The Christmas Sewing Round -Up

... and just in time for the End of Year Round-Up!

There hasn't been a lot of sewing this year, probably because my friend had my sewing machine for the entirety of 2008. I didn't mean for that to happen and neither did she but sometimes we just get lazy. I'd planned sewing projects, washed and ironed the fabrics but nothing happened until two days before I flew home for Christmas. First up were gifts for my lab's Secret Santa, which now I think about it was half-sewn half-knitted, but bear with me that it falls into my arbitrary two-post Christmas round-up thing, m-kay?!

My giftee was my lab manager, Jeff, who runs the lab while fixing all that is broken with general good humor, and also ran a marathon in five seconds flat this fall. This left him with an ailing foot that he has been heat treating ever since, hence - rice heat pack! Inside is a sealed cotton pouch filled with arborio rice (because it was all I had not because I thought he could make a risotto when he's done with it), and the outside is recycled wool felt (green on top, red on bottom) edged with vintage trim. I microwaved it for 30s and it got hot so I guess it's a winner :o) The second gift was also for Jeff, but the Jeff who cycles into work everyday with a dodgy foot in snow, in rain, in any post-apocalyptic weather scenario you can imagine. So I made him these:

... bike helmet earmuffs! (Made with less than half a ball of Cascade 220 superwash, no real mods on the pattern.)

Finally, the last sewing project had been a bee in my bonnet for a quite a while and I was finally spurred on to give it a go when my sister told me she had redecorated her living room in black and red. And really, every newly decorated living room needs a couple of log cabin cushions, right? A flurry of cutting and sewing and ironing and I had two of these!

I swear I ironed them but the crinkles just wouldn't come out. Never mind, I think they liked them!

There is one black and one white (because of gross underestimation of how much backing fabric I would actually need, and because this was all made from stash fabric), with a strip of patchwork along the back edge. They aren't bad for my first attempt but I hope they don't love them too hard or they might disintegrate!

The Christmas Knitting Round-Up

So now the big day is over I can finally reveal the other gifts I made. Yes there was more flying off the needles than just a couple of gnomes...

For my sister I made a matching set of gloves and a neckwarmer, matching in the sense that they were made out of the same yarn and followed the same cable-theme rather than that they were matchy-matchy.

Pattern: Chevalier Mitts by tikru (rav)
Yarn: 1 ball (plus a smidge) of Filatura Lanarota Chaco in Purple Tweed (513) on US6/4mm needles.

I modified the pattern slightly to make these flip-top mittens as per my sister's request. On the fourth row after the last thumb gusset decreases on the palm side only: K4 (P2 K2)repeat to last 4st K4 for 4 rows. Next row K4, cast off the ribbed section, K4. On the next row K4, cast on the same # st you just cast off, K4. 4 rows of K4 (P2 K2)repeat K4, then switch back to stockinette. Keep knitting the top of the mitten as per the cable chart while you are doing this, obviously!

Pattern: Celtic Cable Neckwarmer by Lindsay Henricks (rav)
Yarn: Just less than 1 ball of the same purple tweed on US8/5mm.

The red buttons came from Tender Buttons while the little pearl buttons I added on the inside for stability came from the stash.

My sister's verdict? "(Some lady I don't know) from the train is going to be well jealous", and "They're not itchy at all!" A job well done :o)

I'll show some Christmas inspired fabric escapades next time my dog lets me off the couch...

Getting Festive!

Orange Butter Cookies with candied peel.

Chocolate Truffles with cocoa...

... and peppermint.

And of course, Mince Pies!

Sit 'n' Knit Holiday Party (Or the parentheses Hello! post)

Immediately after the Knit.1 party I put my goodie bag to good use and cast on for my Sit 'n' Knit Christmas party exchange gift. Although the yarn was luscious (Hello Tahki Torino, you are fabulous!) the yardage was short, but never fear... Ravelry is here!


Pattern: Waffle Stitch Fingerless Gloves
Yarn: Tahki Yarns Torino, 1 ball in Pink (124)

I think Miukat liked them :o)

The party was a lot of fun (Hello open bar and fried food!), Anne-Marie is amazing. Just look at the cookies she made....


Since a day before the party all knitting has ground to a halt due to some unforseen back issues (Hello tonically contracted trapezoid, could you give me a freakin' break please?) I've rested up for almost a week and chewed on a hell of a lot of Aleve, and now my hands are twitching with pent up energy. I have a couple of quick knits I need to bust out before Sunday for the lab secret santa and then I'll get back to the schlumpy hat mach 2. And maybe then I'll try to design a sock over the Christmas break, and sew something, and bake and, and, and....

Knit.1 Magazine release party

I really don't know how I get on so many mailing list. Perhaps it's because of my past life as an online sweepstaker, perhaps it's because when offered something shiny in return for my email address you know I'm going to take the shiny, or maybe it's because I'm so wonderfully fabulous that people just can't not invite me to things. I'm guessing in this case it was the shiny's fault.

A while ago I got an e-mail invitation to Knit.1's Fall/Winter 2008 release party which took place last night at The Point, NYC. I've never been to one of these things before but it was interesting and fun and well, I got to out-camera everyone which is always nice.

The editors, Faith (l) and Tanis (r) were sweet and approachable, and it was interesting to hear about the thought processes that go into producing the magazine. This is a particularly fun edition since the first story is all about bloggers and as I'm sure most of you in the bloggysphere know, it contains patterns by several knit-bloggers. I might dispute a little the "most influential" part of the story but whatever, it's fun to see some familiar faces in print.

After the informal talk and Q&A session we were let loose to molest the samples...

... and try them on....

... and to talk to the designers (on the left is Kathy Merrick, designer of babette and the crocheted blanket in this issue of Knit.1).

All in all it was a fun way to spend a couple of hours and there was also the perk of cupcakes and a rather nice goodie bag. One of the skeins of yarn inside has already been knitted up into my new gift for Sit n Knit, I think I'm going to hang on to the Schlumpy Hat for a while until I get a chance to knit it again in the new yarn I bought last night :)

When is a cowl not a cowl?

I was casting around ravelry on Monday night looking for a pattern for the Sit n Knit New York gift exchange. I'd had a cowl in my queue for a while and thought I'd give it a whirl, except in my yarn it looked hideous. Never fear, I thought, I'll rip out back to the ribbing sub in another lace stitch and all will be good. And it was... until I realised that what I was knitting was more slouchy beret than neckwarmer. A few minutes of hesitation was followed by some nifty decreasing, and half an hour later I had what I'm affectionately calling my Schlumpy Hat.

I'm thinking of reknitting this and tweaking the numbers a little and maybe, just maybe releasing my first pattern into the wild. Whadduthink? It's not like there aren't a million other Schlumpy hats out there but this one would be mine.

Gn-one gn-last gn-ome

One last tweak...

... and gnome number three is done! I had fun with the styling of this one. As soon as he was all sewed up it dawned on me that he really, really needed a mustache. A couple of quick twists of fluff later...

SANTA!!

Gnoming

I might have made another one....

Gnome!

Pattern: Yuletide Gnome by Alan Dart, from Irresistible Gifts to Knit (Simply Knitting)

Yarn: Filatura Lanarota purple tweed scraps, Rowan Purelife Organic Wool in black tea for the face, some off white yarn that I vaguely remember buying off ebay a gazillion years ago.... and the pièce de résistance, sirdar foxy for the beard.

Verdict? SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! If I hadn't run out of polyfil after this one litte guy I would already have made another. And another. And another....

Deutschland über alles!

Pattern: My own toe-up mish-mash. Cast on 12st then inc into each stitch for 1 row, pull out needle and redistribute stitches over 2 needles (12 on each, really easy to do because the stitches spring apart into two rows). Start knitting in the round. Increase 4st on every other row to make a wedge toe up to 64st total. Knit foot to whatever length.... rip out because whatever length is an inch too far..... Increase for gusset to 50st on N3, do some kind of bastardized version of the Cabletini heel turn and flap. Cut yarn to preserve stripes, knit forever on the leg throwing in some calf increases near the top and finish up with one stripe width's worth of twist 1x1 rib. Easy!
Yarn: Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Nation Color, GERMANY! 2 Skeins. The yarn didn't start at exactly the same place in the stripe sequence so I had to do surgery to make these socks as long as possible and as such ended up with a wee bit left over.

Verdict: Sie sind gut, schön und überraschen! And I totally used babelfish to write that :o)

Christmas knitting... take two.

Last year I made my sister a hat and matching mittens for Christmas. But not just any old hat and mittens. The hat was lined with cotton/silk so as to be soft and itch free:

And the mittens were flip-top with fingertip-less gloves underneath:

Take a good look at those photographs because after wrapping ever so carefully in tissue paper and tying up with hand made pompoms... the whole damn Christmas package got swallowed up by the USPS never to be seen again. My entire family's gifts disappeared. In a way I hope someone stole the box and is making use of these purple hand knits just so that the effort I went through wasn't a complete waste of time. But even if that were true the whole episode still sucks donkey balls, if you know what I mean.

This year I'm going home for Christmas so hopefully (OMG if my baggage goes missing after I've said that I'll spontaneously combust) the replacement hand knits should make their way to their recipient. I'm not sure I should link them here because my sister does read this blog occasionally (although there are pictures floating around the internets if you know where to look, which she totally does and so defeats the object of not posting here....) but here's a ravelry linkydink if you want to see the mittens-take two :) I've altered them to be flip-top which is a really easy modification (knit a few rows in rib cast off one row, cast on the next, knit the same number of rows in rib andthen carry on in the pattern.) So far I'm really happy with how they are turning out and may have to knit myself a pair once I've finished the second one for Gina :)

Deutschland über alles

Most of you probably know by now that I'm British, what with my flagrant use of "u" in colour, my refusal to spell grey with an "a", and the frequent trips home to the UK. Some of you might not know though that my Mom is German and while I consider myself to be British through-and-through, I do have more than a little bit of Germanic pride. My entire life I've supported Germany over England in soccer (more to be contrary than anything else), I love sauerkraut and wurst, and German Christmas cookies are my favourite. So when I saw this sock yarn a good while ago now, I couldn't not have it.

I mean come on, it's perfect! I have two skeins of this Regia Nation Color (sadly spelled without a "u") that are fast fast fast becoming a pair of awesome German flag socks. And when I say fast fast fast I really mean it. I cast on the toe on Saturday afternoon, had the heel turned by Sunday, ripped out and re-knit the heel on Monday and by bedtime last night I pretty much knitted up the whole skein into the first sock. At the moment I've put the sock onto scrap yarn yarn because I'm not sure the stripes are going to line up perfectly on the second, so I'd rather wait to bind off to save myself from having to rip it out later. And yes, the stripes do have to match. That's why the ripping and re-knitting of the toe, and maybe also the cutting of the few yards of red at the end of the heel flap because I couldn't live with having two rows of red sneaking onto the top of the sock.

There will be a picture later of the almost done sock when I download it off of my spiffy new camera. Oh yes, that Canon lens cap you see up there belongs to my lovely new Digital Rebel Xsi 12.2MP SLR. Happy!! :)

Phew!

So I've been a bit MIA. OK I admit it, a lot MIA. But guess what? Today I defended my thesis proposal in front of my Faculty Committee and hey, I passed!! So now that big stress is over (mostly, I still need to have a one on one with my chair before I officially get the tick in the "passed" box), I'm free to do... what exactly?

Since I last posted there was Rhinebeck, a cowl, a NEW PRESIDENT!!, and the start of a new sweater. I'm not sure where to begin but hey this is a knitting blog so I guess I'll start there.

Pattern: Chevron Neckwarmer by Veronik Avery. This is a great pattern andalso a great price ;)
Yarn: The pattern calls for worsted but since I wanted to use up one of my odd balls of yarn I used my one lone leftover ball of Queensland Collection Uraguay DK.

I used a random assortment of buttons from my stash and I kind of like the mismatched effect. Overall I'm very happy with the cowl, now if the weather will get cold enough for me to wear the damn thing!

The Pre-(Post)RhinebeckPost

Let's pretend Rhinebeck hasn't already happened and that magically we have been transported back in time about a week...

Look what I finished just in time to wear to Rhinebeck!

Pattern: Kaino by Norah Gaughan, Volume 1 (Urban Layers) designed for Berroco.
Yarn: Ultra Alpaca in peat mix (6277), just a smidgen over four balls for the 34" size on US7 and US8 needles.

Notes:
Firstly about the pattern. Kaino is described as easy and it most definitely is, the sweater is made using stockinette, ribbing and a few decreases here and there. That said, the instructions for the left front are very confusing if not wrong. I haven't seen anyone else on Ravelry who mentioned it but please correct me, 32 + 47 does not equal 80. In the end I left 48 stitches in the stockinette region and 32 in rib which worked out fine given the number of decreases the pattern specified. Also, the decreases on the neck are just plain bizzare and leave a weird pointy triangle seam at the back of the neck. I did knit to the instructions but when it came to seaming, I ripped out the point back to the original 32 stitches and did a three-needle bind off. Without a picture of the back of the neck I'm not really sure what the designer was going for, but the stright seam looks great.

As for the yarn, Ultra Alpaca is lovely and soft, and has fabulous yardage for the price. But it sheds a lot and blocking it is akin to bathing a dog. The fabric also pills a lot, the price you pay for softness. I wore the vest once to the event which has not happened yet (remember, we're imagining this is pre-Rhinebeck) and the side where I carried my bag was roughened up almost immediately. The sweater has already been shaved once. I know the combination of jeans underneath and bag on top was probably a little rough but since that particular combination is my usual MO, I'm not likely to change my wardrobe for a sweater.

All those quibbles aside, I love the finished sweater! It's warm and soft, the colour is great and although it's not a shape I'd normally pick out I think it's flattering a fits well. A winner all round!

Nothing to do with knitting

A lot to do with my warped sense of humor.

This picture amuses the crap out of me...

Especially since I just hung it opposite my toilet.

Neckwarmer Exchange!

Anne-Marie, the fearless leader of Sit 'n' Knit New York, organised a fabulous neckwarmer swap that took place this past weekend in Central Park. My giftee was Kristina, who had requested a jewel toned cowl and suggested a couple of pattern ideas. I riffed off that and came up with this:

Pattern: Good Luck Cowl by Drop Stitch Knitter.
Yarn & Needles: Fearless Fibers Midnight Passion (look up if it looks familiar, yes, up there on the banner) on US5s.
Modifications: I knit and knit and knit hoping I'd get to the end of the yarn before I ended up with a cowl that would suit a giraffe, but in the end I couldn't use it all up and still ended up with a fairly long cowl. I think, in the end, the extra length was just what the cowl needed since the yarn was a little thinner than fingering.

I return I was gifted an utterly fabulous cowl from Minty!

Smiles all round :)

Don't vote.

Just because I can't doesn't mean that you shouldn't.

The sound of silence

I've been gone for quite a while huh? Mostly it's because all my yarn was in a -80C freezer until Wednesday, but it's also because I've been away on the annual student retreat and then caught a stinker of a cold as soon as I got back. None of which is really conducive to knitting.

But I cracked last weekend, a week and half without touching yarn was just too long and even though I knew I'd be getting my entire stash back in just a couple if days, I thought a trip to Knitty City was in order.

Yum, ultra alpaca in peat mix! Ever since I knitted a scarf out of this forever and a day ago I've wanted to make something for myself out of it. (Incidentally, about a year after I gifted that scarf the recipient finally owned up to having lost it a couple of months after I gave it to him. Loser.) So temporarily loosing all my yarn to bed bugs gave me the prefect excuse opportunity to get myself set up with a new project, Kaino by Norah Gaughan. Unfortunately the dark colour of the yarn, combined with my camera's inability to capture green, plus overcast skies and well, snot, means I haven't been able to tkae a decent picture. There's a terrible one on ravelry but I'm hoping to replace it with something a bit more green and in focus soon. I'm past the armhole decreases on the back and with my current start of snot-production I should be onto the fronts soon....

Aw crap.

So you know how I said I needed to slow down a little? Well Mother Nature sure has taken care of that.

About a week ago my housemate starting getting hives all up her arm, her neck and across her face. Then I got a couple...

I showed them around lab and some wise person said, "You know, they look like bed bug bites." This got me thinking, what do bed bugs look like? A quick perusal on google very swiftly let me know that the "beetle" I squashed last week on the couch was in fact an adult Cimex lectularius.

Ho-ly SHIT.

All hell has broken loose in my apartment. Everything that could be laundered was washed and dried on hot in one evening, then has been sealed in garbage bags. Everything that couldn't be laundered has been bagged up and is awaiting dry cleaning, freezing or napalm. (Turns out I'm a pretty good liar and managed to persuade lab safety to loan "our lab" a -80C freezer for two weeks so that all the yarn and sweaters and teddy bears can be frozen solid.) Literally everything I own that is not furniture is currently in a plastic bag. I shit you not.

I think the couch was the epicenter of the infestation (it's the only place I was ever bitten and the only place we and the exterminator found bugs) and it has been disposed of. As has the armchair that was next to it. Everything has been sprayed with pesticide and will be sprayed again on Monday and quite possibly again a week after that. I've ordered encasements for the beds so that if there are bugs in there they can't get out and any stragglers from the couch wont be able to make their way in. I'm going to buy new pillows.

Just in case the person who is my Sit n' Knit Neck Warmer Swap recipient is reading this, your cowl was the first thing to be ziplock-ed and put in my freezer. It'll soon be moved to the -80. I'm trying my hardest not to spread the love.

So yeah. I have no yarn, one pair of shoes and seven days worth of clothes in a garbage bag. Housing put me up in "guest accommodation" which was infested with cockroaches. I hightailed it out of there as soon as one crawled across me while I was watching TV. The front desk gave me keys to the "emergency accommodation" which was thankfully free of obvious bugs.

I feel like a bag lady and a leper and the pied piper of bugs all rolled into one.Check your luggage folks, this is not fun.

I really should make an effort to slow down.

Well that didn't take long! I like it, can you tell?

Pattern: Lace Ribbon Scarf from knitty Spring '08.
Yarn & Needles: Fleece Artist merino 2/6 in a beautiful semi-solid red. The needles were a little odd, 3.5mm Perl-Inox which narrow to about 2mm 2" from the tip. I don't know if all Perl-Inoxes are like that, but I have two pairs that I inherited from my mom's collection that do the same thing. It makes moving the stitches around really easy though so maybe that's why they do it...

Lace Ribbon Scarf

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time, but with 23 grams out of 115 left and 3.5mm needles I'm not so sure. It's beautiful yarn that I knew wouldn't be destined for feet, and I'm sure I'll love it when it's done but wow, it's a lot of knitting!

Blaze of Glory!

Yeah, couldn't wait til tomorrow, will ya forgive me?

Pattern: Blaze from Knitty Fall '04. I made the smallest size 30/32 because I had an inkling the cables, which are basically ribs, would streeeeeeeetch. And they did. Go me.
Yarn & Needles: Filatura Lanarota Chaco, 4 balls of colour 710. (Look familiar?) Knit Picks Options US6 for most all of it, US4 for neck decrease.
Modifications: I did another round of decreases to end up with a P1 K2 repeat, then knit maybe four rounds straight to tighten up the neck line a little. I also blocked this quite severely adding about 2" of length to both the body and arms. Worked out great!

OMG. I have to admit that I was skeptical about what I was creating when I was knitting this. It was kind of lumpy and thick and the neck was ginormous. But I persevered because, eh, don't care. I also knew from experience that the yarn would soften a lot with blocking so I trusted my knittery spidey sense. I am so glad I did! Go knit this, it's awesome!

FO: Baby Cable Socks

Who would have thought my love hate relationship with the kitchener stitch video would lead to such a delay in finishing a pair of socks? I can't do kitchener without viewing it (since I lost my arrow instructions) but yet it takes one and a half minutes of waffle before she actually does the damn graft. Gah! But never fear, my arrows are re-scribbled on the back of an envelope meaning that last night I was able to finish not one but two, yes TWO projects!

Real "live" evidence of kitchener at work.

Yarny close-up.

Pattern: Baby Cable Rib socks from Senstional Knitted Socks.
Yarn and Needles: Cherry Tree Hill sockittome in River Run (I'm guessing just over half a ball) on my plastic dpns. The yarn was a gift from Girl on the Rocks during the Ravelry Summer Camp swap.

For shits and giggles, and to satiate my rabid desire for symmetry, I switched the direction of the cable on the second sock. Not that it's really noticeable to anyone but a deranged knitter with a foot fetish. (Which I'm guessing you all might be.)

The second project? Blaze is finished but not yet quite dry, so you'll have to wait 'til tomorrow...

Blaze of Glory

So I had been planning to knit something else entirely when a new knit jumped onto my needles. it's funny how that happens.


This sticky-fingered photograph is plenty out of date now. I zoomed up the 14" of the body to the arms and have knit a good 3" of the left arm. Maybe I can make a late entry into the Ravelympics and cause a big upset by snatching the gold from the clear favourite? Not sure who that'd be, but yeah! Competitiveness!

Another UFO bites the dust!

I'm thinking maybe I should have joined the Ravelympics WIP Wrestling team after all...

This knit has actually been finished for a while but due to unfortunate circumstances it never got completed, until now :) May I present to you not only my newly finished Emerald Seas but also my new look!


Pattern: Emerald Seas from Knitty Summer 2007.
Yarn & Needles: Knick Picks Shine Sport in Leapfrog, about 5.5 balls for the size M (35" chest). Options US4 for ribbing and US7 for the body.

I didn't do any modifications but if I'd been a wee bit smarter I'd have added waist shaping or knit the next size down. I wasn't sure how 5" of negative ease would look, but as is the 1" of negative looks a little bit loose. I am obviously smaller in person than I am in my head. I will not, however, be giving this to my mom, the repository of all over-sized knits because I like the colour way too much. Me, selfish?!