OH KNIT!

Green Fingerless Gloves

2008-06-18T01:38:00.003-04:00

Please excuse my lack of posts. I have been packing up my life and transporting it back to New York again. Now my life is here again, but with less stuff. And less free time. However, lots of time to knit. Hopefully I will have something fancy to show off by the end of the week or so.

However, I DO have something fancy to show off right now! Maddie made me these supacute fingerless gloves which are going to look fabulous with my fall jacket. You know, a little pop of color to a grey jacket.

Photos like this = my stamp of approval.

P.S. The new John Quincy Adams dollar coins look like play money. I want my Sacajewea dollars back. Sacajewea is infinitely more badass than John Quincy Adams. However, I like Metrocards better than both of these things. So I use them for more of those when the machine gives me too much change in coins.

The Knitting Fairy Visited Me!

2008-06-11T18:52:00.004-04:00

... in the form of this hat from Madeline! I loves it. Excuse the cracked-outedness of me-- I just got back from work and have a zillion things to do before I collapse for the night. As for my own knitting... it's kind of been sitting all lonely in its basket since I started work. It's hard to knit on the train without poking anyone. I'm going to have to acquire some shorter needles or something. Also, I have been reading a lot of books, so that's also been cutting into my knitting time. I'm going to try to get to Michaels this weekend to see if I can pick up some more fun stuff.

(Halp! I can't see!) There were also some short gray kitty hairs on the hat. That made me smile. Madeline completely made my day today. I shall have to get my butt in gear and send out some cool stuff soonish.

HAT!

2008-06-04T16:05:00.003-04:00

I got something special in the mail yesterday ...

It's by far the nicest thing I've gotten in the mail in a long time ... maybe ever! Wait, scratch that. When I was seven my grandparents sent me an American Girl doll bedroom set with a bed and a nightstand and shit for Christmas. That was a pretty bitching present. But this hat is ALMOST as good, which is saying a lot. THANK YOU ALEXIS!!! I'm sorry I won't be sending you anything soon ... I think I shall give the hat to someone without a wool allergy ... and make you something fuzzy and wonderful out of cotton or acrylic or some shit.

Past Knitting Projects.

2008-06-01T21:38:00.008-04:00

According to my calculations, I have been "knitting" approximately eleven years. Of course, that's bullshit. I learned the basic knit stitch when I was eight and knit two small squares of garter stitch at that time. Ten years later, I started knitting for reals. I have done a lot of projects since then ... sometimes churning out as many as three new thingies a week. You might have thought that those special productive times coincided with vacations and such, but surprisingly enough it is not so. I tend to be very productive at knitting when I am VERY busy with other crap. That's because ... well, I'm not sure why. You could become a psychologist and figure it out.

But whatever. These have been my favorite knitting projects of this year.

Favorite #1: Green Zig-Zag Hat. Hey, it's my own pattern and shit! I made it from yarn that was left over after I made an afghan. Er, started to make an afghan. It's still not officially "done," yet. That is, my mom still has to crochet it all together. Did I mention that this hat is for sale in mein Etsy shops? Well, it is, and you should buy it, for the good of your soul and such.

Favorite #2: Maine Morning Mitts. I lurve them. They're made from a pattern by Clara Parkes in "The Knitter's Book of Yarn," which is also my favorite knitting book. I have made about three pairs of these, all with lovely Noro changing-colors yarn, which is the best, FYI.

Favorite #3: Felty purses! I knitted the felt. I felted the felt. I cut and assembled the felt. I embroidered the felt. NOW WHO IS GOING TO HELP ME .... EAT THE FELT???

Favorite #4: More arm-warmers ... but I made the pattern myself! And the yarn is super soft ... cashmerino. I've made one and a half pairs of these. I just love them. I used the thumb trick for the first time in making them, and while I ... kind of botched it the first, second, and third times, I think I can do it pretty good now! Well. Pretty well.

And, hey, what is this - a picture of me making my first knitting project with my grandma back in nineteen-ninety-a-million-years-ago? Sorry - I know I've posted this on my old blog and on Facebook and such, so you've probably seen it ... unless you don't know me ... which I guess is possible ... but I can't help it. I mean, who else has photographic evidence of their first ever time knitting? Not everybody, you know. NOT EVERYBODY.

... not everybody.

Current Projects

2008-05-30T13:08:00.007-04:00

I have an inability to work on less than two projects at once. I guess it's an attention span problem, or something. Plus why aim to do, say, 10 knitting projects in three months when you can aim to do 1985343894824? It makes sense to me. I don't know why the colors suck so bad in these next pictures; they just do. You'll just have to take my word for it that they're, like, really pretty.

This is a custom Etsy order I'm making: full-length arm-warmers in the colors of fall. The yarn is Jasper 100% merino wool in worsted weight. Here's a picture of my progress and of the yarn back when it was a pupa ...

You can see the colors much better in the picture of it in its pupal state. Oh, and I should also add that this yarn is the softest yarn that is not cashmere that I have ever come across.

The next is a project that was going to be a Raspberry Rhapsody scarf from Clara Parkes' "Knitters' Book of Yarn," but the pattern was just too difficult for me (I've never done lace before). So instead I made up my own pattern. Wheee! Bitch is going to have to be blocked a LOT. It's curling up like I've never seen befo. Whatever, though, because I like blocking. I got the yarn from The Painted Tiger on Etsy; it's lace weight and yes, it is ridiculously soft.

The last project is done, yay! It's a hat I made for Alexis made of 100% organic wool made from sheeps at a farm near my house ... I just love it. The yarn is undyed and seriously, it still smells like a sheep. I know because while I was still knitting it I visited ANOTHER farm near my house, where I saw a sheep. I smelled the sheep and then I smelled the yarn, and then I let the sheep smell the yarn, and we all agreed that the yarn smells like a sheep. In a good way.

And that is it for now. It's hard thinking up stuff to knit when summer is approaching, you know? Let me know if you know of any good things to make for when it's 80 degrees out ...

Seriously.

2008-05-30T00:39:00.005-04:00

I feel like I am frogging more than I am knitting lately. I'd venture to say that I am unraveling about 1/3 of all my stitches. Anyone else have this problem? There is nothing worse than spending hours and hours on something, then unraveling the whole thing because you dropped a stitch 6 rows ago and just noticed now. Lace is so impossible to pick up stitches in in a non-obvious way. This has resulted in me taking out 23 rows of lacy (mostly) goodness that have taken me an ungodly amount of time. This was already time number two starting this pattern, and I would give up if I weren't so smitten with it. And if I wasn't convinced that it will look fabulous on Sara.

Note the "General WTF area" and my foot in the bottom right corner.

EXTREME FRUSTRATION!!

p.s. the hat from my previous post is finished! Madeline is going to have to post pictures of her modeling it of course.

My things, let me show you them.

2008-05-29T17:02:00.004-04:00

This is my blanket in progress. It's basically just two strangely shaped scarves pinned together because I don't think I'm going to sew until I'm done with all of the pieces. I've got five more of them to knit and then it'll still not be the same size as my bed... but I plan to learn and grow from this experience. At any rate, Blanket will be warm, even if not terribly attractive.

I'm also working on these. Shock of shocks, they're scarves... someday I will try something else. I swear:

The first one just needs a fringe added and I'm planning on doing something fun with it because I find it rather dull. The second one also needs its fringe finished... but the back has started to unravel and it makes me really sad because I'm not sure how to fix it. I'll probably end up doing something really ingeneous with black yarn that will be painfully obvious but save me a good deal of work.

My favorite Etsy knitters.

2008-05-29T14:20:00.008-04:00

This is a long, long list ... but I'll try to narrow it down to the very, very best. I just love looking at knitted goods on Etsy. I can't justify buying any of them, because I have to be able to tell myself that I can knit that one day. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not within the next fifty years. But someday.

First up: Cubist Literature. I love his simple, offbeat designs and choice of colors.

Second: Rosetung. One word: cowls.

Third: Year of the Goat. She has inspired designs, uses gorgeous colors, and makes her own yarn. What could be better?

Endless frogging!

2008-05-28T01:00:00.003-04:00

After hours of knitting, realizing that the yarn I was using wasn't the right weight for the needles called for by the pattern, I finally frogged the whole thing and started over with another yarn. Maybe it's time that I actually accurately follow patterns and make a swatch? I never learn.

Anyways, here is something like 8 hours of work. It's so close to being done! Foliage from Knitty, I hope you turn out pretty enough to be worth the aggravation. I have high hopes. Madeline will look supacute with this on her head!

What's in the box?

2008-05-26T12:34:00.009-04:00

I don't know how else to start off my contributions to this blog other than to root through the big old box of yarn stuffs under my bed. My stash is tragically inadequate, as are these pictures, which are blurry and hastily taken. On the other hand, the box - which I decorated myself, if you can believe it - is stunningly sexy, which makes up for everything, I think.

This is the box:

And this is the crap that is in it:

Here's a closer look at the crap. Most importantly, the BALLS:

This picture does not do justice to their lovely colors, I think. On the far left is the 880 yards of "Attitude Pink" hand-dyed lace weight merino yarn that I bought from the Painted Tiger on Etsy. I'm going to make a summer scarf with it.

The other balls are leftovers and are not particularly notable, with the exception of the white ball in the middle - that's some beautiful, undyed, organic yarn made from local sheep (no, I did not make it, but I did buy it!) - and to its right is some really soft, worsted weight Jasper yarn that I'm using to make an Etsy order (visit my shop bitches). Underneath the balls is some leftover felt that I made.

Other things:

It's a fact: someday, sometme, for something, you may need ribbon.

This fabric has bicycles.

Stitch-markers. My best friends.

Needles of all kinds and sorts. Last night I was watching a TV show about prisons and started panicking, thinking that if I ever went to prison there's no way they would let me have knitting needles because they're so weapon-y. But then I started to wonder what I would be in prison for. Then I realized it didn't matter because the thought of there being someplace where I couldn't have knitting needles was so terrifying, it overruled all logic.

The end.

Coming soon

2008-05-25T00:53:00.000-04:00

COMING SOON:
OHH KNIT! A blog of frogging and frolicking with four college students.