merged.blogs

ok, so apparently not many people are reading this. it was worth a try, but i think, for time and ease, i am going to merge this blog with my daily life blog over at wordpress. thanks for reading, and i hope you follow me over to:

Sparrow Song

secret.knitting

i am knitting a secret. it is half done and i will post pics when the recipient has let me know she loves it... until then... you will just have to guess what i am working on... one hint: it's teeny!

calorimetry from knitty

i have wanted to knit this since i made my mitts in december... i had a little of the blue wool left over, just enough i thought.  and then i actually tried them!  it was a disaster.  in true novice fashion, i knit and frogged, knit and frogged, knit and got mad, frogged some more... and then ripped the whole thing out!

but this time... 

this time it worked!!

i figured out that the short rows weren't what were kicking my butt... the inappropriate use of stitch markers was!  yup.  i wasn't moving the stitch marker at the right time.  my bobby pin... (i know, i know.  i hear you laughing!) just didn't cut the mustard and i kept getting lost!  i got some real stitch markers and voila... a headband in short rows that i thought i couldn't knit!!

here is my calorimetry:
 

i knitted in manos del uruguay 100% wool wildflower colorway.  

the yarn does this thick thin thing that made for a wonderfully cozy "hat".  and the ribbing... wow.  i hate to rib.  but this is beautiful!  and i love the buttons (so arty!).  one wasn't quite enough... it was still a little small.  so i added another...

and now it fits nicely.  

i love the back view:

and the "being silly view":

it is warm, funky, and only took 24 hours to knit.  admittedly, it gets a little itchy around the ears if you wear it all day... but in my mind, that's a small price to pay for looking that cool in the first hat i have ever owned.

no more baby knits... on to socks

we lost the baby on feb 11th.  enough said.  i put away Elijah and the bolero.  i don't have the strength to finish them now.  maybe someday, for another baby.  so now, it is socks.  again.

i pulled out the yarn i bought in january and found a pattern on line that made sense and finally finished a sock.  i hate it.  it is too short in the foot, the wedge toe makes my feet look witchy, and now i have A sock, half a skein of yarn and don't want to finish the other one.  grr.

i think it is off to my lys to find a project that i actually like, that will challenge me but i know will turn out... i will post sock photos next week... the camera i have doesn't take good yarn photos and the new one won't be here till then... 

more.baby.knits

Elijah is going slow. baby brain has kept him in the bag for now because i keep messing up the pattern.  but i am starting this amazing baby sweater and hat tonight.  it was one of those patterns that "called my name"... i can't wait to see my baby Spud in it.

  

the eyelet's on the back are supposed to bring baby good luck!  now, if only i could get gauge!!

knitting.for.baby

so... i finally finished the gloves and gave them to her.  she loved them.  as soon as i knew they fit, i tore the pattern to shreds and tossed it... honestly, i will never use it again.  they turned out great, but i hated knitting them... so there!

christmas brought knitting books to my tree and tho i love them, i have had little motivation to knit anything but baby things since i found out we are expecting in the fall.  that's right, a september baby!  i have been turning out baby hats, baby socks, trying my hand at a baby blanket (which i have ripped about four times... i can't find a pattern i really like even tho i love the yarn!), and am currently working on Elijah...

isn't he cute?  he is knit on dpn's without any seams... so far i have a head and a trunk and it is going swimmingly.  the yarn i am using is 100% merino superwash by avanti.  the colorway is almost nautical:

i love it!  i figure it will be just right for a little munchkin when he or she comes along.  i promise pics in a little bit, when he looks a little more like an elephant... till then, happy knitting!

jan's gloves

this is the first of my take on knitty's knucks for my friend jan from church. i have officially decided that i will only make fingerless gloves when coerced at gunpoint from here on out.  

seriously.  

my favorite thing about this project is the buttons i picked as an accent.

i don't even want to make the second one... 

the glove.  just hangin' out...

the 3x3 ribbed edge i decided on after

i almost went insane trying to do seed stitch for fifteen rows

 

bella's hand is a little small in these!

update:  12.19

the gloves are not done.  if you look really closely at the thumb on these photos, you can see that i totally messed up the gusset.  so i reknit glove one... only to find that when i tied off the bind off, i had bound off waaay too tightly.  that was when i sat for half an hour and cried.  my mom suggested loosening the cast off edge by undoing it and redoing it... thank god it worked.  so now, on to glove three, which is actually glove two, and hopefully glove the last.... 

ever.

knitty, this is one pattern i will not be using again!

bella's "secret santa" scarf

in our house when a "secret santa" exchange calls for a handmade gift the first thing i think of is knitting.  my ten year old bella, apparently, is no exception.  when told that she needed to supply her fellow girl scout with a gift at the christmas parth, she first decided that she would knit a head band.  when she cast on too many stitches we called it a scarf.  

bella modeling her "secret santa" scarf

now, what i didn't know is that bella is only a fast knitter when she wants to be a fast knitter. this scarf, by the time she got around to knitting it, was to be given in a little under 48 hours. she knit, and knit, and knit, and knit (and watched a little spongebob on dvd) and then she knit some more.  after three hours on sunday nite, she only had two thirds of the scarf done.  

what's a mother to do?

i knit the rest of it for her.  

is that cheating?  maybe.  however, she decided on the yarn, cast on, knit like a whirling dervish, decided on the length, and bound off.  i would say that is close enough.  

didn't she do a good job (with a little help from mom!)?

pink and white self striping cotton

from sugar and cream

 detail of scarf

(the dark pink is the side she knit most of)

gromit.knits

even dogs need more wool from time to time!

today i am off to city-knitting for yarn for my friend's fingerless gloves.  i have had a horrible time finding a pattern that i really like.  i am flying by the seat of my pants on this one... i think i am going to combine a glove pattern i like a lot with a totally fingerless handwarmer pattern that i like and wing it.  i can just bind off the glove fingers when they get long enough instead of working all the way to the decreases, right?  

the photo above is from wallace and gromit's "a close shave."  if you haven't seen it, i highly recommend it... suspense, drama, intrigue... all centered around a little yarn shop on the london high street called wendolene's wools!

fingerless.gloves

as i was flipping thru alterknits by leigh radford and john rizzo the other night, the lace-up fingerless gloves on page 37 caught my eye.  my hands are always cold and i have a terrible time with chapping in the winter.  i have seen a ton of these fingerless glove/armwarmer patterns online and at my local knitting shop but i was really pretty scared of them.  all those m1-R and m1-L, the knitting in the round...  they seemed a formidable foe.  

this pattern was different though:  it presented a beautiful challenge.  i. wanted. those. mitts.  the first eighteen or so rows were a breeze.  they are knit in a simple eyelet pattern in order to make the holes for the ribbons.  i soared until time came to transfer stitches to the dpn's.  that's where i froze.  

i put the stitches on the needles one way... it looked wrong.  i put the stitches on the needles the opposite way... it looked even more wrong! then i asked my mom for help.  turns out i had it right the first time, and three hours later, i had a fingerless glove!  the second mitt took far less time.  i even had a great time knitting the eyelets during the sunday church service.  i think they turned out great, and when i showed my mom the finished product, a woman from church noticed them and asked what they were.  after a brief explanation, i offered to make her a pair with the cut off fingers!  she is a little woman, always cold (so much so that she wears a coat and full fingered gloves during the entire church service most weeks of the winter!)... she doesn't like wool, so i have to find a pattern that works with my size 8 needles and a soft cotton or acrylic.  the challenge is welcome!  it will be such fun to knit a similar pattern for a friend and know that i am blessing her!  

aren't these beautiful?? 

 

the finished gloves

bella modeling the mitts

stitch.rip.stitch

today it seemed that i could stitch only about three rows, before i would realize i had made a monumental mistake, pass the knitting to my mom and say "help!"  she would inevitably find a stupid mistake (too many yarn overs seemed to be the order of the day) and i would rip it all back to a place where the knitting was clean.

the frustrating thing?  was i knitting some complicated cable pattern or fair isle?  no.  it was a straight forward dishcloth on number 7 needles.

in the end, after one more mistake on pattern repeat no. three, i ripped out the whole thing and plan to maybe start again tomorrow.  in my defence, it was noisy and busy in the living room with all the family around...the official score for the day?

knitting pattern: 3,000/this knitter: 0   

******

11.27.07 update:  turns out all i needed was a little peace and quiet... the dishcloth is done and it is my hubby amante's new favorite!  yay for another finished project to add to the list!

a.second.beginning

when i was sixteen, i knit a sweater for a class.  i needed a handcrafted item to turn in, my mom was a seamstress and a knitter, so it seemed an easy choice.  it took forever to make a simple knitted sweater for a teddy bear:

i learned something doing that project:  i strongly disliked knitting.  i disliked the feeling of yarn in my hands, i hated trying to manipulate the fibers, but most of all, it was tedious. i became what stephanie pearl-mcphee calls an "i have no patience for this" ex-knitter.forward ten years: i am now no longer a highschool student with no patience. i am a wife and a mother, and i am a little bored.  one afternoon my ten year old daughter brought home needles and yarn from grammie's house. "i wonder how much i remember?" i asked myself as i picked up the needles to knit a row or two. that was the beginning of the end for me.  i love the act of knitting.  i love the act of turning the yarn around the needles, i love the feeling of the fibers, i love reading patterns and trying challenging new skills.

i. love. to. knit.

in the last month, i have finished several major projects:

a cable scarf

a feather and fan scarf

a shawl for 

my daughter bella's doll

mittens and a shawl

for that same doll

so, here i am.  a knitter.  i am totally hooked.  it is turning into an obsession.  

God help us all.