Juneberry Triangle

I've been busy...

I finished a Juneberry Triangle for J's mom. She has spent quite a while hinting--not subtly, either--that she would love it if I were to knit her something. When I gave her the finished shawl, she looked at it and asked, "Is this something you made?" I told her it was, and the reaction was priceless: "ALL RIGHT!" She was pretty jazzed about it. She's keeping proudly displayed on the back of her favorite living room chair.

All the different lace patterns kept this project very interesting and challenging. Paying attention to the pattern was key. No working on Juneberry during Game of Thrones!

The yarn is some Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Patine that has been in my stash pretty much forever. I was thrilled to finally find a use for it.

And look, I even did all of the bobbles:

 

The ones on the edging too:

I may have to make one for myself one of these days!

Finished object: Windermere

It's been a fairly busy summer. As I've learned, we have winter for a solid 6 months of the year, so summer is a time for doing as much as possible outside the house. J and I went to see Daniel Tosh in Great Falls, and we also saw Kenny Rogers--THE GAMBLER himself--last weekend. We've also been making good use of the fire pit I got J for his birthday, and have had several nights of sitting in the backyard with marshmallows, beer, and fire.

In the middle of my summer activities, I finished my Windermere scarf.


The pattern is from Sweet Paprika, and is a design I've loved since I first saw it in the Ravelry Obscuriosity group's past knitalongs. I got this fabulous hand-dyed yarn from The Yarn Stash in Minot, and it turned out to be a great match for the pattern.



I made the stockinette sections smaller because I wanted the finished scarf to be a bit narrower than the design called for, especially since I was using a fingering weight yarn rather than laceweight. Beyond that, I did the pattern pretty much as written--even the grafting! I had to undo some of my grafting when I got about halfway through the center lace pattern and noticed that my stitches weren't lining up AT ALL, but it was smooth sailing once that error was fixed (I'd completely skipped grafting some of the YOs).

When it starts to cool off in another month or so, I have another scarf for my arsenal!

Starfish shawl

My new shawl. Let me show you it:


I've had the Starfish Shawl pattern from Knitting Nature in my Ravelry queue for almost 2 years. Every time I looked at it, I'd see the words "CO 730 sts", and just couldn't bring myself to start it. I eventually figured out that I didn't want mine to be as large as the original, since anything that's too over-sized just looks ridiculous on me. I ended up downsizing it by about 6" in diameter, and only had to cast on 625 sts. ("Only" 625 sts.).

It was an easy knit, though. Once I figured out which row on the chart matched my number of cast-on stitches, the knitting went on auto-pilot. The yarn is Wool in the Woods Frizee, which has sadly been discontinued. It's a rayon yarn that's mostly smooth, but has little frizzy spots every so often. I'm so glad I finally found a pattern to show off these colors. The constant decreases in the pattern broke up any pooling quickly, and the drape of the yarn is just wonderful with this pattern.


The shawl has armholes to make it easier for those of us with narrow shoulders to actually keep it on. It can be worn with the longer end on the bottom:


Or with the longer end on top as an over-sized collar (which is probably how I'll wear it):


And if I don't feel like wearing it, it makes a great lap blanket. Or cat bed, if I ever let Cleo get a hold of it.

Impasto: Finito!

I almost went with "Impasto Was Fast-o", but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I finished up Impasto and got it blocked this past Sunday:


Blocking worked magic on this. The fabric is so light and has such a nice drape to it. The AC in our staff area at work has been on the fritz again, but I've been able to wear this shawl without overheating. And it's a wool blend, so that's saying something.



It looks so complicated, and was so easy. I love projects like that.



I'm loving all the brightly colored projects that are popping up on Ravelry, but I bet this pattern would also look gorgeous in shades of natural wool.

Pattern: Impasto Shawlette by Susanna IC, in Interweave Knits Summer 2010 issue.
Yarn: Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, in Flax, Sky Blue, and Woad
Needles: Size 10

Old Man of Storr shawlette

I don't know about anyone else, but when I know I have a stash enhancement experience coming up--for example, the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival--I start to feel a little bit bad about my existing stash. "Why am I buying more when I haven't used what I already have?"

In order to assuage this feeling a bit, I decided to do a little bit of stash knitting. Out came a couple of hanks of "Sky Blue" Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool, as well as a free shawlette pattern that I stumbled across on Ravelry. A few nights' worth of evening TV knitting, and...


The pattern is the Old Man of Storr shawlette (pdf) by Carie Kottman at knitcrush. It's a mostly-garter stitch triangle shawl, with a 5-stitch repeat lace edging. The pattern calls for fingering weight, but since I was using DK weight, I played around with the pattern a little bit. I added one repeat of the lace pattern in the middle of the garter stitch section, and then only did 28 rows of lace edging. It blocked out to 42" wide, which is just about perfect for me for wearing it with the point in front.



Even though it's a heavier yarn, the shawl is very light. And since we're expecting temperatures in the 80s this weekend, it'll be a good handknit to wear to Sheep and Wool!

Ridiculously easy stockinette cowl

I got an orphaned ball of SWTC Pure a couple of weeks ago from Jimmy Beans Wool. It's a fingering weight soy silk yarn, and given the softness and the weight and the drape it had, I decided to make a quick cowl. I tried a couple of stitch patterns, but the stockinette won out because it showed off the color the best. The yarn is actually 4 different shades of purple plied together, and the end result is a really nice depth of color effect.







I cast on 90 stitches on size 7 needles, and just worked in stockinette stitch until I was happy with the length. And now I have a purple cowl to go with my purple winter coat and my purple purse.

Again with the snow

Snowpocalpyse 2: Snow Harder has arrived, and I'm preparing for a couple of days of being unable to go anywhere. After last Saturday, when I was driving home and ended up skidding into a full 180-degree spin that ended with me facing oncoming traffic, I'm perfectly content to stay right where I am. I prefer less excitement than that in my commute, thank you.

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday for my regular Thursday grocery run, and was greeted by empty freezer case after empty freezer case, and empty shelf after empty shelf. I wish I'd had a camera with me; the store looked like it had been looted, and the employees all looked a little bit shell-shocked. The library was CRAZY, so I imagine that places selling food and essentials were much, much worse.

Anyway, in sitting here this afternoon, I realized that I never shared this FO from a couple of weeks ago:


He's a voidwalker, one of the warlock minion creatures from World of Warcraft. I made up the pattern, and will need to tweak some things if I want to post it here. His shape isn't 100% correct. However, the recipient immediately knew what this guy was, so it was close enough. The main body is some blue acrylic I had on hand, with some black boucle for his shadow cloud and some gold embroidery floss for his bracers and eyes. He's kind of adorable for a demonic creature summoned from the Twisting Nether.

Wool Kerchief

My first FO of 2010! I finished this and pinned it out for blocking on New Year's Day.



It's about as simple as a pattern gets. Garter stitch in 2 alternating yarns to create stripes, with 4 increases every RS row.



The color changes on the Kauni were surprising. The blue-to-lavender one was very slow, but then the lavender-to-green one was KABLAM. There was a 4th color that I never even got to, which is a deep mauve-y pink. Even with the crocheted border, I was still nowhere near getting to the pink section in the yarn.



I liked the borders that several Ravelry members had added to theirs, so I decided to crochet on a scalloped border. I used a new-to-me technique (relief crochet) to give the scallops a little more depth and structure:


Raised stitches! On purpose!

Pattern: Silk Kerchief (pdf) by Kate Gagnon Osborn at Zeitgeist Yarns
Yarns used: Kauni Effektgarn 8/2, EF colorway and Knitpicks Bare fingering weight.

Ariann

22 months was definitely long enough... I decided to finally finish my Ariann cardigan!

This picture best shows the actual color, which is this wonderful rosy pale pink. This is as close to a neutral color as I get.


I'm hoping that the yarn will stop shedding at some point. It's Ella Rae Shibu (color 25, "Mauve"), which is raw silk plied with a thick-thin single of viscose. The yarn feels a lot like cotton, but isn't as stiff. It has a lovely drape to it, and if I have to deal with little pink silk fuzzies, that's fine. Shibu has been discontinued, but there are still places online that have some.



I envisioned this going into my rotating collection of cardigans for the library, where the indoor temperature can be anywhere from 60 degrees to 90 degrees. We all have sweaters or shawls at our desks. This will be a great addition to my cardigan line-up, which currently consists of a blue cotton cardigan that my mom got me for Christmas 10 years ago. Yeah, definitely time to switch up my work sweater.

I LOVE this sweater. It's so comfy, and was an easy enough knit that I could work on it while watching TV or while waiting for raid ready checks in World of Warcraft. My only complaint is that the pattern (or at least, the version of the pattern that I have) does not include any instruction about how to work the lace pattern into the raglan decreases. Perhaps this was corrected in later versions of the pattern, but there's absolutely nothing to warn you that, oh yeah, STOP INCREASING or you'll have shoulders that go up to your ears. I remembered both Jody and Sarah mentioning this when they were working on their Arianns, so I was slightly less confused about what was going on. I just kept track of the lace increases and decreases adjacent to the raglan markers, and whenever the raglan decrease "ate" something from the lace pattern, I'd start working its corresponding stitch in stockinette.

Other mods: I worked the sleeves flat and then seamed them. I wanted to have a little extra structure to hopefully prevent gorilla arms when the silk yarn starts to stretch out. I stopped my sleeves at 18" for the same reason, and also because a lot of notes on Ravelry said that the sleeves as written were very long. I made my collar 3" instead of 4" because I wanted a smaller collar.



I originally wanted dark wooden buttons, but these metal ones caught my eye instead. I got them at Hancock Fabrics, and lucked out that I happened to be there while all notions were 50% off.



Comfy comfy comfy:


Pattern: Ariann by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn: Ella Rae "Shibu", color 25 "Mauve". 8 balls = 840 yards.
Needles: US 7

Beholder

Behold, the Beholder:


This one's more "cute" than" terrifying".


He was a birthday present for one of the guys in my D&D group. The beholder spent most of last night lurking off to the side of our game mat, threatening to shoot everyone with laser eye beams.

I crocheted him in a couple of hours using the Beholder pattern from the Anti-Craft. Mine was a mini-version; the body is about the size of a hackysack. We discovered that he occupies a 2x2 area of the game board very nicely, so here's hoping that our lovely GM doesn't decide to have our 3rd level characters fight a beholder just because we have a "miniature" for one... I don't think we'd fare very well.

Little Bear Preemie baby hat

Tell me this isn't adorable:




I came across this baby bear hat pattern at Squishy Chocolate, and it is too cute, and super fast, and way easy. Basically, everything you could look for in a baby pattern. I'm hoping to make a few of these for a charity hat collection -- this one took me an afternoon, so making a pile of them seems very doable.

Pooling Stripes

I ended up putting ties on two diagonal corners. Tie those together, play with the fabric in front, and you get a nice illusion that there's more fabric than there actually is (this came out to be 14" by 8"). The second picture shows it with the short sides pinned together in the back, which is a snug fit! If I had sewn those sides together, I wouldn't have been able to get it over my head.

Of course, the unfortunate thing was that I finished this before the midnight release of Harry Potter on Tuesday night, so I no longer had purse knitting... but had finished it too close to the release to be able to wear it, since it was still blocking. A bunch of us went up to Arundel Mills for the release and had a blast. The theater did a great job handling the throngs, which were substantial due to the 10 (!) sold-out screens. They were very nice about switching around one of our tickets so we could all be in the same theater, and we were comfortably in our seats by 10:45. The movie was great, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again on Friday with a bunch of my coworkers.

Miss Dashwood

For a coworker's first grandchild:


I probably don't even need to say this: the baby is a girl. And as Lynn has been telling everyone, she has two sons, a husband, and two boy dogs, so she's been due for a girl in the family for a while. Ah, a perfect excuse to haul out Miss Dashwood, the girliest, ruffliest baby hat pattern I know of. For good measure, I used this fantastic color of Lily Sugar 'n' Cream, "Rosewood", which has the distinction of looking exactly like Neapolitan ice cream.

My only mod to the design was to leave off the earflaps and just attach a couple of yarn braids to the back of two of the bobbles. It makes it a little more summery. Other than that, I knit it as written, bobbles and all. Normally, I hate bobbles. I love them on this hat, though.

Here's Terttu!

My saucy new Finnish friend wants to say hi:










I loved this pattern so very much. Lankakomero's site is mostly in Finnish, but the pattern does have clear English instructions on how to follow the charts. The big graphic pattern means it actually works with variegated yarn, which doesn't happen with too many lace patterns. This was one 475-yard skein of Ellen's Half-Pint Farm merino/tencel sock yarn; it yielded a shawl 44" wide. It's a nice over-the-shoulder shawl.

Guess what's blocking?

Terttu is done and in the final stages of prep!

Here's my blocking board, also known as "a towel on my bed":


I had a surprise trip to the emergency room yesterday after I fainted in the apartment rental office, and was KICKING MYSELF for not having my purse with me. This would have been some prime knitting time. (No, there's nothing wrong; according to the many many tests they ran, I'm in very good health).

Anyway, I finished up the last few rows today, wove in ends, and am properly wet-blocking this. A good once-over spritz from my iron's spray feature did the trick.

I'll get some good pictures when it's dry. It came out to a very respectable size of 44" wide; not bad for a skein of sock yarn!

Green is good

I've had this project on the to-do list for a while: a loopy crocheted dust cover for a Swiffer.


I love how cheerful and springy it is! And it's eco-friendly! Perhaps my cutting down on disposable Swiffer cloths will save an otter somewhere.

If you can do sc (single crochet, for the knit-types), you can make this. The loop is just a fancy-pants modified sc, and the loop stitch tutorial that the pattern links to is easy to follow. This was a nice way to use one of the stashed balls of Sugar 'n Cream cotton I had lying around.



I'm off to dust the top of my ceiling fan.

Finished Colinette Vest

This has been kicking around the WIP pile for longer than I want to think about... I decided this week to finally finish the back.



I had to improvise most of the pattern. The Colinette Shimmer 5 yarn is bulkier than "bulky", so there aren't a ton of patterns out there for it. 6" of ribbing, stockinette for the rest. I did a crochet edging around the neck and armholes



I LOVE the colors. Every stitch is different, every stitch has its own personality. This is the Toscana (Tuscany) colorway; the base color is a greyish sage green, with pops of blues and pinks and purples and yellows and oranges and reds... I've been browsing through some of the Jitterbug socks done in this same colorway over on Ravelry, even though I DO NOT NEED MORE SOCK YARN.



We have some very variable temperatures at work, so I'm happy to have another layering piece. This thing is quite toasty warm.

Needles: US 11 / 8.0 mm; US 13 / 9.0 mm
Yarn: Colinette Shimmer Five - 3.5 skeins = 182.0 yards (166.4m)
Colorway: Tuscany / Toscana

Chic on the Halfshell

There I was last Wednesday, happily raiding Mount Hyjal with my guild, ready for a try on Kaz'rogal... when my internet went kaput. Checked my TV... no TV either.

I went to call Comcast, and apparently they have a different definition of "24-hour customer service" than I do. I think it means that a customer can call 24 hours a day and receive service. They think it means "If someone's in our call center, your call may be answered eventually. If not, we'll automatically disconnect your call." This was one of those pesky "auto-disconnect" periods. After the tenth time my call got disconnected by Comcast, I decided to find something better to do with my time.

I started going through the patterns I've downloaded from Ravelry, and there was Drew Emborsky's Chic on the Halfshell bag just begging to be started.

A week later, and here it is all seamed up:


It still needs a lining. I have the fabric, I just need to figure out how to line something that's shaped vaguely like a TIE fighter. This was a fun FAST pattern, and I think the end product is cute as heck.

Pattern: Chic on the Halfshell by Drew Emborsky
Hook: 5.0 mm (H)
Yarn: TLC Cotton Plus Solid
1 skeins = 178.0 yards (162.8m)
Colorway: 3643 Kiwi

The stuff of nightmares

Took a much-needed break from endless black ribbing in order to make this guy...



He was a birthday present for L, my co-WoW-geek at work. L has at least 2 stuffed Cthulhus (Cthulhi?) that I know of, so as soon as I saw The Elder God pattern in the Anticraft's Imbolc '08 issue, I made a mental post-it note about it.

I have never had an FO make me laugh as hysterically as this one did. I was cracking myself up during the assembly phase, particularly during tentacle application.



My mods were nothing huge. I made a set of wings as specified in the pattern, but couldn't get them to arrange themselves the way I wanted. I fought with them for about an hour before deciding that maybe it was time for different wings. I crocheted two triangles, folded them over, and sewed them on. Instant wings!

I left off the first tiny part of the face adornment and just gave him angry eyebrows. VERY horrifying.

And then there were the tentacles. The pattern tentacles are pretty small. I made a set, held them up to his face... He looked like he had a small, scraggly green beard. I wasn't exactly filled with abject terror and insanity. It definitely called for longer tentacles, which I made by just doubling the chain lengths and then doing sc back to 2 stitches before the other end of the chain. The individual chains started curling and ended up looking super-tentacly and awesome.



Now I just need one for me...