Knitting Projects

I love this pattern. :-) I love these mathematical-looking patterns that only use two colors in general, or at least that rely on contrast for most of their interest. This is one of a pair of mittens that I'm making for Kim, she of the peacock teal doily and the buckyball quilt. She's living on the East Coast right now, so she's the only person I know aside from family who might need mittens. I used a beautiful teal variegated mohair/acrylic blend made by Lion Brand (called "Imagine," I think), and got the pattern from the Nordic Knitting book on my book page. The thumb was supposed to be patterned as well, but I wanted to make a nice round thumb all in one color instead of the flat-type thumb found in Nordic knitting, so I just used the teal. I'm really happy with it.

Since it's all stockinette, the bottom was rolling up until I blocked it by wetting it thoroughly and lightly ironing the edge. I didn't do much else to it, except I put it around the bottom of a sherry bottle to dry, which evened out the stitches nicely and gave it a nice feel. (It was a fairly narrow bottle, so it worked nicely. I wouldn't want to do this on a wine bottle.)

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These are made of yarn that I spun up from roving called "Melonfest" that I bought on eBay. Lovely stuff. The toes are made of a dark berry/green roving called "Forest" that doesn't spin up as well. These are the first socks I did with a heel flap and gusset, so that was fun; they are also the first things I did with handspun yarn. It's tremendously fun, and I can't wait to do more!

Just your standard 48-stitch sock, with the k2p2 ribbing continued over the instep to insure a nice fit. Did them on #3 needles, and the yarn spun up to a nice weight somewhere between sock and fingering. Fairly soft, and I'm wearing them now at work -- very warm and comfy.

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A pair of Koigu socks following my standard pattern, with the instep ribbed and a 50-rnd cuff. The ribbed instep takes some time, but isn't that much harder, and helps the sock fit better. I think it's going to be a basic formula for me from now on.

I love this color combination, too. Koigu multicolored is just wonderful.

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I'm vastly proud of these things. Before I left for home for the winter holidays, I ordered myself some more Koigu -- and some of it was lime green and burgundy. While at my mom's house, I envisioned these socks and was anxious to get home and get started on them.

I used the same pattern that I used for the Nordic Tile mittens; I adore it, and it works up incredibly quickly. I was so determined to do these socks and had time to myself after flying home early to avoid a winter storm, so I basically knit nonstop after arriving back at my apartment while watching the Twilight Zone marathon. Crafting while watching the TZ marathon is becoming a tradition for me. I finished the socks in two days and love the hell out of them.

The only problem is that they are stranded as a color pattern and hence warm. Warmer than I should need here in southern California. Ah, well, I'm sure I can find times to wear them.

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This is a pattern from the Winter 2000 issue of Knitter's Magazine, the "Sleeves in your Pi" shawl without the sleeves. (I liked the idea of a perfect circle and didn't want to add anything to it.) It's for my brother's wife for the winter holidays. I know, it's disgustingly early, but I wanted to try to get one out of the way early to give myself lots of time this November. It has not yet been blocked in these photos, so it's smaller than it should be and not as open. I'm not even sure how it's going to block because of the yarn I used.

It took almost exactly four skeins of Lion Brand Imagine (an 80% acrylic 20% mohair blend) on size 9's in a color called "Maize." I started the pattern out with "Autumn Leaves," a gorgeous colorway, but the local Michael's stopped stocking it *grumble* so I had to pull out what I had done and start over again with a new color. I was later able to fiund enough of that yarn to finish a version with sleeves for my sister in law.

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I started these when I got some Socka in the mail that I'd forgotten I'd ordered. :-) It's a gorgeous colorway called "Fall Foliage," and despite that name, it's got every color in the rainbow in it, and the colors change in nice broad, shading stripes. I got two skeins of it, and even though they had the same dye lot on them, they didn't work out similarly at all. Still pretty, though.

I wanted to do something nice over the instep (it's as easy to do something really cool as boring when you're knitting), so I looked over my collection of stitch patterns (the Walker books, the Vogue book) to see what I could find. Initially, I wanted to to a double lattice, but didn't work out how to make it repeat in a circular pattern, so I got bored and opted to do something else. In the Walker book "Charted Knitting Designs," she gives what's called a "Wrought Iron Panel."

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I'm cheating by listing these here; they aren't done. I haven't put the thumb in the glove on top yet. These are gloves that I made from a pattern in Ann Feitelson's "The Art of Fair Isle Knitting." In that book, the pattern and the background both shade from light to dark, as Fair Isle patterns tend to do, but in these gloves, I opted to do a two-color look from roving that I bought from The Joy of Handspinning and spun up on a drop spindle and two-plyed together using the Andean Plying bracelet method. The glove with the thumb was done first, and looks it. The pattern is messier and the whole knit is looser than the second glove, damn it. It shouldn't make an enormous difference, but it's irritating nonetheless.

I'm always a bit uncertain when it comes to making gloves for people since my own hands are unusually long. I can't use my hands to measure gloves for anyone or else they wind up too big. Happily, though, my brother's wife (for whom these gloves were made) has very long hands as well, so they should fit her just right. They should also be very warm, which'll be nice for cold Philadelphia winters.

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I'm a bit ambivalent about this one. I originally wanted to make the pattern cranberry, and still wish I had. Couldn't get the cranberry yarn, though, and went for dark green.

I started it probably in the summer of 2000, and when I lost my oldest cat Jewel, I just didn't feel like working on it. Took me until sometime like last June before I felt like working on it again, maybe May. Got to the last sleeve, and that's when the the 9-11 attacks happened. So this thing doesn't have the best of memories associated with it. From a technical knitting perspective, I'm happy with it, and I do need it since I wear it at work because they crank the air conditioning too high, but nonetheless I'm glad to have gotten it off my needles.

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I just got this idea in my head for a pair of socks. They are for a friend of mine Adele, who infected me with the tatting virus. I haven't made the second sock yet since she has to try this one on and make sure it fits. It should.

The pattern is extremely easy. It's the Koigu sock pattern that I always use, except with size 1 needles instead of size 2, and Socka classic in red, white, and blue. The heel isn't done with slip stitches so I could make the white dots in the blue field. The stripes are three rows wide, and I put simple eyelets in the second row of the white stripes using (k3, yo, k2tog)*. I continued the eyelets over the instep since Adele has a moderately wide foot.

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This one was going to be a Christmas gift for my mom, but seeing as how it's May of the following year, and I'm still in mid-sleeve, we can all guess how that turned out. :-) I'm really happy with it so far, though, and I can't wait to get it off the needles.

You'll notice that it is once again the tile pattern that I've used on a set of mittens and socks already, the one that I love so much. I did a stripe decrease on the sleeves (I learned my lesson from the sweater prior to this one and used a five-stitch stripe), and I think it looks nice. A few firsts in this sweater: I put in a pocket! Went easy as pie. I also used a doubled buttonband, which looks really sharp, and I was able to find the perfect gold-yellow buttons for it.

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I have been working on these damned things since last year. A friend of mine online, Pamela, was nice enough to upload some TV shows for me. I won't get into it any further than that. O:-) And I wanted to thank her. Socks were a good way to do that.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize that texture-stitch socks were significantly different from the typical colorwork-in-stockinette that I typically do. That and I got an attack of the lazies. Suffice to say that it's going to be wonderful to finally be able to get these things in the mail to her once and for all. I used a texture pattern from "Socks, Socks, Socks." I think it's the first pattern in the "texture" section, by the woman from New York. It's tedious, slow, and utterly beautiful. The pictures aren't that good, though. These things really need to be seen to be understood.

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Oh, I just love this. This idea came to me suddenly, and just as suddenly, I neeeeeeeeded to do it. You know how it is, you can plan your projects out, buy yarn in advance, then suddenly your brain gets ambushed by an idea and you're on the phone to Patternworks within five minutes, and everything else is on hold.

That was this project. An entire pullover done on #2 needles (I should have my head examined), done in the same Sour-Apple-and-Watermelon Jolly Rancher colors that showed up in those checkerboard socks a ways up the page.

So I got a cone of lime and two small skeins of berry from my pusher Patternworks in a brand called Cotton Fine. 80% cotton, 20% merino. Very nice blend. It turns out I should have made one of those skeins lime, because as you can see, I ran out and finished it a few weeks later.

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Oh, I just love this. This idea came to me suddenly, and just as suddenly, I finally got through the black merino/silk that I picked up on eBay! This was a bunch of black merino pencil roving with floofy bits of white, pink, and mint green silk stuck in it. Spun up handily on my new Ashford Joy *preen*, and I decided I wanted a pair of hobo gloves. That evolved, though. I decided I didn't want hobo gloves, per se, so much as I wanted convertible mittens that turned into hobo gloves. If you look at the pictures, you'll see that they are a mitten until you peel back the top shell that's connected over the knuckles. Then, they become hobo gloves, whereupon you can stay warm but still fish around in your pocket for exact change without taking them off. I anticipate wearing them when I go home for the winter holidays and will leave them there for my mom or brothers to use since I have little use for anything like that myself. I plan to put a button along the cuff so that the mitten shell can be fastened down along the back of the hand to stop it from dangling.

I sort of cobbed the pattern together out of several other glove patterns, mostly the one in the "Knitting in the Nordic Tradition" that I link to on my Books Page. Did the fingers partly from Ann Feitelson's "The Art of Fair Isle Knitting."

Overall, I'm really pleased with them. The crooked thumb gusset worked out to be incredibly comfortable, and I think it'll be a standard for all my gloves from now on. The pattern can be found at Knitty.com.

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This was another cob-together using a generic raglan sweater pattern and a lovely flower pattern from Solveig Hisdal's "Poetry In Stitches," a collection of Nordic and Nordic-inspired patterns for all sorts of wonderful sweaters. It was pure coincidence that I finished the sweater the day that it first hit 100 degrees in southern California in the summer of 2004. :-)

It turned out lovely, and I'm quite happy with it. You can see that it has a ribbed neck and lower edge, and hemmed sleeves. If I had my druthers, I would have added an inch or two to the sleeves, but overall, it's a good fit. It would look lovely in dark sage green and light heathered rose. Size 4 needles and Plymouth Encore worsted weight, 75% arcylic, 25% wool. It's a lovely yarn -- wooly and warm, but machine washable.

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Another attempt at the first spun glove pattern, this time with the superior fit of the crooked thumb gusset. Fun to knit, and spun up from three different colors of the same brand of merino roving. One color is called "Sapphire," and is a lovely slatey/purplish blue. The other was spun from one ply of yellow, and another ply of alternating yellow and pink.

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Done with size 1 needles instead of my previously habitual size 2, these socks fit the best out of all the various ones I've made. The toes and heels are done in another colorways of Sockotta, which is rapidly becoming my favorite sock yarn in the known universe.

They use a 60 round cuff, and I could actually stand to make it a bit longer. If I do though, I'll need to look into sock calf shaping, which I've never had to worry about before.

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These are the kind of socks that result when you have a bunch of leftover Jawoll and two kinds of leftover Opal and feel like having a little fun. They were also made on size 1 needles and as a result fit as well as the green Sockotta socks.

I also learned a valuable lesson while making these: those who knit with black sock yarn need to keep a bottle of aspirin in their knitting bag. To say that using black fine-weight yarn on size 1 needles is a bit ... ophthalmologically challenging is an understatement. I think I'll stick to vaguely variegated colors from now on. :-)

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Once again, Plymouth Encore worsted weight makes an appearance. It really is a lovely worsted weight yarn, a nice blend of wool and acrylic that keeps the resulting article both warm and machine washable.

The dark green beret and mittens are for my sister in law for the holidays, and the dark red beret will be joined in a few days by a pair of identical dark red mittens. I'm knitting the mittens with, as you can see, a flat sock toe at the top instead of a star decrease. I also decided to use the sock-heel stitch pattern for the entire mitten, where you slip every other stitch, every other round. Given that the yarn is part acrylic, I wanted to make sure they would be as warm as possible.

The green beret was an attempt at a beret similar to the one worn by Molly Weasley in the train station in the first "Harry Potter" movie. Next time, I'd like to try it with a thinner, non-heathered yarn.

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More of my favorite glove pattern, with the asymmetrical thumb gusset. I love this thing, although I think I'm going to have to start taking four stitches off the circumference, because while I have very long hands, they are also very thin, and these are just too wide although very, very comfortable.

You'll also notice the clever and artsy choice to spin up the stuff with uneven color. I meant that. I did.

*nose bumps up against screen*

And honestly? It's not that I was trying to spin a uniform color, it's that I don't think it occurred to me to try to spin a uniform color until I got past the cuff of the second glove. I'm not sure which is worse.

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This one started out similarly to a hat I made for a friend, where I made a large cable that circled the head, grafted it (in pattern, she preened), and then picked up stitches and finished the hat. The first hat I made like this was more a simple cap with a flat top, but I decided I wanted to try a stocking cap.

To give you an idea of how much I hate cabling, that cable band took me literally months to do, and the rest of the hat was done in two weekend knitting sessions. Simple pattern -- pick up stitches around the band, then decrease an average of one stitch per row. That's about it for a stocking cap. What I did here was complete a band of fairisle-inspired patterning, and then made a plain row where all the decreasing occurred, then did another fairisle band. It's not hard. If the fairisle band you use takes something like 15 rows, then you know you have to do away with 15 stitches in the plain rows. I can still see a jog in the decrease rows in some places as the hat has not yet been blocked, but I wouldn't go for more than about 20 rows without decreasing, really. Even that's probably generous.

The pompon is, of course, required by law.

The second cap was added November 26, 2007 and has happily been blocked at last, as has the first cap.

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