Summer Scarf

I have only a month left in Florida and have been spending as much time on the beach and with friends as possible. Although I wouldn't have it any other way, I haven't been knitting as much as usual. When I do get a chance to knit, I find myself wanting to space out and work on something soothing and beautiful, so the Lace Ribbon Scarf got a lot of play this month. This project came with me to Ohio for the birth of my nephew and has logged more hours than I'd like to admit on the couch watching the first two seasons of Battlestar Gallactica (hey, man- no one is more surprised that I'm BSG crazy than me). I try to spend time with my cardigan, but she is such a fickle and demanding thing. Working out gorgeously, but damn if she doesn't make me work SO HARD for every little thing.

But this scarf...I just never got tired of it. I know several people on Ravelry have commented that the knitting got a little boring after a while, but I never felt that way. I think it's probably because my life is in the midst of turning upside down right now, but I really relished every mindless minute of her.



Pattern: Lace Ribbon Scarf from Knitty, Spring 2008 by Veronik Avery
Yarn: One skein of Dream in Color Smooshy in Dusky Aurora, purchased from Sonny and Shear
Needles: Size 4 Knitpicks Options
Time: May 13-June 23

This pattern didn't really call my name when it was first published in Knitty, but I didn't feel like making socks and I was hankering to knit with that particular colorway of Smooshy, so I searched around a bit on Ravelry and realized that the ribbon scarf was a perfect fit for my mood- easy, repetitive, pretty, and perfect for one skein of sock yarn. I ended up doing 24 repeats of the pattern and it came out to 80", just like the pattern specified.



I am a bit of a purple lover so I'm obviously biased, but holy crap if this isn't the prettiest colorway of Smooshy ever. My love of this yarn is well documented, and this time is certainly no exception. When the newest Knitty came out, I cast on for the Spring Forward socks immediately with some other sock yarn from my stash and quickly became less interested because it just didn't have the allure of the ever-sexy Smooshy.



I'm not sure what I'll do with this yet. It's so pretty and universal I think it would make an excellent gift, but I really love it and may just get selfish. I know I would get some good use out of it during the fall weather...

I'll catch you up this weekend on the progress of my cabled hoodie. I just need to block the back and left front so I can seam it up and see if this bad boy is going to work out. For now, I can't resist leaving you with one more picture to remind myself of what I have to look forward to when I move away from this place that I love...

2 weeks early

Here's a kid who is loved by a knitter.



My nephew was born early Saturday morning, 2 weeks before his due date and just 5 and a half lbs. Mom and baby are healthy and happy, and I was able to get from Miami to Cincinnati in 12 hours, just 2 hours after he was born. We are all completely bowled over by him.

The cute.

I am officially on the bandwagon, people. I made Elijah and I am in love- with the pure cleverness of the pattern, with the relief of making a seamless toy, and with the flat out unadulterated cuteness that is this little elephant. I mean seriously people, look at this thing...



Pattern: Elijah by ysolda
Yarn: One skein of Cotton-Ease in Snow and scraps (literally scraps, as in pulled apart a tangled little mess I found under the couch) of Cotton-Ease in Berry
Needles: Size 5 DPNs. Next time I might use size 4s.
Modifications: Very minor- made the feet pink, didn't use french knots for eyes
For: A pregnant friend at work

There's not much else to say about the amazing pattern that hasn't been said before, but my spatial problems did lead me to have bit of trouble with the right ear. I just didn't get what Ysolda meant when she said to do the right ear in the same way except picking up stitches toward the back of the head first. It literally took me about 3 hours to figure it out, but now I've drawn myself a diagram so next time I'll be okay.



I also used a little trick to make sure the ears were picked up evenly on the right side (ask me how many times I picked up stitches incorrectly, forcing me to come up with this little trick. No, don't. I might cry. Again.) I took a DPN and put it through the stuffed head as evenly as I could at the top of the left ear. Then I took another one and put it through the poor elephant's head at the bottom of the left ear. So there were 2 DPNs ends sticking out on either side of the head. Then I picked up the stitches in a line between the 2 DPN ends on the right side. Finally, the right side looked identical to the left- woot!

Instead of french knot embroidered eyes, which were just too small, I just winged it and tried to make 2 bigger eyes using a method I made up as I went along.

Speaking of which, does anyone know a good tutorial about how to embroider knitting? I just can't seem to find one that answers the many questions I have about it. Thanks for any help!



I feel I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this present, which was wildly well-received by my friend and coworkers and made me feel like a freaking superstar, cost less than $10 to make. The pattern was $6, I got a skein of Cotton-Ease with a 50% off coupon and some polyfill at Joann for about $4. If you are looking for a baby shower show stopper but aren't looking to spend a lot, Elijah is the ticket.

Casting on in celebration

So my job hunt is over and come this summer, I'm moving back to Ohio. Although I will miss the heck out of Miami, I am thrilled to be going back home to my family and to be buying our first house. We couldn't afford to buy a cardboard box in Miami, but the market in Ohio is much more forgiving and we already found a great place. As I type, I have HGTV on in the background and I'm scheming about all the DIY stuff I want to do.

To celebrate, I'm making myself a sweater. I'm hoping it will help me cope with the drastic weather change- I mean, the good thing about winter is the knitwear, right? I loved the Cabled Hoodie from the Paton's Street Smart booklet and was excited to hear that Vy loved it too. We decided to do a mini-KAL, with both of us making major mods to the pattern. Vy subbed the worsted weight for a DK and I decided to change the cable pattern. I just wasn't really digging the bobbles.

I've been working on it for a couple of days and am really coming along on a sleeve:


How you like the yarn-ball in the pajama pants look?

Like Vy, mine fits a bit more snugly than I anticipated. Unlike Vy, I am stubborn and delusional and am choosing to believe that this will work out. It really seems to fit, but it won't be a jacket type sweater like I thought. That's okay, right? I have a crazy feeling this post is going to come back and bite me.

I found this Hourglass cable in Barbara Walker's first Treasury and I just love it. It's a bit difficult to keep up with (I had to frog a couple of pattern repeats already) and I had to chart it out to keep up with the 16 row pattern, but I think I'm on track now.



I love this so far. We'll see how I feel when I get to the back and am doing four of these cables across, but for now I'm loving watching my little sleeve grow.

Onesie Crazy

Ever since I started knitting, I've been pretty much exclusive to it. I used to make cards and mess around with other crafts, but yarn has taken over my free time (and my life, to be honest) to such a degree that now I just buy my cards at Target like everyone else. But at one of my sister's showers we were asked to decorate a onesie and bring it to the party. Cola got a bunch of cute clothes for the baby and we all just felt great about our cleverness.

I decided to use iron-on transfers (I intended to do embroidery, but then I realized that it was really hard. I'm going to save that new craft for later). Just in case anyone is interested, I thought I'd just describe what I did.



Supplies:
Computer & ink jet printer (I used a color printer, but B&W would work)
Iron On T-shirt transfers (I used Avery ones from Target)
Onesies
Iron
Sharp scissors to cut out image



Instructions:
1. Use Google Images to find pictures to depict your ideas. I searched for the perfect buddha to go with the "rub my tummy" shirt for about 3 hours, I think.

2. If necessary, use picnik to manipulate images. I freaking love picnik- I use it for everything. You can bet that every picture you see on this blog has been cropped, brightened, and fixed using picnik.

3. Insert the images into Powerpoint. I put all 4 images that I used onto one slide so I wouldn't waste the iron-on sheets. It's a great deal- 1 sheet = 4 onesies.

4. To put messages on the images, I wanted to use fancy fonts that went with my pictures. There are tons of places to find them online (e.g.,dafont). For example, I really wanted the Hello onesie to have child-like handwriting, so I found a font called "kid's first font" and used that. I also downloaded tattoo lettering font and the eastern-inspired lettering. I had to download the font to my desktop and then drag it to the "font" folder under the "windows" folder, but that could be different for you.

5. In powerpoint, insert a text box over your image and write the message in your chosen font. You may have to mess with this to get it perfect.

6. When you are finished with your images, print them out onto regular paper to test out how they'll look. Cut them out and place them on the onesie to make sure they are the right size. If you're satisfied, print it out on the iron-on paper.

7. Cut out the images, leaving about 1/8 of an inch around the edges.

8. Following the directions that come with your iron on transfers, iron them on. The directions will probably tell you to have the iron as hot as possible for the fiber in the onesie (probably cotton), not to have the steam function set, and to press as hard as humanly possible when ironing. I was super scared about this step, but it worked out perfectly.



Cute, huh? And such a good deal!

4 100% cotton onesies... 5 dollars

1 sheet of iron on transfer (from pack of 6)... 1 dollar

Forcefully demanding your unborn nephew to declare his love for you from birth... priceless

Revolution

I'm back home from Baby Shower Weekend and I'm happy to report that the knitting went over big. And I can finally tell you all about it!



Pattern: Revolution by Woolly Thoughts
Yarn: Filatura Zara in Red, Yellow, Medium Blue, & Fresh Green (2 skeins each-8 total)
Source: Yarnela
Needles: Size 4 Knitpicks Options
Dimensions before blocking: 29.5 inches across
Final Dimensions (after wet blocking): 35 inches across
Modifications: None, really. I just did an icord bind off instead of a regular one.

First off, let me start with the pattern. I really like the people over at Woolly Thoughts. They sell the pdf versions of Revolution (along with most of their other gorgeous afghan patterns) and they go above and beyond with all they provide in that little pdf. The whole blanket is row after row of garter stitch, so it's fairly mindless, but it's in little rectangular chunks, so I really felt like I got something done each night.

My issue with the blanket is the picked up stitches. Even after trying it a million different ways and researching like crazy to find new methods, I never found a method of picking up the stitches that looked neat enough for my taste. Because of the round design, the picked up stitches pull against the existing pieces a little more than they normally would and I just didn't like how that looked. My family said I was being too perfectionistic about it, but you know how it is. When you see something that you don't like, it's all you see.



I had never done an icord bind off before and I LOVE it. It creates such a nice smooth edge and it's super easy. I used the instructions from the Knitting Answer Book (a little gem my friend Apa got me for my birthday) and they were great.

Blocking did help a lot on this guy. It was super lumpy and wouldn't lay flat at all at first, but wet blocking had it laying flat as a pancake. Unfortunately, it got kinda rippley after it was folded up for the gift giving. I couldn't get it to lay flat again for the pictures, but I'm over it. I'm sure the baby won't be smoothing it flat to the ground every 5 seconds like I have been.



I'd like to tell you that you've seen the last of baby knits for a while, but I doubt that is true. Just looking at Cola's belly gets me pretty motivated to get knitting. And I have at least 3 more babies that deserve something special (get ready, Kara!) In the meantime, though, I am psyched to get started on my Ohio hoodie. Swatching will begin this week!

MIA but busy

So I've been MIA for the better part of April- it's mostly because I've been crafting away at all my super secret projects and can't say a thing about them until after my sister's shower. Good thing it's next weekend! I don't think I can keep this stuff in much longer.

There is one thing I can share for now, even though it is shower-related. My mom suggested that I knit something as a prize for one of the baby shower games, so I whipped up a set of dishcloths on the train.



Pattern: Lacy Round Dishcloth
Yarn: Lily Sugar & Cream
Needles: Size 5
Modification: Did a provisional cast on and then grafted together at the end instead of seaming.

This was a cute little pattern, and pretty easy to memorize. Very good for train knitting, except they seemed to cause some confusion because people here in Florida apparently don't use dishcloths. People would ask me what I was knitting and look really confused when I answered. When I explained what dishcloths were for, every single person just said, "but why don't you just use a sponge?"

We always used them growing up in Ohio, and that's where the shower is, so hopefully they will go over a little better. Just in case, I am going to package them like this:


Hopefully the Dawn will answer any question as to their utility. The presentation is actually Bryan's idea- he tied them up into that cute little flower. My boy's got talent, yo.

In post-shower news, I got Cascade 220 from the WEBS sale in the mail for my new sweater. I decided on the Cabled Hoodie from the Paton's Street Smart booklet. I'm doing a mini-KAL with Vy and I can't WAIT! Not only because I think this sweater is going to be great, but also because I think it's going to be fun to knit it at the same time as Vy and see how they both become their own versions of the pattern.