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!