rope. tree. fan. spear. snake. wall.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Skein that Wouldn't Die

So once upon a time, my friend Kris was destashing and I bought a bunch of yarn from her. Now it's my turn to destash, and I am trying to do it by knitting! Knitting one thousand baby items out of sock wool, apparently. Because I am insane.

purple baby sweaterOne of the things I bought was a skein of purple Nova Socks yarn by Fleece Artist. One skein of sock yarn, which I usually figure will do for a baby sweater, and I have a friend - well, several, actually - who's about to have a baby. So I cast on for the Ruby version of the Five-Hour Baby Sweater, and made it nice and roomy, I thought. But once the sleeves were indisputably long enough, and I frogged the body to remove the decreases so it would be nice and wide, and then made the body indisputably long enough and had to bind off - lo, there was still a bunch of yarn left.

purple baby bootiesSo I made booties! Simple toe-up, short-row heel baby booties to match the sweater. Only they started heading into knee sock territory, and again I had to bind off.

And now I have this aggravatingly small wad of yarn, too short to do anything with and too long to throw away. Arg.
purple yarn, leftover
Also, I really hope this baby likes purple.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

starting over

Um. Hi. Sorry.

I managed to do a fair bit of knitting over those lost months since my last post, but there was never really time to document it all. So instead of trying to reconstruct what I did, howbout I just start with what I'm doing now, and we'll figure that all those projects from September-December 2009 are just lost to the ages. I made some "Brainless" mittens, of which I was fairly proud - I started out with Yarnissima's Brainless sock pattern and after 2 or 3 inches I realized that what my kids actually need are mittens. The pattern was really easy to modify.

But that's in the past, eh, what's (not) done is (not) done and all that, and here are the current projects:

FelipeThis went through several versions before I got exasperated and settled on a fairly classic cable pattern. It's for my husband, a v-neck knitted from the top down, with sleeve-caps. Having found no instructions for such a beast on the intertubes, I am making it up as I go along, and so far it is well; the sleeves aren't quite the same, but I hope the difference will be unnoticeable in the finished garment. A bigger problem is that they are quite, um, spacious. He says that's good, he doesn't like tight sleeves, but if it comes out looking like some kind of early '80s batwing thing, well, that would be bad. Fingers crossed, since 1) this yarn is fairly fuzzy and will not appreciate being frogged and re-knit, and 2) I've already been working on this thing for a year.


firehat progress Secondborn, aka the Sniglet, has requested a hat like the ones I made for our former neighbor's grandbabies. I suggested waves instead of circles (because I have this blue and green yarn), and he said how about flames. For which I had to order orange yarn from the wonderful Wollmeise, so that took awhile. Double knitting is a bit slower than regular knitting, so it's taking awhile, but he seems excited. Of course, he was excited about the Brainless mittens too, and then he refused to wear them once they were done. Sigh.


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And here is yet another Five-Hour Baby Sweater, a wraparound version this time, knitted with giant yarn on giant needles so it'd get done fast. One of the other moms at the Sniglet's school is very nice, and we got to talking during the bad weather when we were both somehow always on the same bus for the school run. The last time I saw her she gave me a shiny hair thing because, she said, she really enjoyed our chats on the bus, limited as they are due to our dodgy Dutch skills. And since she's expecting a baby, soon I think, I made a baby sweater. It's blocking right now, and if it's dry I'll give it to her tomorrow.

And that's it for active projects. I have a ton of other half-knitted stuff lying around, but those'll have to be classed as UFOs until I pick them up again. Which I really should do, at some point...