Saturday, February 27, 2010

spring has sprung

Only a day after complaining about the lousy weather it turned awesomely sunny. And even with a few grey days in between, it has stayed sunny. Spring is in the air and I'm torn between wanting to knit more mittens and abandoning all winter projects. Looking at my Ravelry projects, I thought I had more projects that had to do with spring - apparently not! And not all of them are in spring colors either. But I'll introduce them here, anyway.

The oldest project is the Spring Hat for little girls, a pattern of my own design.The yarn is Jaeger Matchmaker, a mercerized cotton yarn. Sometimes I just get the urge to knit something girly, even if I do favour gender-neutral children's clothing (or actually boy clothing because I like the colors better). I do love adding just a bit of ornamentation to an otherwise plain item so that the yarn can really shine, but is accentuated by the pattern. So that's what I did here.

 

Next up is a favorite pair of fingerless gloves, the Spring Flirt gloves, also my own design, the cable pattern is from the Vogue Stitionary 2 book. These werde done in Lana Grossa Furetto and I love their color combination. Sadly, the yarn has been discontinued. I love these especially because compared to other mittens and fingerless gloves I have made, they're pretty short, so they're useful if I wear a jacket or shirt with especially long sleeves.


Then there's the little Spring Bracelet from when I was doing a spot of beaded knitting. It's a modification of Knitty's Maryella design. I've since given up knitting beaded bracelets, because there is too much sewing involved - those snaps are a pain! However, I do want to do more beaded knitting and explore its possibilities ... some day.


The penultimate project (yes! I've finally used this word!) is the Spring Blanket - also my own design. It doesn't have a dedicated owner yet (more about that when I run out of material again) and so I use it to keep my legs warm on my couch in the morning. I used Lana Grossa New Cotton for this and recycled the white and green from a scarf I knit back in ... who knows when, at the beginning of the knitting obsession. I do love it very much, but it isn't blocked yet, though, so the squares still are as sloppy as they look her.


Waiting for Spring is the last project with "spring" in the name - these gloves are currently undergoing a redesign. I wanted stripes and zigzag, but the zigzag thing is seriously messing up my thumb construction and I don't want to bother anymore. Plain stripes it will be! which involves unravelling everything I've done so far, which does kinda suck. But if the finished product isn't nice, then what's the point.


Here you can see the inspiration from the baby cap put to use! And there's sunlight as proof. Dang zigzags ... I'm not completely convinced that I should undo everything yet.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

i think the sun has gone forever


There's a reason why there hasn't been a post in almost a week. The sun has completely disappeared and taking pictures has been nearly impossible for a while. On Wednesday I had a glimpse of something resembling sunshine, but then it went away just as fast. Another reason is that I've finally been able to find Elizabeth George's "Careless in Red" at the public library - I've been waiting for this for quite a while. Now that I've read it, I must say, I felt a little flat about this one, especially after "What Came Before He Shot Her". The solution was a tad too obvious for my taste, but I won't spoil it here.

Then I came across "Hue & Cry" (1947) which caused me no end of pleasure, because I have come to love British films, especially the late 1930s, war-time and post-war films, so I had to watch it. It's a most adventurous story about a gang of boys finding out that crooks pass messages through a boys' newspaper - there's a definite touch of Kästner's Emil and the Detectives, but the film is more brutal and very British. Through it I have finally made the acquaintance of Alistair Sim, who was once the rector of Edinburgh University and who will never leave my memory again. (There's *na-hemm* gin in mine.) Add to all that some manga read online and well - knitting time got converted into reading time.

So now I can't do much but wait for the sun to come out so I can take a picture of my 200th project, which has been finished for a while, it just needs a big button and all the ends need to be hidden. Then there are my beautiful Plum Blossoms in the Snow mittens which need plum blossoms and snow flakes, even though they're nice enough as they are now:


And of course while waiting for the sun I can knit even more - I've started my fingerless gloves inspired by the coloring of the Sweet Elfin Baby cap and am up to the thumb on the first, but wrestling with how many stitches to use for the thumb ...

Guess if this sunless thing goes on, I'll have to do a post "from the archives". Maybe one about my sad attempts at berets or about my fleeting affair with socks or about my true love for all things mittenish ...

P.S.:

Monday, February 15, 2010

quick action

Usually it takes me a while to finish things. I hate weaving ends, sewing on buttons, seaming and blocking. It's all too boring. But once in a while, when I'm feeling inspired, things get finished rather quickly. Those red gloves were finished in a flash - ends woven in, blocked and all. And something else got finished rather quickly, too.


My snow bunny from the second episode of Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou. First I used the figure-8 cast-on to cast on 8 stitches, increased 4 stitches every row for a bit, then 8 stitches every row for a bit. Then knit straight, then increases again and finally scattered decreases to create the round bum. I think it's a pretty accurate copy, except the nose is maybe a touch too pointy and the ears are a bit longer, too. But I don't think that detracts from its cuteness. I just wish the light was better.


Thursday, February 11, 2010

out in the snow



The mittens for Finland are finished, all ends are tucked away and right now they're blocking. I took them for a little outing to get a more interesting background than my windowsill and they fit right in with the weather.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

For Finland!

Mittens are my true love. I love mittens. I wear them more often than the socks I've knitted, that's for sure. Mittens to me are like tiny canvases on which to try things I'd never try in a sweater. Also, buy two balls of yarn (or even just one) and a pair of mittens or fingerless gloves at least is always a possibility. And if something goes wrong, ripping it all out won't be such a drama. What's hard to fit on mittens? Big fat cables, intarsia and well, lace mittens ... maybe not the best idea. Besides mittens, I also love fingerless gloves and wristwarmers, but that's for another post.

Today I'd like to introduce a mitten fresh from the brain. A friend of mine who was among the first people I met when I went online back in April 1999 a very long time ago recently complained about the cold (on facebook, where else). We used to send little things to each other ages ago, so I thought - mittens, why not? After much back and forth about his hand measurements and the color of yarn he'd prefer, I went to my favorite yarn store to search for dark red yarn. In my brain, a devilish idea was already lurking.

It's cold in Finland, very cold (otherwise he wouldn't have complained). So I couldn't knit just a simple mitten - anyone can do that. No, I would knit a superwarm mitten! But how? Simply doubling the yarn would make for warm mittens, but bigger stitches mean colder hands when it's windy. Enter a very simple solution, if you like fairisle, that is.

I bought four balls of yarn of the same color, a fluffy, muted dark red. The yarn is Lana Grossa Linea Pura Verde, a mixture of merino and alpaca. Then I doubled the yarn and knit the cuffs in a simple but pleasing pattern of k1tbl, p2. After 12 rows, I switched back to single yarn and knit one stitch with one ball, the next with the other, etc. So, stranded knitting with the same color. I increased periodically from 30 stitches to 72, then set aside 20 for the thumb, but didn't cast on any further stitches. I knit knit knit until the glove was too long (I still have to fix that), then I started decreasing and did a three-needle bindoff at the top, it just looked better. Add the thumb and - voila - a superwarm dark red mitten, that just needs its top ripped out a little ... for Finland!

Friday, February 5, 2010

only five things

My father died a year ago today. I knit five things for him. I don't have a picture of the wristwarmers I knit for him - those he probably wore most often.

The second item he wore most often is probably this one:


The Architect's Hat, an original design by me, just for him. He wanted it to be very plain, I wanted it to have at least something special, so I used a very understated sequence of k1, p1, k1, p2 with 5 rows stockinette in between. I've since used that sequence in other projects, too, to infuse them a little with his spirit. When I did the decreases, I accidentially created a star on top of the hat:


The third item I knit for him was a sweater, using a pattern by Renée Rigdon and Zabeth Stewart, published in Anticraft. I took the measurements from other sweaters of his, but by the time it was finished, he had lost a whole lot of weight and it didn't fit him at all anymore. I'm still not sure what to do with it now.


One of the last things he actually wore was the nightcap I knit for him. The pattern, a vintage one recreated by Franklin Habit for Knitty, gave me a lot of trouble, since the original pattern numbers lead to something that could have fit two people. In the end, I picked up stitches mid-cap, cut the thread and knit from the top down and ended up with this:


I don't remember if he actually ever wore the improved version. I do have pictures of him wearing the ridiculously large version, though.

The last item I knit was one he never got to wear. It is a woolen recreation of a hat I designed and knit for my brother using bamboo yarn. I finished it and gave it to my cousin.


I've decided to keep the architect's hat as it is, but don't know what I'll do with the nightcap and the sweater. Maybe I'll find good places for those or maybe I'll unravel them and knit something entirely new with them.

Monday, February 1, 2010

falling in love with short rows

For a long time, I've successfully managed to avoid short rows. If they were in a pattern, I clung tightly to that pattern and hated how they looked. I understood the principle of the short rows and had used them in freeform crochet without problems, but in knitting, I didn't really know what to do with them.

Looking for a way to make short rows look nicer, I read about Japanese short rows done with pins, but found that to be kind of material intensive, a big minus for me, since I like to knit with as few accessories as possible. Using accessories like cable needles, pins or stitch markers, and doing things like knitting stuff in pieces and seaming them up later takes a lot longer than making stitch markers out of left-over yarn on the fly, cabling without cable needles and knitting seamlessly whenever possible.

Still, I wanted to learn how to deal with short rows since I hated being afraid of them. With all this baby knitting, I found the perfect opportunity to get over my fears: the Aviatrix baby hat by Justine Turner. I love the look of it and just had to make it for my friend's baby. But how? How could I get over the short rows?


Solution: the internets. TECHknitting is an excellent blog with lots of how-tos, tricks and tips and really clear explanations and pictures and there I came across the method that cured me. At the end of this article on short row methods is my new method of choice: Japanese short rows done with yarnovers and slipped stitches, no pins, no wraps, just knitting. Once you get used to slipping the first stitch, everything becomes a cinch!

Now I can proudly present my two Aviatrix baby hats. The first one was modded a little, according to the instructions of a fellow Raveler, but with the second one, I stuck to the pattern. Funnily, the hats turned out roughly the same size. I just hope the straps aren't too short or too long. They were both made using Lana Grossa Superlana, which is rougher and not as tightly plied as the Cool Wool 2000, but soft and durable all the same (also, cheaper and the right weight for these hats).


Yes, I had gotten over my short row anxiety. Now how to put the new knowledge into practice? Why, by modifying a pattern, of course! Enter my love of pixie caps. I bought the first Knitty book only because there was a pixie cap in it. It turned out to be not very cute, even though I travelled to the US to get the exact yarn specified (ok, there were other reasons for travelling there, as well). But if I can't wear them, I know who can - babies.

 
Yes, babies can wear pixie caps. And I found the perfect pattern: the Vintage Pixie Cap by Hadley Fierlinger. To make the pointy end more pointy, stitches are bound off at the beginning of rows, which always leads to ugly stepped edges and ugly seams. I used Japanese short rows and could do a comfortable three-needle-bind off in the end, saving myself from having to do a seam. Jubilation! I used Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 yet again, since it's superwash, supersoft and superdurable.

The last baby hat I knit doesn't have short rows. But the Norwegian Sweet Baby Hat by Gro is cute all the same. I picked up a ball of dark blue-green Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 (what else, by now), but when the time came to cast on, I was a little split. It's lovely yarn, slightly heathered, but the color was maybe somewhat austere for a baby that wasn't mine. After much wrangling with how many stitches to cast on (gosh, is it ever hard to settle on a size when there aren't any babies around you that you can test things on), I decided to add a little more color.

I had recently finished a headband for my mother (no picture yet), because the first one I made for her got stolen. Looking at the leftovers, I discovered that the color suited my dark green-blue perfectly - and since the pattern called for stripes, I put the yarns together and got something much more beautiful than if I had used either yarn on its own.


In fact, I love this color combination so much that I'm going to make myself some fingerless gloves with the same yarn and a zigzag pattern. At first I thought about making the same baby hat and saving it for my own future babies (yes, I am a little crazy), but in this case, rational thought (and selfishness) won.

So that's it on baby hats. I have a few more baby items in my queue, but my baby knitting elan is petering out. After all, I have to weave in all the ends on all the things I already made, there are seams to sew, there's blocking and finally sending everything off. In the meantime I'll be working on the 200th project I recorded on Ravelry - and it will benefit heavily from my short row craze.