evenly spaced three decreases in the round before I started formal ones. It worked out.

(That's my roommate,Megan. She's such a good sport. She might also be bribed with hand knits, or threatened with pointy objects. Or both.)

I finished at about 11:45 tonight after weaving in ends (badly, I must say, I have to figure out a way to make my finishing look more neat) and adding braids. After trying the thing on myself I noticed that one of the ear flaps looks a smidgen longer than the other. I measured a few different times, with a ruler, and matching up the flaps side by side so I'm not sure how this happened. I think I'm going to compensate by shortening one of the braids which on second thought looks too long in it's own right.

I feel so much better having proved that I can make a simple ear flap hat. Even if did take two people, knittinghelp.com, and is still a tiny bit wrong, I love this hat.

xo,
Emily

I started the purple quatro hat the other day.

The first few hats I did were exciting, new, and lookit, I made something that wasn't rectangular! Now, I'm just bored. I wanted to start a cabled hat but I didn't have a pattern and I couldn't figure out how to space them properly. Damn you, knitting math!

You might notice in that picture that the working yarn isn't actually attached to the ball. I have myself a yarn snipper. Who needs scissors when you have a yarn snipping kitty of your very own? Anyone who doesn't want to have a single color hat with 47 felted joins, that's who. I enter these photos into evidence.

Yarn Snipping in Progress

Post Snipping Stretch

The Good Kitty who Doesn't Eat Yarn

Because of the purple hat boredom I tried to start a ear-flap hat (Thanks Julie!) but I can't seem to get the ear flaps to work without having holes all down one side. The pattern is: (row 1) K1, P to end of row, K1 (row 2) K1, KFB, k to last 2, KFB, K1. It shouldn't really be that hard. The left side is all nice and stockinette-y little v's all slant ways. The right is a mess of holes. I would love to put a crisp, clear, close up picture here to show what I am talking about, but my Photosmart E317 (which is just camera-ease for DOESN'T FOCUS) isn't cooperating, so this is what you get:

What am I doing wrong?!

It always ends up this way - I knit and frog and knit and frog and knit and frog and then realize whatever small mistake I'm making and then it's easy. I think maybe it's because I'm a left handed English knitter and I have to flip all the directional instructions presented in most patterns. Maybe I'm just a slow learner and it takes a few dozen tries before I realize I've been wrapping counter clockwise instead of clockwise.

Once I've figure out what I'm doing wrong with each of the hats I want to try fingerless gloves, socks, and eventually a baby sweater and then who knows, maybe I'll get all crazy and make myself a sweater, you don't know.

xo,
Emily

DOOM!

So the Misti DK 4ply is on my shit list. While it is still super soft, snugly, and generally begs to be rolled around in naked - it is a bitch to knit on bamboo circs. Maybe it's the circs I'm angry at really, I'm not sure, but I am definately annoyed at one of the two.

I swatched for the J hat of doom (JHOD) and cast on last night and maybe I just cast on too tightly but the first row was a bitch, the stitches were nearly impossible to see what with being so small and black, and I managed to split nearly every stitch. By the second row things were easier but only because the stitches were so loose it looked like I was knitting lace. Half way through the third row, I frogged the whole thing.

So frustrating.

I think maybe I'll save the Misti for some other project, maybe socks on smaller metal needles, and use the other yarn I've been coveting from my LYS - a thicker alpaca blend, also black for the JHOD.

I'm not holding my breath for a response, since I'm pretty sure I'm all alone here, but does anyone happen to know how to explain a cabled cast on to me?

xo,
Emily

Diamond in the Rough

So I thought I would take a picture of my stash, which is humble, holds no sock yarn, and has several skeins of acrylic which I hate so much I might never knit anything out of them at all. I'm also warning you that I don't own that umbrella thingy that makes the nice little yarn cakes so some of my yarn looks unusable. There's a system, trust me.

The four balls on the top right are my favorites. The right most, black yarn cake is DK 4ply Misti Alpaca (80% baby suri alpaca and 20% silk) destined to be a hat for Mister J - hopefully sometime before he has to pack it away for next year. The blue next to it is beautiful, Dive Fiamma (100% wool) - a scant 55 yards that I have no idea what I'm going to do with but it's pretty. Next to that - Cascade Quatro (100% wool) to become a hat to match the basket weave scarf I made my roommate in the same yarn. She's demanding. Last but absolutely not least is my favorite stash yarn to date - 138 yards of Manos del Uruguay in color 114. It's beautiful. I donno what I'm going to make of it yet but I'm leaning towards a ear flap hat for myself.

So there you have it. It's not impressive but it has potential. Diamond in the rough, dontcha know.

What's your favorite yarn to work with?

xo,
Emily