Knitting Help

This week-end I passed on the art of knitting to another budding knitter. :) However since we don't have regular contact with each other it will be hard to help her further her education in this great art. So here is one of my favorite knitting help sites. It has several over-the-shoulder videos that demonstrate stitches and techniques in both styles of knitting. http://www.knittinghelp.com/

Branching Out in Alpaca.

My Aunt had a coworker who raises alpacas and she knew I love to knit with fun yarns so she most graciously sent me some. She sent a ball of sparkly blue and one of a beautiful green for me to use and a black for me to make a scarf for her.
The pattern I used is called Branching Out by Knitty.com, it's one I have wanted to try for a while. My Aunt loves gardening so I thought that the leaf pattern would be perfect for her.



The yarn ended up going much further than I expected it to, so I was left with extra to use up. So I started making the least yarn intensive projects I knew how, that being mainly flowers. Flowers going well with the leaves and I, continuing to be left with more yarn that I intended after a project, ended up making several.


Flower Pin

Flower Necklace

Headband with Flower, modeled by the ever lovely Yorick.

Not Quite Knee High

I had a bunch of wool sock yarn. Can you guess what I decided to knit with it...? YES..SOCKS! Knee high socks to be exact, for those cold days when your feet are freezing but you don't want to put on shoes, or when you go up to the mountains to play in the snow.
I had two skeins of black (one for each sock) and several random skeins of browns, greens and blue. So I doubled up one of the other colors with a black, to get the random stripes you see below. The black all through gives it that speckled look, instead of clean sharp lines between the colors. This worked until I ran out of black. Then I added about an inch of tan ribbing to the top and called it quits. They come to the widest part of my calf, not quite knee high sock, but close enough.
They are finished but for weaving in the ends, of which I have to many because I didn't think, and joined the colors the wrong way. Oh well.

New Shawl

So this is my new shawl. I wanted something quick and simple to do, I had a ball of cream colored cotton, so I made a shawl. Its just a basic triangle with little flowers around the edge, something I could do with out a pattern. I kept going until I ran out of yarn. It's just big enough to go over my shoulders. Will I ever actually were it? Who knows.


It took my whole arsonal (and then some) of pins to block it. I don't know what I am going to do when it comes time to block my PNW shawl.







Artfully draped over the chest and dresser. Or maybe not...I tried.

Don't Forget to Pack the Knitting

On my trip to Alabama last month (lots of fun by the way) I arrived at the house I was staying at and got settled in. After dinner, with some down time on my hands, I realised that I had forgotten to pack a most important item. That it was still sitting on my bed, at home, all nice and neat, ready to be taken out to the car. I had forgotten my knitting!

I did have a book with me, but after two days of no yarn I started to see the effects of withdrawal. So I told the Tom-Tom (GPS) to take me to the closest Wal-mart. I then made a bee line (why it is called that I don't know. Have you ever know a bee to fly in a straight line?) back to the craft section. Most of the yarn was acrylic, but you take what you can get. I wondered what I should make. I wanted something simple, that I could do while watching TV or talking with my friends. A scarf was out, I have to many of then already. Also I wanted something that I could do without a color change, I didn't want to carry around multiple colors of yarn. Then I remembered a pattern that I had seen online that I wanted to try. So I grabbed a couple of skeins of Red Heart, in a variegated color called cherry chip, and the longest circular needle that they had.

Back at the house I found and printed out the patten, borrowed a measuring tape, worked a little math and cast on. I cast on a quickly as I could, desperate to feel the yarn flowing through my fingers and the swish-click of the needles. I crammed a bazillion stitches onto a needle that needed to be 6 in' longer. However, the only shaping in the pattern a was a series of decreases, it would get smaller as I worked.

About a 2 weeks later, and with an additional skien and a half into it I realize that this is not looking right. It was taking way to much yarn and not decreasing fast enough. So I double checked the gage. What I thought was 5.25 stretched itself out to be 3.75. That's what I get for not taking the time to do a proper gage swatch. So I frog the whole thing,(for those of you not familiar with knitting lingo, frogging is when you "rippit rippit" out, opposed to tinking, which is to unknit each stitch) take all my measurements again, and start over. Eventually I get this.




Can you guess what it is?
I'll give you three guess'.








No is not a dog bed, Charlie is just the model.






No...try again.






Nope.






It's a vest!






Now I have two extra balls of this yarn. I think that I will make fingerless gloves to go with the vest.

Pop Tab Purse

For a couple of years now I have been collection pop tabs. For no particular reason. You know the kind that come off the top of soda cans. I had no idea what to do with the things until the family went to see the Coke museum in Atlanta. Poking around in the gift shop afterwards I saw several purses made out of these pop tabs. An ingenious idea if you ask me. I had never seen the like before. So I took a look at the price tag, bad idea. They ran from $40 to $70. No way am I going to pay that much for something that I can make myself with a little bit of work. I even had all the tabs I would need.

So I take some of this.



A little bit of fidiling gets me this.



Sew it together and I get that.



A little more and I get a wonderful birthday gift for Naomi. Ta Da.

Grandads Vest

This is the vest I knit for my Grandad for christmass. He liked it very much. I spent a good part of christmass eve frantically trying to sew it together and crochet the edge on the neck and arm holes.

Got Mail

So now that I have a job I can do a little bit of my own shopping for my addiction...um hobby.

I found this website that has some great deals on yarn. (They are having a big sale this weekend so I will be keeping a eye on it.)

This is what I ordered and it arrived today. The kidsilk night I got for $7.49 each and the Ella Rae classic wool was $2.99 each. (For those of you who read my blog and don't know any thing about yarn, that price is about 50% off. Kidsilk is a mix of kid mohair and silk.)

About half of the wool will go to make a pair of leg warmers, and the rest will most likely be matching gloves or scarf. At least one of the kidsilk will become a beaded cowl. Watch out for pictures of these.

Yarn

OOhhhhhh. Look what I found at the dollar store, for guess what, a buck each. It makes my fingers itch with anticipation.