I've been busy - here's some socks

I made these lovely socks because... as we all know... I don't think before I start a pattern.  Jenn got me a two-at-a-time sock book for Christmas... and... it uses the magic loop method of knitting socks... I haven't used this method before.

Starting these socks was incredibly painful, as all I could tell I was doing was making a giant bungle of my yarn (and that made me sad).  AND... then I realized I had started a size that was too big (!) so I tore the whole thing apart and started fresh.

Aside from the fact that the twisty-ness of the pattern seems to make the foot of the sock twisty... I like it... it looks great... and they're comfy.  Love the yarn - I got it from Mary Maxim.

FINISHED PRODUCT!

TWISTY!  FUN!

Love the colour of these socks.  It's so nice...

Girly Baby Sweater?

I have been on a massive crochet binge lately.  I really really really need to stop.  For two reasons - 1. I'm running myself low on projects 2. I have no idea where any of these things I've been making lately are going to end up - aside from in a drawer of finished projects (it's small).

Anyhow, I was at Michael's and I found this lovely baby yarn that I liked and wanted to purchase, but I had no pattern, so I picked up their Loops and Thread Baby Patterns book while I was there (sorry for the lack of a link, I can't even find the pattern on raverly at the moment!).

Then I went nuts and made a baby sweater... it's sort of girly... sort of boy-y... so I decided that it was going to be a girl sweater... and added pink buttons... so there.

AND... the finished product.... drumroll please!

Isn't it adorable?

Close up and armless....

Buttons and detail!

SUCCESS!

Alright, with all the massive motivation of posting all the things I'm working on and not done... I finished a few of them!  Woo hoo!  Of course, they were the easy things to finish... but still!  Progress!

Most exciting news - Johnny's Camo Blanket is FINISHED!  C'est fini!  And just in time for him to come to town, so he can take his lovely new blanket home.  :)

Kind of huge, but good huge - aside from the phenomenal
amount of work.  I have no idea how to do a project small.

Looks nice with the bannister, doesn't it?

Easiest to finish - the Christmas Snowman hanging.  He's cute.  I'm going to need to figure out something a little better for hanging him, but he looks good for now.  I may just glue some popsicle sticks to the back of the "let it snow" sign. 

Adorable!  Now with his head on his shoulders!

Then, of course, I started more projects, but that's a story for another day!

WIPs - what's left

So, only two more projects to speak of when it comes to my works in progress (I know, how do I ever FINISH anything if I'm constantly working on 8-10 projects at a time?  Well, in all honesty, the answer is that I generally DON'T finish the things I'm working on - shhh!  That's a secret!)

First, I've been working on a "Cleopatra Wrap" from the Sensual Knits book.  I am not even kind of using the right weight of yarn.  I was trying to make something a little more sunblocking than a very fine, lacey wrap.  I like working on this, but I've found I'm getting bored.  Not too much longer to go before I call it quits and graft the thing together, but wow have I been working on this for some time - maybe a year or so? - and every time I pull it out, I get all excited, do a couple patterns repeats and shelf it again.

Second, and most likely to be finished sometime soon, I decided in a moment of temporary insanity that I was going to try knitting two socks at a time, which uses the magic loop method - this is new to me.  BAH!  Why make knitting easy for myself when I can make it oh so very difficult!?!  Easy is for wusses!  Anyways, thus far, the verdict on socks two at a time, it takes a long time (or at least it feels like forever!  "But it's never taken me this long to knit a sock before" "you're making two right now" "and how does that change the problem??") and at the beginning your yarn is all tangled up, BUT... if you stick with it... it's stupid easy - not sure how, but it is - and well, no more second sock syndrome!

More works in progress... with a different needle variety

I am still working on cross-stitch and needlepoint stuff... in the background of this incredibly fun and speedy thing called knitting.  But, I'm not getting very far.  In fact, I thought I was further on the tea-cup one.  *sigh*

Anyhow, this is what I'm up to.

Cute Zen Butterfly:
Ya know, I had a plan for this at one point.  I was going to have an incredibly Japanese-ly decorated kitchen.  I no longer have this plan.  Now what on earth am I going to do with this when I finish?  No idea.  So it's being worked on S.l.o.w.l.y.  Very very slowly.  This is my progress... not even finished the butterfly, let alone the background.  Ya know, I like cross-stitch, maybe I should dedicate some time to it in the near future.

Trio of Teacups:
Yeah, so I've FINISHED one teacup, but haven't started the other two.  Oh ballz.  That sucks.  I thought I was further than that... I thought I was about halfway done the second teacup!  That makes me super grumpy.
Anyhow, progress to date is such.

Swinging Christmas Snowman:
I got this pattern from Mary Maxim.  It is super super cute and was a lot of fun.  It was my first attempt at needlepoint (I think that's what it's called) and I learned a couple of interesting things 1.  Cut the pieces out of the plastic canvas immediately before you start sewing them so that you don't work on the wrong side of the piece only to find out later that you've done such, and have to take everything out because the canvas is NOT SYMMETRICAL!  2. Make sure all of your stitches go the same way.  It looks stupid otherwise.  Cross-stitch is VERY forgiving this way.  and 3. Figure out which colours are which BEFORE you start stitching.  Now, this is very obvious.  This is something I should know and something I always do.  However, this time, I was tricked by the colours on the package.  Looks like someone else decided that the colouring should be done differently and here I am trying to match colours up and thinking "that's not dark enough to be the dark blue colour, it must be this..."  which was NOT true.  I ended up having to go out and buy another ball of yarn to finish this thing.  Sadly, now that I'm done the stitching work, I have not put the darn thing together.  It was like I went "YAY!  I'm done" and put the whole thing on the shelf.  I know there's no rush to finish it up as it's nowhere near Christmas yet, but still.  The snow JUST went away here and I'm not feeling overly fond of anything related to snow at the moment, so this will probably stay shelved until I get my Christmas decorations out - or until I decide it's taking up too much space in my craft room.

Works in Progress - afghans

In an effort to force myself to finish some of the projects that I've been working on for some time, I'm going to start posting a few of them on here at a time.  I figure if I post that there's something in progress, it will give me a little motivation push that I need to finish it.  Hopefully.  (key word, right?)

AND... with no further adieu...

I mentioned I was on an afghan binge.  These are the rest of the afghans I'm working on...

Zigzag blanket
This is actually a baby blanket pattern.  I liked it so much I decided to make a "full-sized" blanket.  Sadly, this was pretty much when I first started knitting... and like so many other projects that came afterwards, I had lofty intentions and no idea how to make them reality (ie. I doubled the size of the blanket... woops).  This blanket is likely going to end up large enough to cover a queen sized bed.  This is why it's taking me so very long to finish... and, well, the pattern is rather repetitive and somewhat boring... the thing is huge already, but I still have a full ball of yarn let to use up.  BUT... I love it... the pattern is easy-ish, but still pretty... I'm just stalled.

The entirety of the blanket.  That ball of yarn is about as big as a grapefruit.

ZigZag Detail

Johnny's Camo "Granny's Attic" afghan
So, this pattern didn't end up making a big enough blanket.  I posted that I was nearing completion on this monstrosity some time ago.  Sadly, when I laid all the squares out to sew it all together, I found that I was lacking, probably half a blanket.  This one isn't going to fit a bed, but it needs to be large enough to swaddle a full-grown person - comfort is key, right?  So, back to the proverbial drawing board... and I started making more squares... and now I just need to tuck in ends (which I SERIOUSLY hate doing.  There are so many ends in this pattern!) and finish sewing it up.  This blanket is probably the nearest to completion of all the WIPs that I have - and yet, I still can't drum up the motivation to finish it.  I'm slowly plugging away at tucking in ends... I get a few squares done a week... or, rather, I WAS getting a few squares done a week.
I must admit, I am rather pleased with how this blanket is turning out.  It's beautiful, but with all the end-tucking and huge number of squares required (the pattern calls for 48, and I ended up making 99), I think I would have to admit to a loss of sanity prior to starting another one of these.

Current status.  The neat pile has the ends tucked already.  *sigh*

The glorious detail.  Love the way it looks.

Rainbow baby blanket
This is one of those "new fun" patterns that caught my eye while I was working on afghans.  Verdict?  This one is going to get shelved for a while.  I can't figure out how to put all the lovely weave sections together.  I WILL figure it out though, but don't look for completion of this one anytime soon.

Quite the non-traditional baby blanket colours.

Circles / squares earthy afghan

I'm on an afghan binge!  I'm finishing up afghans and blankets that I've been working on for years and I'm making some new neat patterns while I'm at it.  Sadly, the new neat patterns tend to get the attention rather than the patterns that I've given up on for oh so very long... but... I am REALLY trying to clean out my stash - or at the very least finish the projects I've already started.  This is usually my lofty aim, but I'm a bit of an ADD knitter/crocheter and I go... "focus... ooooh... that looks fun! I'm going to do that...."

On that note, here's the first finished afghan from the binge!  And... you guessed it - new neat pattern!  I found it on ravelry.  I was just looking for something cool and funky - you know, different than the average granny square afghan.  It's purdy.  I used Vanna's Choice yarn in Rust, Olive, and Barley.

Ignore the crochet hook sticking out of it.  It's done now.

 I really like how it turned out.  I mostly finished it in a lovely weekend at the lake.  Isn't that terrible?  It was still snowy out here though, so you'll have to forgive my working through a weekend at the lake.  :)

The only issue I have with how this turned out is that I'm not particularly good at sewing up the squares.  It's a little bumpy on the edges, but otherwise, great afghan!

Faux cable socks!

So, I am way behind on my posting.  That is mostly because I keep forgetting my drive with all my photos on it at work.  Ooops.  I have really got to stop doing that.  Anyhow, another good excuse for forgetting to post a lot is that I've actually been working on a lot of projects recently (yay me!) and ones that get finished sometimes... :)

So, I bought a whole bunch of sock yarn from Mary Maxim not that long ago and I thought I would just go nuts and make lots of socks... and, well, I finally finished - A pair.  Guess I'm not going to be a sock knitting machine.  Oh well... I'm trying.   This pattern came with my lovely sock yarn, so I don't think it's actually available online... my bad... but I'm really happy with how they turned out.  It's a faux cable pattern.  No actual cable crossings, but all the effect of cables. 

I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to not make things ladder on dpns without putting a hole in my index finger (aka knitting too tight). 

Baby Clothes - because I had the yarn

Well, this is a new development.  I'm not making things because I have "this amazing pattern that I just have to try out" and then go find yarn for it anymore.  I'm starting to accumulate so much yarn that I have the need to make use of it in some way, shape or form, whether it's particularly useful or not.  Ooops.

I guess I just graduated from "newbie knitter" status to something somewhat more dangerous.

Anyhow, Jenn had this lovely pattern that she sent me... and I don't actually know where the pattern is from because I'm bad like that... BUT... she's got  it somewhere... let's see if I can link to her post with the pattern. 

Right.  That was easy.  Okay, so I made those super cute baby hats (for people!  Not to just sit in my pile of finished knitting... it's small, but it exists!) - the bear and bunny hats - and then I had a ton of left over yarn.  So I thought I'd try out the adorable pattern that Jenn had just finished coz I'm a copy-cat like that.

This is Goldie - she's my baby sized model.  :)

I liked it, so I made two.

It worked out quite well, I'd have to say.  I did have a little bit of trouble with the whole changing colour thing on the pink and white sweater.  This pattern is built so that it does make that white line you can see in the sleeves... you have to change colours at the appropriate time in the body to make it appear everywhere else, which is something I didn't master.  Heh... oh well.  It looks nice now!

Last Christmas gift

I'm sure you've been kept waiting long enough, so I will just get on with it.

Snezi!

I made my other sister a lovely grey shrug from the Sensual Knits pattern book. This is the easiest pattern in the world with little to no sewing up involved. It took me two weeks to knit up and I made the biggest size (my sister is tall and it was sized by length). I loved working on this because it was so simple. I'm sure it could be considered tedious to some, but it was so mindless I didn't really even think I was "working" at it. I think I will have to make more of these, but not for me, I am too short.

My sister is "modelling" on Christmas morning.

More Christmas Gifts

A lot of posts all at once, yessir. That's what I'm up to... mostly because I have been working ever so hard on my knitting and the like that I haven't had time to blog... and now I do. :)

Right, so my youngest sister was asking for an eternity scarf and a redo of her legwarmers (from Love to Knit) in basic black. (The legwarmers thing is a terrible story - when I was JUST learning how to knit, I made her a pair of legwarmers in white and pink, tres cute. However, I brought her with me to the store to pick out yarn. I didn't know the first thing about knitting and how important the yarn you select is for the project, etc. Well, the first pair of legwarmers are absolute crap. *sigh*.)

Legwarmers - in basic black - stylish.

Anyhow, so a friend of mine was doing a cute neck warmer / infinity scarf thing that she'd found on Pickles and I LOVED the pattern, but I wanted a longer, more dangly form of infinity scarf, so I adjusted until I had a pattern that was more suited to my project, which is as follows:

Scarf detail

Using a bulky yarn (5) and US size 11 (8 mm) needles

co 23 using the provisional cast on method
(RS) Row 1: k2, yo *sl1, k2, psso both knit stitches, yo* Rep from * to * until last 3 sts, ssk, k1
(WS) Row 2: k2, p to last 2 sts, k2

Rep 2 rows until desired length is reached ending on RS row.
Graft the live stitches on the ends together.

WOO!

The scarf looks really nice on.  YAY!

And if you're wondering what's up with all my headless models... that's the only way they'd model for me... if I didn't include their heads. :)

Merry Christmas with Joie de Vivre!

So, yet again, I decided this year it was a good idea to try to make all the Christmas gifts I was giving... well, at least those for my mom and sisters. This always seems like a good idea until two weeks before Christmas and I still have a project that I haven't even started. woops. Anyhow, this year, I actually pulled it off without a mad dash on Christmas Eve.

Anyhow, so what did I accomplish this Christmas? Well, for mom... I made a lovely sapphire blue sweater / cardigan. The pattern is Joie de Vivre from the book Sensual Knits... and I must say I find the sizing to be rather small. I used Patons Silk Bamboo yarn, which didn't quite give me the right gauge, but it was awfully close. AND... then I knit a LARGE... for my mom... who is a stick. I started and ripped it out because there was no way it was the right size, and then I started and ripped it out again, and then I decided it was going to have to be a large. BUT... eventually it came out right-ish.

I'm not fully convinced that this is the nicest sweater, but I tried really hard to get it right and the pattern is beautiful. Anyhow, my issues: 1. the sizing. Either the yarn I used is very very much the wrong yarn to use or my gauge is too tight. (I knit a swatch, it was darn close). 2. the ribbing! Knitting this up in one piece is TRES COOL! EXCEPT when it comes to sewing together the seams. I can't figure out how you make the ribs line up. Maybe it doesn't matter, but my ribs don't line up and that makes me sad. Hopefully no one else notices. 3. I didn't block mine, so the sleeves are about 1/2 length, which is fine, but I'd recommend making longer sleeves period. It wouldn't be that hard to do, just cast on ~34 more stitches on either side.

The pattern really is lovely and elegant. How much cooler can you get than an alternating drop stitch rib? I also LOVE how soft this yarn is... wow...

My sister's favourite scarf

So, I stole a picture from my sister's facebook that shows the lovely toque and scarf I made her *gulp* two years ago now. She was super nice and took pictures of the beret and scarf I made her too... just don't have those yet. So, here you go, my blurry sister, showing off her wicked-cool toque that she loves so very very much! (I believe there was a matching neckwarmer and mittens at one point too... )

Oh yeah, patterns, the toque is from Bronwyn Lowenthal's Love to Knit Book.
And the scarf was from lord knows... but I found it?
Seriously, easiest scarf pattern on the planet...

Anyhow, that's it for now!

Later!

Instructions

I find that I'm always searching you tube for a variety of stitches that I can do during one project but can't seem to remember for the next project. I need constant reminders. Also, I'm working on a sweater and just learned how to do a cable cast-on (yes, I'm aware that's pretty basic, but I've been using the long tail cast on method forever and haven't felt the need to change until now.)
Anyhow, this post is all about my favourite videos on you tube for learning / teaching yourself how to knit. I have a pair of socks in the works that will require a kitchener stitch (or grafting) as well as the sweater I already mentioned, where I will have to neatly and carefully sew the shoulder seams together.
I will post some older projects soon as it seems the projects I'm working on at the moment are coming along very slowly.

Back from holidays

Hi! I've been away on holidays for a month, which generally means no knitting, but I did finish the baby girl toque that matches the little boy's bear toque just before I left! These things are so freaking adorable! :D
I hope baby Elise looks super cute in it when she grows into it. It's a touch big for her head at the moment. Ooops.

Anyhow, current projects? Working on a pair of socks in a really pretty blue colour, there's a shawl in the works, a blanket that I've been working on forever, and a few new ideas in my head (one's a sweater and the other is a pair of legwarmers).

Love to Knit... Love that Book

I may have mentioned a scarf I knit for my sister (which I still don't have a picture of by the way) a few posts ago. I may also have mentioned a matching beret from Bronwyn Lowenthal's Love to Knit book. Well, I liked the beret I made for my sister so much that I made one for myself. They're so much fun and living in a place like this having cute / fun winter hats... not necessarily all toques... is a must.

Back to Babies!

So, my cousin is having a baby, as is a girlfriend of mine. My friend, is having a little girl, but I just can't see her dressing her baby in frilly pink frou frou... and my cousin, is having a little boy. Sadly, I didn't know my cousin was having a boy when I started this frilly pink frou frou blast from the past dress. I can't link this pattern as it's from a book my mom had when she was a knitter (ie. when she was pregnant with me, she knit a baby sweater. Once.)
I wanted to make this dress in just a solid lavendar or replace the pink parts with lavendar, but I just couldn't find the yarn in the right colour (and was too lazy to go buy it online) so it ended up frilly and pink! Which is awesome... now to find the right person to give it to... someone has to be having a little girl who likes pink, right?

Too long!

Wow. That was quite the hiatus. I should really be more on top of this. My bad! Anyhow, what have I been up to you ask? Many things, but mostly this:This afghan has been an absolute ton of work, but it's so pretty, ahem, in a manly sort of way. I'm actually really excited to see what it looks like when all the ends are tucked in and the granny squares are all put together. I absolutely love this pattern, but be wary, there's lots of colour changes and lots of sewing to do!

Babies gallore

So, it would seem that a large number of the people I know are having babies. That being said, recent times have seen an increase in the number of baby related projects I'm working on at the moment (up from 0). After the socks, knitting in the round on double pointed needles seemed like a piece of cake! So, I took on a baby hat! I found the most adorable pattern when I was out shopping for yarn and I couldn't resist, so I bought the yarn and VOILA! Adorable Baby Bear!Sadly, you have to log in to the Bernat site to see the pattern, but it's the "softee baby - knit hats with ears" pattern.

Sockies!!!

So, after the scarf was finished, I decided to move onto something completely different. A friend of mine had got a ball of sock yarn and a pattern (from Make One Yarn Studio here in Calgary) to go with it for me for Christmas, now seeing as I had never used double pointed needles before, I was a teensy bit wary, but no pain, no gain, right? So, I consulted almighty youtube for some advice on how to work in the round on double pointed needles. The going was slow and after half of the first sock I was wondering how on earth people did this to make their clothing (especially because the pattern was not as easy as it could have been and I was contemplating making only one sock)! But, lo and behold! Once you get the hang of double pointed needles - sock two goes much faster!
So, for me, this was something entirely new and I'm still not sure if I liked doing it, by my socks are SUPER COMFY!!! <3