[Last Minute Gift!] Warm and Cozy Socks

Here’s a quick and easy pattern for some very warm house-socks for your favorite guy (I say guy because they are sized for a man’s foot – US size 10 1/2 – 12). They only take a few hours to knit, so are perfect for a last minute gift!  I used Encore worsted (doubled) to ensure that they could take some abuse (or at least washing).  They’re worked from the toe up and are a quick way to try out Judy’s magic cast on (my favorite for toe-up socks) and a toe up heel flap.

I’ve also worked out a little trick to eliminate the hole at the gusset/heel flap join.  I can’t guarantee that this method is original, only that my pictures are!  If you give it a try, let me know what you think and if it worked for you.  To set up the join, leave the final gusset stitch unworked until you have begun working in the round.  This method decreases the last gusset stitch backwards, so that you are knitting in the round and can close up the final gap between gusset and heel flap.  [If this doesn't make sense, it might help to take a look at the pattern]

One: after knitting the last gusset stitch, pick up one leg of horizontal stitch from previous row

Two: twist picked up stitch and place on left needle

Three: place previously knitted stitch on left needle

Four: pass picked up stitch and last heel flap stitch over knitted stitch

As far as the pattern goes – it hasn’t been tech edited and has only been knitted by me, so please let me know if you find any mistakes!

Traveling Woman

Here’s another project started over the Thanksgiving holiday in Chicago (wow, it’s almost Christmas and I’m talking about Thanksgiving still – I need to get with the program). Did I mention that Sasha’s mom and I went to 5 yarn stores over two days? It was awesome, and I managed to get my hands on some Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Peppergrass for another Liz Abinante project – her little shawl Traveling Woman. This one is based on Angela Montenegro of Bones, and it was the perfect excuse to buy new yarn.  The funny thing that happened on the second day of yarn shopping (after I had already bought my Mountain Colors), was that we walked into Sasha’s mom’s LYS and were almost immediately handed the same pattern by one of her knitting guild members!  Man, when a pattern is on a roll, you start seeing it everywhere you look!

I started the shawl on the last night of our Chicago visit (Tuesday) and had it finished by Saturday.  This actually is sort of a longer-than-normal-fingering-weight-shawl-knitting-time for me, but remember that there were almost two whole days of visiting family, eating pie, and playing hide and seek with little kiddos that seriously cut into my knitting time.

The pattern is a simple triangular shawl, stockinette at the start and then blooming into a fishtail lace pattern.  For the lace section you stop working the center increases, which leads to a nicely rounded shape that I really like.  The edging is dainty and open, and you can pull it out into little peaks during blocking for a pretty finished edge.

I made my shawl larger than the pattern called for.  Specifically, I knit the stockinette increase section to 187 stitches (so that I could add two repeats of the lace pattern).  I knitted Chart A four times and Chart B once.  I really liked Chart B (the edging) – I think the pattern mimicked the fishtail lace nicely, but created a pretty, open edge.

Let’s here it for Liz, and let’s hope she comes out with some more interesting little patterns soon!

Happy 100th, Margot!

Margot reached 100 projects on Ravelry today! And assuming that some people who aren’t on Ravelry also made Margot, that means that there are something like over 100 Margots out there in the world!  Whoa!

If you are on Ravelry, take a look at all of the beautiful projects!

Art de Chiot

That’s “Puppy Art” in French (thanks babelfish!, much better than my first attempt – Art d’Pup), and, as promised in a previous post, I’m here to share the “art” created by me and Hugo for Sasha! As I think I mentioned before, this project was inspired by an idea over on younghouselove.com (ok, more than inspired – copied from).  Hugo’s paws were central to the piece, and he was happy to use them – aww, what a handsome artist!

The basic idea is a blank canvas + some washable paint + your doggie’s paws = custom puppy art. Hugo and I worked on this outside on the patio, where I put down a big trash bag for the “painting” to take place on. My first thought was to have Hugo walk through the paint and then onto the canvas, leaving realistic doggie tracks along the way. This plan was unfortunately foiled by the fact that Hugo only wants to walk in any direction other than the way you want him to go. This setback led to a wonderful innovative technique that I’m thinking about patenting – I call it the puppy stamp. Not to go too far into the technical details, let’s suffice it to say it involves picking your pup up by the undercarriage, stamping his front paws into the puddle of paint, then stamping the canvas. After the “painting” was done, I immediately washed the paint off of Hugo’s paws before he got a chance to lick it off. And voila! I present Art de Chiot by Hugo:

I really love the results; the “painting” looks abstract but we can still tell that it is little Hugo foot prints.I think it is a lovely addition to the pictures of Hugo that I just framed, and it was a really fun project to do and then explain!  I would definitely recommend this as a fun way to create adorable pet-centric art for the home!

Leafy McLeafleaf (or, Portland)

Since I was traveling last week, I had to bring along a small project to work on the plane ride(s) and in-between visiting with family and friends. Owing to my nature (as a last minute packer), I didn’t really plan ahead and had to comb through the stash and Ravelry to find an appropriate project the night before departure. I came across this adorable pattern – Saroyan by Liz Abinante. As I mentioned before, I decided to knit up this little scarf in my Peacock ShibuiKnits Baby Alpaca which was acquired while in Portland for E’s wedding.

I think this pattern is really very pretty and that it looks especially nice in a slightly variegated green yarn.  The leaf repeat is fairly easy to memorize after working a few, and I love patterns where I can complete little milestones along the way (one leaf, two leaf, three leaf . . . ).  I decided that I wanted to make a really long scarf using all of my yarn, and that I wanted to make the transition between the increasing/decreasing sections and the straight section more gradual.  The details: I worked 7 repeats of the increase section as instructed in the pattern and then one repeat increasing only on the first, seventh and thirteenth rows. I worked straight for 20 leaf repeats and then mirrored my increase section for the decrease section.  The only other minor change was to not work the “stem” on the final leaf.  My lovely scarf ended up being a little over 8 feet long and I only had a tiny bit of yarn left over.

After being knit, my leaves looked quite wilted and wanted to curl up and disappear.  The rest of the scarf was also curling (what can you expect from stockinette after all), so I decided to use a damp washcloth and iron the thing!  I got wonderful flat results, with perfectly planar leaves and lovely regular stitches.

While I was knitting away on this project, Sasha’s mom decided she liked the pattern and started on her own.  She was wanting more of a shawl and decided to increase more for a wider straight section and also work short rows at the shoulder so that the scarf/shawl/stole? would lay nicely.  So there you have it – from the same pattern a long, gradually widening scarf and a wide shawl with shoulder shaping.  I love all of the different ways different knitters can use the same pattern!  Oh, and did I mention that the pattern is one in a series based on one of my favorite shows, Bones?  Perfect!

Giving Thanks

I’m going to be out of pocket for a little while visiting family for the holiday, but I figure a small update couldn’t hurt. I’m still working on a Margot for Mom as well as an adorable scarf called “Saroyan” by Liz Abinante. I’m using my Shibui knits baby alpaca from the “Emily’s Wedding Commemorative Stash” for the scarf and I’m really loving how it’s knitting up.  Liz also has a cute shawl pattern called “Traveling Woman” that I think I might try out next.

I’ve also been working on some non-knitting craft projects!  I was lucky enough to receive a sewing machine (as well as sewing machine lessons from mom) for my birthday and I have been so excited to use it! My first project was a cover for Hugo’s bed (he destroyed the original) which turned out pretty well with only a few minor mistakes. Next, I tackled a cushion cover for Poang, my usual TV watching chair. Take a look at the before and after (see Hugo sneaking into the frame?). I’m not in love with the fabric (it looked better to me on the bolt), but I’m very excited about the fit and amazed that I succeeded in constructing it!

My inspiration lately has been coming from a new blog that I’m obsessed with – younghouselove.com – which has quite a few nice do-it-yourself home improvement projects. Hugo and I tackled one last week that I’ll share as soon as I get some pictures.  Go check them out if you want to wile away a few hours imaging how to completely redo your home all by yourself!

Circumference = 2πr

I’ve gotten a few questions about how I blocked the massive blanket known as Girasole (AKA Top Secret Wedding Present), so I thought I’d talk about the process and show a couple of visuals to explain.  I’ll refresh your memory with a pretty picture:

Seeing as Girasole is a giant circle, and I’m a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my knitting, I had to formulate a plan of attack for this monster.  Here’s how it went . . .  After soaking the blanket and getting rid of excess water by rolling it up in a towel, I placed the center of the circle in the middle of the office floor and stuck a few pins in to keep it there.  I used a couple of pins through the hole in the end of my tape measure to secure it in place, then started pinning the points out – on my first try it soon became painfully obvious that to get Girasole to open up the way I wanted it to I was going to have to pin out the points 4.5′ from the center instead of 3.5′!  Insert unintentional step of removing previously placed pins and starting over.  Readjusting my tape measure to 4.5′, I began pinning out the points again, starting at 12 o’clock, then 6 o’clock, then 3 o’clock, then 9.  After that, it was simply a matter of pinning out points halfway between previously placed pins, always placing one pin and then placing a corresponding pin on the opposite side of the circle.  Admittedly, this means an unreasonable amount of walking around a nine foot circle, but the results are worth it!  Take a look at the whole thing stretched out and taking up the whole floor . . .

Can you see my improvisation in the upper right corner?  I ran out of straight pins with about fifteen points left to stretch out, so I, um, used wooden skewers from the kitchen.  I’m not embarrassed – it totally worked! : )  And look what a beautiful edging it turned out to be . . .

Malabrigo Sock Deirdre

My dear friend Deirdre recently celebrated her birthday and, since it’s been a while, I wanted to knit something for her. I started working a simple triangular shawl with the Malabrigo Sock I got at Stitches, not really knowing where it was going to end up. For a while it was going to be an Ishbel, but I thought that something simpler would be more suited to Deirdre’s tastes. I decided to add a light lace panel, made up of yarn overs and decreases worked on every row. I finished it off with a few rows of garter and it was good to go!

By increasing at the sides of the shawl every row, Deirdre (as I will henceforth be calling the little shawl) is nice and shallow – offering lots of length to wrap around your neck with a little bit of thickness in the middle to keep you warm! : ) I really like how Deirdre turned out, and I’ve got half the skein left for something else!

As far as other knitting, I’ve been working on a few designs that I can’t yet share. Boo! But I’m also creating one thing I CAN talk about. I’m really excited about starting a Margot for my Mom. When I was home a couple of weeks ago Mom and I went yarn shopping and she fell in love with Rowan’s new Lima, an alpaca/merino blend. I didn’t need to fall in love, because I saw it at stitches and was already smitten. Mom agreed to finance the project, which I think makes this whole thing more of a gift for me than for her! I’ve made it through almost half of the raglan increases and I’m still loving this yarn.

Stitches Shoalwater Shawl

While at Stitches, Sasha’s mom and I decided to start our own little mini-knit-a-long.  Well, it’s not so much a knit-a-long, since neither of us really does those – it’s more of an “Oh, we could both buy this same yarn and make this same shawl” thing.  I bought the green lace-weight Interlacements Spiderweb (a discontinued yarn)  and she bought the red.  In the booth, they had a version of Evelyn Clark’s Shoalwater Shawl that we both admired and decided to make.  Although the pattern is a garter stitch shawl with an old shale lace pattern the sample was knitted in stockinette stitch, which we decided to replicate.

I must admit that this shawl isn’t my usual style, but I love the finished result.  The Spiderweb is super soft and the finished shawl is light as air.  The lace pattern was very simple, although I had to keep consulting the chart for the edges.  When it came time to block the shawl, I was so excited to use the new blocking wires I got for my birthday – and they worked great!  Now I just need to find the perfect shawl pin for my lovely shawl and come up with an appropriate place to wear them both!

Monogrammed Monochromatic Moderne

This past weekend I attended the wedding of a dear friend from high school. Emily and I spent as much time as we could together during our high school years – gossiping, talking about fashion, watching movies, shopping, attending each others’ extracurricular events (for me – cheering on the volleyball and girls basketball teams; for E – cheering on the cheerleaders at football and basketball games), sleeping over (most of the time at Emily’s house), and just generally doing the things that high school girls do.  I have learned a lot from Emily, and really feel like we just get along perfectly!

We’re six years from high school now, but I still love Emily [and her little sister Lauren, who will always be a freshman in high school to me : )] – and I was so, so happy to celebrate her marriage to a seemingly wonderful and charming man.  Now, you may have noticed that I tend to express love through knitting, so a few months ago I went to work deciding on a gift for Emily and Pete.  I wanted something very cozy (and for me this usually means garter stitch), classic, and neutral so that they can take it with them wherever they go in the future.  I decided that the Linie 208 Natural wool I bought at Stitches would be perfect and I settled on the Moderne Log Cabin Blanket (rav link) by Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne as the pattern.  I decided on this pattern because it is cozy garter stitch, but has some interest – both for me during the knitting and for the recipients.  I thought that the different sizes and directions of the garter stitch pieces would be pretty in the natural yarn without being too much.  And . . . I couldn’t resist the alliteration – Monogrammed Monochromatic Moderne (we’ll get to the monogrammed part later).

I used the pattern as a guide, but ended up changing the structure a little bit due to restricted amounts of yarn.  I added an attached I-cord edging – a finishing touch that I always love.  I think the I-cord edging makes the blanket look complete and also adds structure to the stretchy garter stitch.  It took me a while to come up with the perfect personal element to add to the blanket but then I realized . . . if there’s one thing I know about Emily, it’s that she loves a good monogram! : )  I looked around for a while on etsy until I found Rememberwynn, who made me a lovely faux suede patch with the newly married couple’s monogram to sew on to the blanket.  [I have to take a moment to say how wonderful Rememberwynn was, rushing a new patch to me when the first got lost in the mail!  Thank you Rememberwynn!]

Once the patch was sewn on, the ends were sewn in, and the care instructions were attached, MMM was ready to go!

I was so excited to head to St. Louis for the festivities – it’s been a while since I’ve visited my old stomping grounds, and I was excited to catch up with a few friends.  The ceremony was beautiful, the bride was gorgeous and glowing and the reception was quite a celebration!

I hope that MMM keeps Emma and Pete [and George : )] warm and toasty this winter and for many years to come!  Congratulations again!