i am a butterfly…

Posts Tagged ‘knitting’

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week may be officially over, but I’m still plugging away. This is the topic for Day 4:

Is there a skill related to your hobby that you hope to learn one day? maybe you’re a crocheter who’d also like to knit? Maybe you’d like to learn to knit continental, knit backwards, try cables or attempt stranded colourwork. TAGGING CODE: knitcroblo4

This one is easy: I want to improve my crochet skills beyond the rudimentary. I’ve mentioned before that my paternal great-grandmother was an avid crocheter. Because of that, I sort of feel like crochet is a family tradition, one I’d like to carry on.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t plan to crochet many things similar to what she used to crochet. Grandma S’s most prolific pattern was the crocheted toilet paper doll. Holy wow, she had those thing everywhere. As a child, I loved them. Now… not so much. I admit that I would like to crochet just one of them, though. Just for sentimental purposes. The only reason I haven’t tried it so far is that I’ve never been able to find a pattern for them that looks like Grandma S’s crochet toilet paper dolls. All of them seem to have southern belle type skirts, but I’m looking for one where the skirt is more of a cylinder, just like a roll of toilet paper.

The big thing I’d like to pick up in crochet is granny squares. I’m just mad for them. They have a yucky, 1970’s acrylic stigma attached to them, but when I see things like this or this, I want to pull out my meager supply of hooks and cast on immediately. (Can I even say cast on for crochet? What’s it called when you start a new piece?) An airy, lightweight granny square throw in some fuzzy, laceweight mohair yarn? Yes, please.

One day, I’ll turn my mind to learning this.

Pattern: February Baby Sweater
Source: Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac
Yarn: KnitPicks Simply Cotton Organic Sport
Colors: Malted Milk w/ Ginger trim
Needles: US4

I love this little sweater so much! It was just shipped off to its recipient yesterday, so it will be waiting for her when she makes her big arrival.

I made a few small changes to the pattern to personalize it. For the tie closure, I just used a yo k2tog tow to create eyelets and then threaded a contrasting color  icord through them.

The cuff edging is a basic crochet shell edging. I really stretched my crochet skills here with such fancy stitchwork.

The rest of the sweater is edged in a simple single crochet edging, in the same contrasting color.

Yes, I somehow managed to screw up garter stitch. That little mistake is a lot more glaring than I thought it would be, but I’m mostly okay with it. I’m going with the idea that it was a purposeful mistake because only the gods can create perfection. Yeah, that’s it.

The great thing about cotton yarn is that it’s machine washable and dryable.  For babies, that’s essential, so this organic, undyed cotton seemed like a perfect choice. It will only get softer with washing.

I love how this turned out, and I can’t wait to see photos of Baby C wearing it. If I could change one thing, though, it would have been to knit it in DK instead of sport weight yarn. It ended up super tiny, so she won’t get to wear it for very long, sadly. That’s alright, though, because I’ll just have to knit her a bigger one as she grows.

My day 3 post for Knitting and Crochet Blog Week, and I’m amazed that I’m still going! A post every day for three days? It’s a miracle.

Write about a knitter whose work (whether because of project choice, photography, styling, scale of projects, stash, etc) you enjoy. If they have an enjoyable blog, you might find it a good opportunity to send a smile their way. TAGGING CODE: knitcroblo3

This is an easy answer for me: Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed. His work almost always makes me swoon. Whether it’s one of his own designs or a classic pattern that he knit with his own style, I just love everything he produces. From his yarn choices, to his color choices, to his photography… I love it all. Even better, he designs so many great patterns for men, which is hard to find most of the time.

Several of my favorite knitted pieces are Jared Flood designs. My favorite, to date, is the Noro Striped Scarf:

I loved this so much I knit two of them, one for Scott and one for me. It was only because I ran out of Noro that I stopped knitting at two. I plan to knit more of them in different colorways.

Two of my favorite hats are also Jared Flood designs:

The blue one is Habitat, knit for Scott. The pink and brown one is Koolhaas, knit for me. I haven’t worn mine anywhere yet except out to play in the snow in the park, but Scott gets so many compliments on his Habitat. I plan to knit at least two more of those, one each for me and Scott, both in Noro. Koolhaas is another pattern I plan to knit again, also in Noro.

I’m normally all about new. It’s a rare book or movie that makes me want to read or see it more than once, and I feel the same way about knitting patterns. The fact that I want to knit these patterns again says a lot about them and about their designer. And these three are just the beginning. There are so many more of his patterns I want to try, including the ones in his book, Made In Brooklyn. Without a doubt, he’s my choice for “one great knitter.”

Let’s call this Day 2 of Knit and Crochet Blog Week. Yeah. My week starts on Wednesday. That’s my story.

Blog about a pattern or project which you aspire to. Whether it happens to be because the skills needed are ones which you have not yet acquired, or just because it seems like a huge undertaking of time and dedication, most people feel they still have something to aspire to in their craft. If you don’t feel like you have any left of the mountain of learning yet to climb, say so! TAGGING CODE: knitcroblo2

I consider myself to be a fairly fearless knitter. There’s very little I won’t at least try. I mean, the worst that could happen is that I have to frog, right? The only thing I really think I’ll never do is steeks, because… whoa. That’s just scary. You can’t frog out a steeking disaster. So steeking isn’t something I aspire to. No.

Right now, I think the pattern I aspire to the most is the Yggdrasil Afghan. I am absolutely in love with that blanket. All those cables! Cables are quite possibly my favorite thing in knitting, which makes Yggdrasil even more appealing. What keeps me from starting that pattern is the huge investment in yarn and time required for an afghan that size. No matter how much I love it, I fear it will languish half-done in my UFO pile for years. And the financial outlay for that much yarn is intimidating. The only other afghan I’ve knit was Lizard Ridge, for which I was able to buy yarn on a skein by skein basis. $12 here and there for a skein of Noro is no big deal. 1000-4000 yards of the same yarn all at once is a different story.

I will knit this pattern, though. Some day when things are more calm and I have more time. In the meantime, though, I may come up with a new inspirational pattern. Who knows? That’s one of the things I like most about knitting: what I love is constantly changing.

I’m a little late to this party*, but I still wanted to play, so I am.  This week is Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. Each day for this week** bloggers are invited to write about a specific topic pertaining to knitting/crocheting. This is Monday’s topic, but let’s just call it Day 1.

How and when did you begin knitting/crocheting? was it a skill passed down through generations of your family, or something you learned from Knitting For Dummies? What or who made you pick up the needles/hook for the first time? Was it the celebrity knitting ‘trend’ or your great aunt Hilda? TAGGING CODE: knitcroblo1

I remember my maternal grandmother (Mom-mom) and paternal great-grandmother (Grandma S) as being prolific crocheters, though thinking back I think Mom-Mom may have been a knitter. There’s one particular afghan she made that I’m sure had bobbles all over it, and I don’t think you can do bobbles with crochet.*** Grandma S did try to teach me to crochet as a small child, but I was never that into it. I picked up some basics like chaining and single crochets, but I was far more interested in my grandmother’s sewing machine**** and didn’t really like to crochet.

These days, I’m much more interested in learning to crochet that I was when I was five, but because of that early indifference, what little I know about crochet is entirely self-taught. My true passion, though, is knitting. Knitting and I had a rocky start that began in college. There was a small yarn store in my tiny little college town, and I wandered in there one day, drawn by all the colors. For some reason, I decided I would only knit with cotton, so I loaded myself up with brightly colored skeins of Sugar n’ Cream cotton and a pair of needles and set out to learn. This was well before the Internet, so I must have also bought a book or something, but I don’t remember. It’s possible that I just decided to learn from the ball band.

As you might imagine, the combination of cotton yarn and lack of resources to really learn what to do was enough to make that first venture short-lived. Over the years I tried several times to pick it up again, but it never lasted. I still had that stubborn insistence that I was going to knit with cotton and only cotton, and that made learning to knit really hard. Between the dryness, the slipperiness, and how hard it was on my hands, I never got far. I honestly don’t know what the hell I was thinking or why I thought it had to be cotton or nothing.

About four-and-a-half years ago, though, something changed.  I decided, once again, to try learning to knit. Once again, I stubbornly picked up Sugar n’ Cram cotton with which to do it. This time, though, I had the Web and several different sites to teach me how to knit. It still wasn’t easy, but something just… clicked. I suddenly got it, and suddenly I was loving knitting. Then I discovered alpaca and it was all over for me. Once I discovered that soft, wonderful fiber and the pleasure that could be found in knitting with something like that****, I was done for. Knitting suddenly became a passion.

And it still is a passion, several years later. I am so happy that this time, it took. The enjoyment I get out of knitting can’t be measured, but it brings so much delight. Now, I can’t imagine not knitting.

* So what else is new, right? Late is my middle name!

** Or for this week plus some, for those of us who are always late to things.

*** I could be wrong; I know very little about crochet.

*** Though, I still couldn’t sew to save my life, so that didn’t work out very well.

**** Not to mention the pleasure that can be had by keeping a ball of it on my desk to pet once in a while.

22/31 – Spotted on the subway. Caprica turned out to be pretty good. I look forward to this week’s episode. I can’t believe they made Eric Stoltz say a line about someone feeling the sun on her face, though. That gave me a giggle.

23/31 – Knitting catnip mice is my new obsession. They’re quick and easy and use up all the little bits of worsted I have lying around, and Xena isn’t complaining.

25(-1)/31 – Yes, I missed a day, but I don’t care. The fact that I’ve made it this far is a small miracle.

Hair color and laundry detergent, that about sums up Tuesday. I’m not really happy with the color, though. I switched from my usual Feria because it doesn’t cover grey very well. This color was meant to be dark golden brown, which I think is pretty close to my real color (which I haven’t seen since 1989), but it has really red highlights. I don’t like red highlights, they really wash out my skin tone.

The beginning of Koolhaas, in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Multi. The color changes are creating a sort of striped spiral effect. I wasn’t sure I liked it at first, but it’s growing on me.

Pattern: Cross Diamonds – The Harmony Guides: Cables & Arans
Yarn: KnitPicks City Tweed HW
Color: Cottontail
Needles: US 9 KnitPick Harmony

As I wracked my brain trying to figure out what to buy for an 80-year-old man I don’t know anything about, other than that he used to work for the railroad, it occurred to me that a handknit scarf might be the way to go. Especially when I had already knit a shawl for his wife, aka Scott’s mother. So I turned to one of my trusty stitch dictionaries and chose a simple-to-knit cable pattern.

Halfway through, I got lazy and switched to a wide rib. Yeah, I know. But it actually looked really good. There was something about the diamond cables merging into the wide ribs that makes me think of an Art Deco pattern. I think I’m going to knit this again, but next time I’ll stagger the beginning of the ribbing so that it begins in a triangle, which I think will make it feel even more Art Deco.

I made one change in the stitch pattern for the cables, which was to change the C4B on row 9 to C4F. That changed the crossovers on the middle diamond, which made the cables look more woven together instead of just laying on top of each other.

This was a super easy scarf with great results. It did seem to take a lot longer to knit than it should have, but I think I wasn’t spending enough time knitting. And the City Tweed! Oh wow do I love this yarn. Scott’s definitely getting a few accessories knit out of this stuff.

The scarf was extremely well-received by its recipient, as was the shawl by Scott’s mother. I’m so happy these gifts were successful.

A list for today, in no particular order.

• I woke up with a pounding sinus headache this morning and took some Excedrin then went back to sleep on the couch. The headache is still there, but the pills built a little wall around it. It may break through the wall soon.
• Sinus headache is what I said, but I think it’s also partly a stress headache. Life has been feeling really chaotic lately and that’s making me stressed and anxious. The fact that Krismas is looming so near isn’t helping.
• On the positive side, a project that was meant to launch on January 4 has been pushed back to at least January 25. Moving that deadline did a lot to lessen my anxiety.
• Also on the positive side, the tree is up and the wreath is on the door. Once the tree is decorated and all the boxes are out of the living room, my stress level should drop considerably.
• Most of my shopping is done, though I still need to finish the scarf for my mother-in-law’s husband. I really can’t believe how long this simple scarf is taking to knit. It needs to be finished today, too, so it can have a nice bath and have time to dry in time to be wrapped and shipped on Saturday. That’s causing a bit of stress, let me tell you.
• We took all our change to a Coinstar machine last night and made 60 bucks. That’s like found money.
• The search for pine garland is ongoing. Pine garland is a necessity for draping the living room archway, since we have a fake tree. I need the pine garland to offset the fake and make pretty smells in the house. It’s hard to find around here if you don’t get it really early.
• Being stressed and anxious was making me think that it was too late to decorate this year, which Scott convinced me was silly. He’s right. Though the decorating is adding to my stress level, it will be better when it’s done. And then I can sit in my living room with my pretty tree and the lights in the windows and the smell of pine in the air and drink (wine, beer, bourbon… something), and then I’ll feel happy about the holiday season.
• Monday is the Winter Solstice. Scott took the day off and that’s when we’ll have a big holiday meal. Roast pork and cranberry sauce, most likely. Yum.
• I think we need to start sending out holiday cards again. I got sick of doing it a few years ago and stopped, which has caused us to be dropped from a lot of people’s lists, I think. Either that, or everyone else is getting sick of sending them, too. If that’s the case, I can hardly blame them. It’s a pain.

Okay, that’s all I have for you today. A long list of mostly complaints. T’is the season!

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl ~ Interweave Knits, Fall 2006
Yarn: KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud Lace Yarn ~ Peppermint Heather
Needles: 3.5mm KnitPicks metal circular

Done! It had a good soak and spent some time blocking, and it is spectacular, if I do say so myself.

I was really surprised when the yen to knit a lace shawl came upon me. Much like the surprise I felt when I first decided to knit a pair of socks. Those were two things, I originally told myself, I would never be interested in knitting. And like the socks before it, I found that I loved knitting lace. Now I want to knit more lace, and soon.

Even with the purl 5 togethers for the nupps, this was a fairly easy pattern to knit. You probably wouldn’t know it from all the complaining I did about having to rip back to the lifeline, because I had to do that a lot. Once I got into the groove of it, though, I had to rip back less and less often. The lifelines were an absolute MUST, however, and I will never consider knitting lace without using them. I say “them” because eventually I started using 3 lifelines, spaced every 2 or 4 rows. It made me feel more secure.

One thing I learned was why lace knitters insist on super sharp needles. While the KnitPicks needles I used were sharp, I often found myself wishing they were even sharper. So if this is something I plan to continue doing, and it is, I think I need to invest in some Addis.

Overall, I’m exceptionally pleased with and proud of this piece. I hope Scott’s mother appreciates it and loves it as much as I do.