Hats for Lisa

Wow! It's been awhile. I've been knitting. Heaps. (That's a frequently used word in New Zealand in case you didn't know.) But I haven't posted any of my items, because I wanted to save it all up. And now I'm ready for the big reveal.

I've been working on a fundraiser for my sister-in-law Lisa. See the details here:
http://www.clutchcreations.com/fundraiser/

The synopsis (if you're too lazy to click the link) is that I've been knitting hats to sell and auction off to raise money for Lisa since she's been dealing with breast cancer, a herniated disc in her back, a difficult pregnancy, a typically challenging toddler and a recently hobbled husband. All of that makes paying bills difficult, and I wanted to help. You can too, and get a sweet hat at the same time! The list of hats is here:
http://www.clutchcreations.com/fundraiser/hats.html

Click the link. You know you want to. I've only got 5 hats up so far, but I've knit 3 times that. It just takes time to get good photos and list them all. So keep checking back, too. Thanks!

I'm back

Yes, I've been gone for a long time. Actually, I'm still actually gone. In December I left my home of over 33 years and moved to the other side of the world. 6 months later, I'm still down under, and things are going well, and I'm getting some knitting done! Like this sweater.



It's the o w l s pattern by Kate Davies. I used my Ayany yarn, finally. I got this stuff years ago, and have started 3 different projects with it. Before this one, it was a long coat which I got almost done, when I decided since I wasn't making gauge it was turning out too tight and I didn't like it. That project sat in my knitting bag for over a year till I finally frogged it last month.

The yarn, a 100% merino bulky, hand spun by a women's cooperative in Kenya, purchase through a co-op (but now also available on Etsy) is nice and rugged. Due to the fact that different balls are spun by different women, there's variation in thickness through the project, but not enought to really show. I had 6 balls of green and 6 balls of brown, but for some reason I was constantly running short on brown. I even had to rip back after I got halfway through the owls because I was clearly going to run out of brown, but had plenty of green. I went all the way back to before the color-switch under the bust so that I could knit a few more inches with the green.

This turned out to be a good idea anyways, because the shaping of the sweater as written in the pattern is a bit odd. It asks for you to decrease and increase on either side of the spine, only on the back. But with the way the numbers worked out, you'd end up with many more stiches on the back than on the front as you get up in the bust region. I don't know about you, but most women I know have more going on on their front than their backs. My second time around, I moved most of the increases to the side, so that the front has more room, and it fits really well now.

I've actually knit quite a few items since my last post, but I'll leave it at this for now. I hope to show more of it soon though!

Yarn Gone

I'm moving to the other side of the world. And so I'm bringing my considerable yarn stash with me. But since it added up to 5 huge plastic bins, it had to be shipped, rather than taken with. So now I'm living without yarn. It's a sad state.

I kept one project to work on, but as it's a Christmas gift for a certain someone, I'm not going to post about it till it's given. That'll have to last me till I get there, and start a new and improved stash. :)

Block Granny Squares

That's what I learned from making this blanket for my brand new niece Rosa.



This is what the squares looked like pre-blocking:



This is what the squares look like after blocking and seaming and weaving in ends (aka Finished Object):


The pattern is the Granny Square Baby Blanket by Sohpie Britten in Complete Crochet: Techniques and Projects.

My first ever granny square project. It was a lot of fun, though it dragged on a bit. I didn't have much of a plan when I started. I only had two colors of this wonderful o-wool organic merino worsted weight yarn. So I kinda just changed colors randomly for awhile, then realized I'd want the finished product to be symmetrical, so I needed to start planning. I liked the way it turned out, but I think next time if I only had two colors, I'd just do all solid squares. There's just too much going on on this one.

So back to the blocking granny squares thing. So when I had done crocheting all 49 squares, I wasn't sure about blocking them. The pattern says to do it, but I didn't know what was the best way to do that. So I googled "blocking granny squares" with quotes. It came back with a few results of pages where people talk about the importance of blocking granny squares, but no directions how to. So I changed my search to "block granny squares" with quotes. And hoo woo! The results that came back. SO bizarre. 99% of the pages were weird porn pages! I don't know what that's all about. So I thought that I'd post this with the title, so if other search that, another real page about blocking granny squares will come up.

And by the way, the way I blocked my granny squares was full wet wash, squeezing out most of the water in towels, then just pinning the 4 corners, measuring to make sure each was the same size.

Learning new tricks

I forgot to mention in the last post that I used this project to teach myself a lot of different knitting tricks.

After the lace section, there's a bunch of plain circular stocking stitch, which is just knitting knitting knitting. So I practiced my continental knit stitch. Then, you split the front and back, and there's a whole bunch of back and forth stocking stitch. Rather than learn continental purling, which seems like a PITA, I figured out how to do left handed continental knit stitch. So rather than knitting across a row, then turning the work to look at the wrong side as I purled across, I knit across a row, and then just switched the yarn to my right hand (since I was doing continental, the yarn had been in my left had for the knit across) and continued to look at the right side, and left handed knit back across. Got that? It's wicked cool. I'll have to take a video and show you some time. Saves so much time not having to turn the work and purl. I just have to practice more to make my stitches more consistent.

Learning new tricks is what I do to keep the knitting interesting. Not that it ever really gets boring. Well, it does a bit, during those never ended stocking stitch rounds. So if you're in a knitting funk and kinda bored of it, try a new technique!

Happy Belated Mothers Day!

Yes, that's right. I just got around to finishing this bamboo lace top for my mom that I started way back in May. It was meant to be a birthday/Mothers Day present, and then I got busy. But it's done now! And she likes it. She even wore it to choir practice, so she must like it a lot.

The pattern is the Lotus Blossom Tank by Sharon Shoji in the Summer 2006 Interweave Knits. I used Sarah's Yarn 100% Bamboo in Sage. Not sure how I feel about bamboo. It's really soft and slippery. Too much so, maybe. I've got the same stuff in pink and blue also. Maybe I'll make bags out of that.

Anyways. Here's my mom showing off the back.


And here I am showing the front.


Mom will be wearing a shirt under it, as the lace shows off a bit too much skin for her otherwise. It's really cute either way.

But something about the fit makes my arms look HUGE. And I'm not just saying that being all self-critical. Even my husband told me it made my arms look fat, which is not the kind of thing he normally says at all. But then he pointed out that it must be the design, because the same affect could be seen on the model wearing it on the Interweave Knits cover. She's not a large woman at all, but check out those upper arms! Weird.

Finished set

I made that way more difficult than it needed to be. But it's done! A hat/scarf/mittens set in Colourmate 100% New Zealand wool. As I explained before, I had run out of yarn with half a mitten left. So I frogged the scarf several inches to get enough yarn to finish. But I was a fool, and almost didn't pull enough back.

As I was finishing the second mitten, I could tell I was going to be really really close to running out again, so I finished it about 2 rounds earlier than the first mitten. When I was done I had about 12 inches left attached, but I also had about a yard left from the hat floating around. I'm such a dork, and the half inch shortness of the one mitten annoyed me so much, that I ripped it back to use the extra yarn I had to knit an extra 1 full round, and 1 short round after the decreases. Now I'm content, and the project is finished, and the yarn is gone. Yay!