FO: The awesomely awesome bear hat!!!

Yes, I am super pleased with this hat!!! Could you tell? ;)





I actually finished the crocheting a couple of weeks ago, but I was worried about how the sewing would turn out. The muzzle looked a little small, and the nose looked a little large, but last night I decided to just bite the bullet and sew it. I did the muzzle first, stretched it out, pinned it on and sewed it, and it turned out fine! The ears were next (sewing the whole thing involved a few dozen trips to the mirror and back to check placement, but it was worth it), then the eyes and nose.

I think when sewing things made of bits, I get all worried, but then spend so much time checking the placement of each bit that it works out fine. Going back and forward to the mirror to check every piece was a bit of a pain, but I'm so pleased with how it turned out!

Seriously, I've been walking around the house with this hat on all last night, and the first thing I did this morning was to put it on and look at myself in the mirror. This hat makes me smile, which is what makes it so awesome! :D







I'm so excited, I can't wait till it's winter. Why does it have to be July just now *pouts pathetically and stamps foot* I want cold weather so I can wear it outside!!! :D

WIP Wednesday

This week I've been working on more than one project!! I finished last week's WIP - the lacy baktus scarf - but I still need to get pictures of it so I can write an FO post. I knit 3 rows on my willow scarf, another previous WIP Wednesday, but it's not grown enough to bother taking another picture of. Just imagine another 3 rows added onto the last pics :D

I started 2 more projects though - I seem to have a bit of a case of startitis going on, for small projects especially.

Firstly - my afterthought experiment sock.



It's just a plain 64st sock knit from the cuff down, but I'm going to put in an afterthought heel in this pair of socks. It'll be the first time I've ever done this, and I don't know if I'll like how it turns out, but if I don't it doesn't really matter. I'll wear the socks anyway, and its good to try new things once in a while. Keeps the brain fresh :)

The yarn I'm using is some kind of Opal yarn, possibly the toucan colourway, but I've lost the ballband. I got it a couple of years ago, and decided to use this one because it's the sock yarn I'm least attached to in my stash. It'll be interesting to see how those weird stripes look in a finished sock.

I've been knitting this one mostly in my bedroom, which has quite dim light, so it was surprising to take the sock into the kitchen to photograph and see all that blue! In my room, it looks gray, or even black at times!

Dim light is why I haven't finished my next project yet - my teddy bear hat.



I only have the nose and eyes to do now, but it was impossible to crochet with black yarn in my room. I just couldn't see anything, and with crochet I'm still at the stage where I need to see where I'm putting my hook all the time. So I had to put it aside last night :(

This pattern is the Teddy Bear Hat by Diane Langan. It's so cute!! I so want it for next year, so I can walk about with a teddy bear face on my head! My partner is in horror at this, it's far too weird for him, but it's my head, and I want a teddy bear face on it, dammit! :D

This is a project for the Harry Potter Knit and Crochet House Cup. I'm going to try to squish it into the Defense Aganst The Dark Arts class - reveal a truth about yourself (that I'm nuts and want a teddy bear face on my head?!) It's been in my queue for ages, so it's a good excuse to get it out of there and actually make it.

So yeah, that'll probably get finished today in the living room where there's actually some light, and the socks will just get worked on whenever I need some mindless knitting.

More FO Photos!

I have 3 FOs to show off today. My ravlery profile page is slowly being removed of all those photoless entries! :D Of course, I had to decide to catch up just when the weather is turning cold and rainy and cloudy, and the light is absolutely terrible! Typical!



This is my Simone sweater. (pattern: simone by Kristeen Griffin-Grimes, from the book "French Girl Knits". Yarn: Stylecraft Special Aran with Wool, about 500g. Needles: 4.5mm, 5mm, 5.5mm, 6mm) It's no exageration to say that I got the book specifically for this pattern, I just love it! I'm really pleased with the finished object too, except that the sleeves are a bit short (they've been pulled and tugged quite a bit to get the photo). But I figure it won't be too hard to snip above the lace, knit some rows, then graft together again.

I have to stress that I love this jumper!!!! I love the flarey sleeves and the lacey cowl neck, two things that I'm really into right now!





This is my 9 to 5 Shrug, a test crochet for Nicole Carmen. It's taken me absolutely ages to get these photos up, which I feel really bad about :< beats self over head with ball of yarn in penitence The shrug is fantastic, and the pattern is very easy to follow. My gauge was a bit off, which was totally my fault, either my gauge or much more likely, I’m a bit larger than Nicole! So I substituted trebles for doubles, and all was well :) I love this shrug, it's definitely going to get a lot of wear!




And finally, I learned a whole new knitting technique for this one, double knitting!! For the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup over on ravelry, this month's arithmancy class task was to make something showing binary. One of the options was to knit something reversible, so double knitting immediately came to mind with that one. This pattern (which is the Double Knit Headband from Knit Hats!) seemed like it had the easiest to follow instructions out of all the ones I had, so I decided to make that. I would normally have made the large size because of my huge head, but I was using thicker yarn, so I made the medium (and I liked the leaf pattern better than the ones given for the large size).

The first row where you put the front and back stitches together on the same needle was quite hard and fiddly, and so was seperating them at the end of the leaf pattern. The actual double knitting didn't go too badly, although my balls of yarn kept getting twisted round each other. I'm sure there's a tutorial somewhere for how to avoid that, but I just untwisted them at the end of each round, and it wasn't too bad. I'd like to try more double knitting, it seems like a really good technique for making these picture, almost intarsia-like, images on a thick warm fabric. And I'm counting this towards my Year of Colour, as it's a colourwork technique! :D

And now after all that, here's funny pictures of Tupac wearing my headband :D He normally hates wearing anything knitted, but he doesn't seem to mind this. Especially if he's being bribed with a treat for posing!

Harry Potter Knitting

I found this fab group on ravelry, the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup, and it is so much fun! The basic premise is that it's like in the books, you're basically roleplaying that you're at Hogwarts, you get sorted into a house and everything (I'm in Ravenclaw, yay!) Then at the beginning of the month, new classes are posted. The classes are like those in the books, such as Defense Against The Dark Arts etc, and you get given a task along the theme of that class. It's basically a creativity exercise where they give you an idea, and you run with it. Then, when you start and finish your project, you get points for your house, and at the end of the term, hopefully your house will have the most points!

I've had so much fun this month, because it's given me a chance to just let my creativity run free (along Harry Potter themed lines, of course). I participated in 4 of the 6 classes.



This is the first project I created, for the Arithmancy class. The task was to make something that demonstrated the golden ratio. Pentagons do this, with the length of their diagonal being approx 1.6 times the length of the side. So I found a pentagon pattern on ravelry (the Pretty Pentagon Mini-Washcloth by Hallie Madhoun), and started crocheting some to make into a bag. I discovered while doing this that pentagons apparantly do not lie flat when you sew them together, unlike hexagons. That explains why they're not used so often in patterns, at least. And of course, I learned all about the golden ratio, and fibonacci numbers. So it was fun and educational :)



This was my project for Defense Against The Dark Arts. The task was to make something protective. This was protective against the ribbon yarn in my stash (I ripped out a charity shop sweater, not realised that you can't really rip out ribbon yarn without it looking like chewed spaghetti), it's protective for the environment as I won't need plastic bags, and my house is protected from all those plastic bags cluttering it up! The pattern is the Japanese Blossom Handbag by Mimoknits.



This is my version of the Stargate Fair Isle hat by Carol Schoenfelder. This was for Muggle Studies, where we had to make something based on a show that "muggles" would watch on television. I adapted the pattern, basically just used the charts for the zigzags and the stargate address symbols on a basic hat pattern. It's not the prettiest colourwork that I've done, because there's really too much space between some of the strands, but I like it :)




This is my favourite of the projects, I think. It's for the Ancient Runes class, where the task was to knit something monogrammed. I saw the word "runes" though, and went with that. I looked runes up on wikipedia, and found out that medieval runes correspond with the alphabet (more or less), so I picked out my initials, and duplicate stitched them onto a pair of socks knit in ravenclaw coloured yarn. I had to learn how to duplicate stitch for this project, and I absolutely love this technique now! I can totally see much more duplicate stitching in my knitting future! It's almost magical, how you weave the yarn in and out of the stitches, and it looks like the colour has been knitted in :)

This month in the HPKCHC was fun, and it got me back into doing some colourwork, which I'd kind of neglected for a while. The Year of Colour continues!! :D Plus I learned a whole new technique, and a mathmatical theory (I've been boring everyone I know IRL with facts about the golden ratio, and pointing out golden spirals to them!) I totally had to quickly upload my photos today to claim my points though, cos the new classes go up in June. I can't wait to see what they are!!

Obsession...

I have a new favourite pattern of the moment :)








Pattern: Peaked Slouch by Zuleika Lambe (rav link, buy pattern link

Seriously, I cannot impress upon you all how much I love this pattern! I've barely had the jamaican striped one off of my head since I made it!

I became obsessed with making this pattern after I saw Zu's jamaican tam come up on ravelry, and needed to have one just.like.it! It's so cool!

I made a couple of mods, just added one extra row in the working straight section, and did stripes on what would have been 10-12 (11-13 since I added one in grey) after asking the designer exactly where she had placed her stripes :) My hat did have to be the same, after all! I also added decreases on the first sc row, and made the brim using a 4mm hook to make it more solid ( Ihad to add a couple of rows to compensate for smaller size).

This pattern is so fast and fun to make! I made those two yesterday, and I've become a bit addicted :) They're excellent stash busters too, cos the stripes can go anywhere (so many ideas in my head just now, it's not even funny!)

Norwegian Star Hat

Project 2 in the Year Of Colour!!



It's the Norwegian Star Hat by Stephanie Taylor. I chose it because it had a more complicated chart, actually knitting something recognisable as a pattern, but the chart wasn't too big, 16sts by 15 rows, I think, so it was totally manageable.

It knit up so fast! I started yesterday and I would have been finished yesterday except I had to rip back to before the decreases and add 5 more rows in black to make it a bit longer. I have a huge head! :D

I totally love, love, love this hat. I was staring at it in the mirror for ages just marvelling at the fact that I knit that pattern! Those blue stars, I knit them! And even though I had to strand across 5 sts at a time sometimes, my stranding looks pretty regular.



I'm so chuffed. Eventually I had to be told to calm down because I was getting a little manic about what is essentially just a hat :) But I totally love this colourwork thing. I just have to decide what to make next :)

First FO of the Year of Colour!

I finished my Stripey hat!

I love it! I can't quite believe that I managed to complete a project in stranded colourwork! I'm so proud of myself right now :D

I thought it was going to be too small when I cast it off, but I gave it a good steam-blocking, and it fits fine now. I recently discovered the magic of steam-blocking hats, and it's wonderful. I put my hat over a pyrex bowl, and just blast the iron at it. I generally don't put the iron straight on it, unless maybe it just needs an extra flattening, and then only for a second. I did that for the top of this hat, because it was a bit pointy before blocking, and it made it so much nicer. The strands at the back got much neater and straighter too with the steaming.

As an aside, like my new head? :) I blagged it off my Dad when I went to my parents' house at Christmas time. It was just sitting in a corner anyway :D Now it only takes a second to take pics of finished hats, and I don't have to harangue any
one else into taking pics, then not having them turn out the way I would have taken them. Now all I need is a fake leg like Cookie A takes all her sock photos on, and I'll be set!

Back To The Beginning

I had to rip :(

My gauge was too tight, I had a whole extra stitch to the inch. I tried it on, and it did go round my head, but it was very tight, and I don't think it would really have worked. I was trying to convince myself that it would all work out when I blocked it, but then I reminded myself that "it's only knitting" and ripped it all the way back to the beginning to start again.

I suppose it's only to be expected that my gauge would be different as I'm doing something new. Apparently I knit super tight just now, but I'm sure it'll even out in time. In the meantime, I went up to 4.5mm needles, and just started again. It looks much more like the correct size now :) But 4.5mm needles for DK weight yarn just seems insane to me on some level! :D

The knitting also went much faster the second time around. I think I'm getting (!) used to this type of knitting, and I'm still super excited about it. Trying the little band that I had made on also made me excited about the hat when it's finished, I think the colours go together quite well. So, even though I had a sad face at the beginning of this post, I'm not really sad at all.

One thing for anyone else out there trying stranded knitting - if you have to rip back to the start, do it one row at a time! The two yarns get very tangled up if you try to pull out about ten rows then wind it back onto the ball. I would tell you to ask me how I know, but I think you can imagine ;) It was not pretty!!!

Look! I Can Do It!

Well, after much humming and hawing, and procrastinating, I finally bit the bullet and just started my Stripey hat. And I can do this stranded colour thing!!! It took me 2 hours to do 7 rows, right enough, and my left hand hurt a bit afterwards, but I did it!

Photos! :




I'm using the leftover burgundy yarn from my Mariah sweater, and some unknown black yarn from my stash. It feels like it might be a wool blend. I figured I hand wash most of my knits anyway, so it shouldn't matter if the yarns are slightly different. It took me ages to decide which colour to substitute for the blue and gray of the original pattern. Maybe that's why I was so anxious about knitting with more than one colour, because I'm scared I'll choose a sucky colour combination. Eventually I decided the burgundy would be the blue, and the black would be the gray, so that the hat will have the burgundy at the top, and not be mainly black, which I was tempted to do for the safety factor - black goes with anything, and would look good as the main colour for just about anything as well. But I stepped out of my comfort zone, and chose to use the burgundy as the main one.

I'm not sure if I'm doing it "right" - I just jumped in without watching any videos or anything because I didn't want to confuse myself immediately. My stitches look correct anyway, they're not twisted or anything, and that's more important to me than if I'm doing it "right". I'm using one colour in each hand, holding the left-hand yarn like I would hold my yarn in crochet. My left hand is tenser than in crochet, trying to keep the tension, which is why it hurt a little after the two hours. I just decided to take a break after noticing it hurting, and I'll need to find another knit project to work on in between times doing stranded knitting, I think, at least until my hand gets used to the unfamiliar motion, and stops tensing up so much. I don't want to injure myself! :D

I'm totally excited about stranded knitting, now that I've jumped in and started. I keep looking at patterns (not knitting patterns, just patterns I see around me) and thinking "oh, that could be knit!" And I've got a feeling my rav queue is going to grow even more !

My First Colourwork of 2009!

Well, I've finished the secret project (the knitting part anyway!), so I have permission from myself both to play video games, and to knit something fun where the pattern is all laid out for me. :)

I haven't started it yet (Breath of Fire called me first!) but I'm going to start it later today - Stripey by Torirot. It looks like a good beginner project as the stripes go straight up without moving around, so I think (!) I'll be able to keep track of what I'm doing!

It's ridiculous that I actually feel a little anxious thinking about doing colourwork. I mean, it's only knitting! Even if I totally mess it up, which I probably won't, it can always be ripped back and redone. I think I've just built it up in my head to be something more impossible than it actually is. The silliness of my "fear" is what's driving the Year of Colour. Plus there's all these great patterns out there, and I was holding myself back because I thought I wouldn't be good enough at it. Very silly.

So I'm very excited about making this hat! I suppose I'd better get my butt off of the computer (and away from those time-sucking video games) and actually knit it, eh? :D

Arka Hat and Mittens Pattern Up!!!!!!

Yay! The pattern for these mittens and the hat is up on The Inside Loop, here.

I was so excited when it went up this morning, I was planning to spend all day refreshing the page to see when it came up, then it was up at 8 in the morning!

This issue of The Inside Loop is fab, and no, not just cos it has my pattern in! There are a ton of other great patterns too, and some really interesting articles. I particularly liked the article on photographing knits and yarn. It's something I need to work on and this article is super helpful! The whole magazine is great, a whole bunch of the patterns got queued!

Kate and Diane did a really great job putting this magazine together. Thank you to both, they totally deserve a rest and lot of chocolate now! Go and check it out, if you haven't already! :D

Many, many FOs!

I've been busy since my last post! I seem to have lost all concentration ability for large projects (must be something to do with spring coming), so I've been making a lot of small things. It's been good, cos I feel much more productive when I finish many small things. I'm sure I'll get back to Stargazer at some point (all it needs is a band round the middle, and sewed up, but I just can't do it!), but till then I guess I'll be trying to get some of the little projects out of my queue (778 items in my ravelry queue now, and it seems to grow every day!)

I'm going to try something new here, and link to my flickr pictures. Blogger takes forever to upload, and since I already have to upload them to flickr for ravelry, there doesn't seem much point in uploading twice. So here goes:



The 3am Cable Hat, by SmarieK. A really fast, fun knit made from some blue wool that I found in the stash.




These are zill mufflers, the pattern came from www.shira.net My dog, and no doubt my neighbours too, get annoyed if I try to practice playing my zills in the house uncovered. Tupac still doesn't like the muffled zills, but it's more of an annoyed not liking, than a terrified running away, which is much better. I made the purple ones first, then realised they are a fantastic project for using up little balls of leftovers. One tiny ball made 3 sets of the green zill mufflers, so I gave some to my friends in my dance class. We're learning zills in both egyptian belly dance and tribal. I also made a bag to keep my zills in:



This is the Jamaica pouch from 101 one skein wonders. I made mine a little smaller by omitting one repeat, as it only needed to be that size to fit my zills in.



This is the Cabled Baglet from 101 designer one skein wonders. I actually used a couple of the books I have! This turned out really well, but the patten in the book is wrong, so if you're going to make it, go to the errata page first. (link takes you to a pdf) I have a whole rant about books and errata, but I'll save it for another day :) You can already see some of it on the project page for this on ravelry. But the bag is nice, and I use it as a project bag for my portable projects.

Lastly, some monkey socks:



This is the pattern I use when I want to try out a new yarn for socks. This yarn is one I got off ebay, Rennie pure wool, a huge 900g cone of it. It's really good for socks, nice and cosy, and washes up soft.

I'm still making some small projects, but I'll put them in another post tomorrow. Linking the pics from flickr is much faster, but this has still been a long post. C u again soon with more FOs!

More Baby Knitting

I made some hats for my cousin's baby, who was born healthy on last Sunday! Yay!



I used two patterns in the making of these - the tinkerbell hat pattern (the one with the crown in my photo), and this beanie pattern. I changed this pattern a bit - cast on 80 sts instead of 92, and then I used this formula for making the larger one - same pattern just with bigger yarn and needles. I've no idea what the yarn was, it was just in the stash, and is now gone! Yippee!

So that's my baby knitting done for a while. The sproglet has loads of clothes given as gifts from various people, plus what my cousin bought herself, so I don't think she'll need any more for quite a while! There's another baby due, but that's in the bf's family, and frankly I can't be bothered making the effort knitting for it. I think my cousin will appreciate the hats and other knitting, whereas I don't think the other soon-to-be-parents would. So I'll just buy them something instead. I'm too busy knitting for myself!

Scheherazade is finished but not blocked. I cast on for the celtic knot stole, but then realised I'd made a mistake about 20 rows ago, and threw it in a corner, where it is ahem, 'resting'. I cast on for that one so quick cos I had to go to my parents' house overnight (when I also dropped off all the baby knitting), and I have this weird fear that if I leave the house on a big journey and don't have anything on the needles, then I won't be coming back. Weird, I know. So, the celtic knot stole was the thing I cast on to ensure my survival on the trip. God, writing that makes me sound so weird, but I guess everyone has theire little quirks, right? Right? (looks round to see everyone backing away slowly)

The End of the Endless Ribbing (at last!)

Yay! The jumper is complete!



After that I tried to cast on for the jumper I was going to do for the Fall Cable KAL , but that didn't turn out too good. I don't think the yarn is right for the pattern so it got frogged. I think I'm just going to do lots of small projects instead. After the bf's jumper I'm in the mood for small, quick knits. Speaking of which:





The first one is Jackyll&Hide from the latest Knitty. I knit this cos I like the way it looks as a hat, but it's pretty cool that it folds down into the mask. Should make for an interesting talking point when I'm wearing it, lol! It knit quite fast, only 3 days.

The 2nd is the Aran Tam, form One Skein Wonders. This also knit super fast - only one day for this, and I'm now working on the Yorkshire Tweed Beret from the same book. This is actually the first pattern I've knit from this book. There is errata for the pattern, but it's just a case of an extra knit stitch being placed in rows 7 and 8. You'll know it if you knit the pattern, it just obviously shouldn't be there. I really like this hat, and may knit more, who knows?

I seem to have become obsessed with knitting hats - must be winter coming on!

Finished Objects!

I haven't posted for a while, but I have been busy. I finished the bi-directional vest:



I like it. It has an interesting construction - you knit the centre panel first, then pick up and knit out to the sides. You do this for both front and back, so they're both the same, then pick up and knit round the neckline, hem, and armholes. It's all in straight lines, which is good. It knit up fast, and was good practice at picking up stitches. I had to rip out the side bits though and knit them in a smaller size cos I made it too big first time. I made it in the size I normally make, but it was too big so I had to make it a size smaller. Must be something about negative ease, or something, but I can't be bothered thinking too much about it just now. When I finally got it to the right size, I liked it. I did have to rip out the scarf I had made previously in that yarn though, cos I ran out, and just couldn't wait till I could find more.

I also made a hat:



I love it! It's from this pattern (I've been manically going through the crystal palace yarns free patterns page, in case you hadn't guessed!). The yarn is Sirdar Valentino, and it took a ball and a half. I made it a bit longer than the pattern called for, I must have a big head or something, knitted hat patterns always come out too short on me. I like hats to at least reach my ears, ideally to cover them. It gets cold here in winter! So instead of 7 inches like the pattern said, it was more like 9. I've been looking for a rolled brim pattern for this yarn for AGES, since I bought it. It just screamed out to me that it wanted to be a rolled brim hat, and this pattern was perfect for it. All the other patterns I could find were for different gauges, but this yarn substituted quite well for the one in the pattern.

And . . . the mystery stole is blocking!



At last. Tomorrow, I promise I will sew it together. No more procrastinating.