Back on the bandwagon

I can't imagine how many pairs of these slippers were knitted this holiday season. I contributed with two pairs and I have another in the works (for a particularly impatient little lady who has a birthday in about a week).



The infamous French Press Felted Slippers are a really good gift for a few reasons: all you need to know is a person's size, everyone can use a pair of slippers, and they really don't take too long at all. I didn't manage to get down to the 90 minutes promised by the Yarn Harlot- for me they were more like 3-4 hours once you consider the knitting and the considerable seaming on both slippers. That is not including the felting and sewing the buttons and flaps.



The buttons are from this huge stash of vintage buttons that my grandmother-in-law has been collecting for about 50 years. She gave me this amazing stash over Thanksgiving and I still can't believe how lucky I am to have inherited it.

Not so awesome modeled shot:


I also made a pink pair with really nice brown buttons, but I forgot to get pictures before I gave them away. So all I have is the obligatory Christmas present shot:


To be honest, they aren't my favorite thing in the world to knit because of how fiddly the seaming can be, but I do love the end product. And I think both the recipients so far have been happy. The third recipient next week will almost definitely be happy, considering the degree to which she insisted that she get a pair. I'll show you some modeled shots of those soon.

Flannel is awesome.

Getting ready for Christmas this year, I realized that my sister and I got our sewing machines from our parents last Christmas and we've had some good times over the last year. I wish I could say my sewing has advanced as much as my knitting did in Year 1 (when it was a full on, all-encompassing obsession), but I have made a few things I've been pretty happy with.

The newest is this little gift set I made for a February baby. I got some really great deals on flannel from Joann, so I looked up ideas for things to do with it. Chickpea Sewing Studio has this great tutorial for a blanket, changing pad, and washcloths and this tutorial for bibs, which were both awesome. I combined the directions from both and just kind of ran with it.



The whole little set contains a huge receiving blanket (flannel on both sides), two washcloths, a changing pad, and a bib (all flannel/terrycloth). I bought 3 yards of fabric and one yard of terrycloth. Even with my super-slow sewing skills, I finished it in an afternoon.





There was a fleece remnant at Joann that matched the green frogs in the flannel, so I decided to make a frog plushie to look like the frog head in the pattern. I free-handed a pattern on tracing paper to look like the frog head, then cut that out, pinned it to the fleece, and cut out two identical fleece pieces. I sewed them together right sides together leaving a small opening for stuffing, flipped it inside out, stuffed it, then ladder stitched the opening closed. Using felt from the craft store that is sticky on one side, I cut out shapes for the facial features and stuck them on the head. Ta da! Frog head plushie!



I gave it to the parents at a baby shower a few weekends back and they were pleased. They were even more pleased with the knitting I did for the little one, though- more on that later.

Hope your last minute holiday knitting is going well and is not stressing you out too much. I have one last project to finish up knitting-wise, but I think I have plenty of time to do it. Now just to wrap all the presents and clean the house and dang it I want to bake some sugar cookies too.

Quick Stuff

I've been MIA lately, but there actually is a little knitting going on. At least some knitting for little people. On the car ride to Nashville for Thanksgiving, I started working on a hat for a baby girl who is coming in January. I wanted to give a little gift to her Mom during the trip, so I was knitting fast.



Pattern: 10 Cable Baby Hat, my favorite newborn hat
Yarn: baby-pink Plymouth Encore Worsted
Needles: Size 8

I got the hat done in record time, so the night before Thanksgiving I started on some booties to match. I borrowed some antique buttons from Mema (grandmother-in-law extraordinaire) and had a little set ready to go. I made super-girly Mary Janes, which I've made before and love.



Pattern: Mary Jane Baby Booties
Needles: I think size 4s?

There is seaming involved in these booties, but it's not too bad. I think the back turned out pretty well- you can tell they are seamed, but it's not too noticeable.



Pretty cute set together, huh? I think everything together took about 5 hours or so.



It's that unfortunate time of year in the knitting world when the blogs are blank because no one wants to show off their holiday knitting too soon. I'm no different- I'm exclusively working on holiday knitting now, but I do have a few FOs waiting. I'll try to get those blogged soon!

Sunday Late Night

I'm sitting here in my pajamas (which, yes, is exactly what I was wearing when I got out of bed this morning) and wanted to get a quick post in to make me feel like my day hasn't been a total waste. Not that watching four hours of RuPaul's Drag Race and all 17 hours of the Emmy coverage is a waste or anything, but I did actually knit a baby hat, learn a new knitting trick, and learn how to use my new camera. So pajamas or not, that's something, right?

Baby O.C.C., the recipient of this sweater, is going to arrive any day now and I wanted to make him a little hat to wear home from the hospital. I used the same yarn as the sweater and whipped up this little number...



It's pretty much based on the Umbilical Cord Hat from Stitch & Bitch, but I used DK weight yarn instead of worsted so I casted on 80 stitches. Also, I inserted an extra knit row between each decrease row in the crown because I like hats when they lay more flat on the top. Oh, and I also added stripes. I used TechKnitter's Jogless Stripe tutorial to make traveling stripes, which worked shockingly well I thought.



So the new Canon Powershot Elph camera seems like its pretty great. These pictures are taken in my dining room at 11 at night, with miserable lighting, and I still got pretty good sharpness and colors. I'm excited to see how it does in better conditions.

In totally unrelated-to-knitting news, I can't resist sharing one of my favorite pictures of the weekend. On Friday night we went to the Reds game and Logan cheered his little heart out, but nine innings was just too much for him...



Being an aunt is kinda awesome.

I'm 32, so I'm at a time in my life where everyone I know is having a baby. A friend in Philly is having a baby boy next month, so I'm sending this little sweater off tomorrow. I really, really love how it turned out!



Pattern: The Yarn Harlot's Baby Yours (Ravelry link)
Yarn: Debblie Bliss Baby Cashmerino- 2 skeins
Yarn Source: Ewe & I
Buttons: Etched shell buttons from Joann



Ewe & I, where I got the yarn for this, is just down the street from my friend Juliana, whose baby will wear this sweater. When I was visiting her there, Ewe & I was having this awesome sale where you could pop a balloon and whatever percent off it said on the paper inside is the sale you get. I got lucky and got 30% off 7 skeins of baby cashmerino!



I love the pattern, love the little buttons, and of course the cashmerino is awesome. I already have a request to make another one of these!



Part of the reason blog posts have been so scarce lately is my broken camera. I can take pictures, but I can't see what I'm doing on the LCD screen. Luckily, this will be the last post with mystery pictures because I just ordered this new camera from ebay (where it was the same price as Amazon but with free shipping and a memory card, case, and lens cleaner included). I have been swatching for my Opulent Raglan, so stay tuned!

Toronto knitting

I was in Toronto a few weeks ago for a conference and it turned out to be an excellent knitting vacation. I bought a Knit Kit at the famous Lettuce Knit and then hung out at Kensington Market for the rest of the day. I also made it out to the Beaches, where I got my hair cut on a whim and visited The Naked Sheep, which was having a 25% off-every-yarn-in-the-store sale. I got 5 gorgeous skeins of Elsebeth Silky Wool in a pretty purple to knit the Opulent Raglan. Finally! I have been looking for the perfect yarn to make that sweater forever. I passed The Purple Purl while riding the streetcar back to my hotel and hopped off to check it out. I'm so glad I did because I think it was my favorite Toronto yarn store of all. They had some SWTC Yin at 40% off, so I bought some blue and brown to make a sweater for a baby boy who will be arriving in about a month.

I decided to make a simple little sweater with the baby's initials on the front. I gave it to the parents at their baby shower last Saturday and they seemed to really like it.



Pattern: Modified version of Striped Sweater from Debbie Bliss Simply Baby
Size: 3 month size
Yarn: SWTC Yin (2 skeins Blue, 1 skein Brown)
Needles: Size 6 for body, size 4 for borders
Buttons: tiny wood ones from Joann



I had planned to use intarsia to do the letters, but it just didn't work out so I used duplicate stitch instead. The entire time I was duplicate stitching, I found myself chanting "You down with O.C.C.? Yeah you know me!"

I have another October baby to knit for, but I know just what I'm going to do. I bought some Cashmerino when I was in Philly back in June that is destined to be A Cardigan for Merry. After that, I can move on to my Opulent Raglan.

Let's be honest.

They don't all work out the way we'd like them to, do they? I hesitated to post this project because it showcases my flaws (in both my knitting and my personality) in such a spectacular way, but I figured why not be realistic. I am almost always impatient and sometimes a little lazy, and those traits have repercussions.



Pattern: Sexy Vesty (Rav link)
Yarn: Jo-Ann Dreamweave, a wool/silk blend I got on sale
Needles: 8's for the body, 7 for the armhole and neck ribbing

CanaryKnits made up this little recipe for a lacy vest and she is very clear that it is not a pattern, but more a general set of guidelines, so the pattern is not to blame for what went wrong. What went wrong is all due to me, and my problems were 5-fold:

1. As I was knitting, it seemed way too small. CanaryKnits was clear that the vest was made for a person with a 35" bust, and my bust is definitely bigger than that. I justified my decision to keep knitting because on Ravelry, someone commented that this yarn "blooms like no yarn I've seen before". So I just figured it would get bigger with blocking. Did I swatch and test this theory? Nope. I just yellled at Daisy on Daisy of Love for having such terrible taste in men and such an unscrupulous plastic surgeon.



2. Ouch. Look at those terrible seams. The thing is that despite my best efforts, I didn't make the front and back the same length at the armholes. I had a feeling I had messed this up, but I somehow ignored this feeling and kept knitting.



3. Look at those tiny armholes! The guidelines said to knit for 2 inches before binding off the top, but that just isn't enough for my arms. I tried on the vest after seaming up the shoulders and the armholes were very clearly too tight, but I somehow convinced myself that adding on the armhole ribbing would fix this. Seriously? How does that even make sense AT ALL??

4. You can't see it that well in these pictures, but the decreases at the front center are wonky as well. Somehow I picked up stitches so that the wrong side was facing me, which meant I had to use P2tog and SSPthroughbackloop to decrease. It looks ridiculous from the right side.



5. Not only is it too tight, it's also way too short. Again, my delusions about blocking led me to ignore the obvious and keep knitting.

So that's it, friends- a real UGH! to add to my Ravelry page. The sad part is that I'm so done with this project that I don't even think I'll frog it for the yarn. The yarn is soft and has a nice halo, but I hate it now because it is associated with nothing but self-contempt.

On to the next, though, right? I'm going to Toronto tomorrow and have big plans to visit all the yarn shops in the area. One of them, the Naked Sheep, is apparently having a huge sale with 25% off every yarn in the store. Can you believe my luck?

If anyone has any ideas of things to do in Toronto this weekend, I would very much appreciate it!