Beard in Progress

My man has an orange beard, and I've had the idea for a while to knit a beard...being knit.  I saw this pin and it made me want to get on that already.

I'm pretty happy how it turned out.  I cut a piece of thick cardstock around the beard and roughly sewed it there (otherwise the mouth drooped).  I also put a piece under the knitting needles.

I had a broken set of size 7 knitting needles, from when I first started knitting and kept my knitting on the floor and stepped on it.  Learning experiences!  Luckily I held on the them and finally found a use.  I cut the knitting needles down and whittled the ends a little bit to fit a white bead on them.  Crudely.

I glued the beads on with some Elmer's craft glue that I had originally bought to use for quilling, and then put some on the backside of the stitches so they wouldn't fall all over the place.

I used a couple finishing nails to nail it through the cardstock/cardboard and ruffled the knitting in front of it.  Tada!

Ravelry page

Planning Ahead

That's what I'm telling myself. I'm only planning ahead when I finish these heavy winter knitting projects at the beginning of spring. Oh well!

They are still very pretty and soft and wonderful!

On to the info!

Pattern:
Ringwood Gloves
Yarn:
Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light
Color:
Peat Mix, 4277
Skeins Used:
2
Cost Per:
$6.50

This pattern was fun and quick. DK weight gloves on size 6 needles. It flew by! The ringwood stitch is stretchy and warm and perfect for a nice pair of sturdy gloves. I do love these and I cannot wait to wear them once it gets cold again!

Not the best timing.

Ah 60 degree weather. How I have missed you. To celebrate I'll finish this beautiful chunky cowl that I cannot possibly wear until next fall.

Oh well.

Even though the season for beautiful cowls has passed I am still in love with this cowl. It's thick, soft, and just the right size. The color is probably my favorite. This yarn has such beautiful surprises in it. The big streaks of red in the purple and best of all the blue that you only notice in the sunlight.

Beautiful!

STATS!

Pattern:
Devonshire Cream
Yarn:
Ultra Alpaca Light
Color:
Boysenberry Mix 4282
Dye Lot:
1101
Skeins Used:
4
Cost Per:
$6.50

This was a fun project and my first time working with cables. The pattern was easy to follow and the yarn a dream to work with. It's the same kind I used for the gloves I made not too long ago. I'm also using the chunky stuff to make a bag.

I love this yarn, apparently.

Somewhere to put my crap!

- What do you got in that purse of yours? Rocks?

- Oh no, bricks. I've been paving my garden...

Roger and Anita - 101 Dalmatians (1996)

My purse was dying. Look at that poor thing...

Those handles were a few more tugs away from unraveling into oblivion! This just wouldn't do. Buying a new purse wouldn't do either. You can only replace a handmade purse with another handmade purse. It's a rule... that I just made up.

I decided to improve on this purse with my next one. I wanted something a little smaller so it doesn't get so full of stuff. Also pockets! I can never find my phone or a pen in my purse. Something had to be done about that.

I just winged the pattern for the knitting portion. The base is just standard garter stitch. I worked it until it looked right and then picked up stitches all around it on my circulars and just worked my way up.

The handles just involved binding off stitches and then on the next row casting on more and knitting until they were big enough.

EASY PEASY !

But then I had to line it... Ugh.

I am a terrible seamstress. TERRIBLE. I can do it but it's messy and rushed and I get so frustrated and sweaty. Obviously it's worth it in the end, but still. UGH!

I used the ever amazing Futuregirl tutorial for a bag liner. It says for a crocheted bag (she made it for her Starling Bag) but it works great in my knit one too. As you can see this bag is pretty much a knit Starling. I figured that was fine since the bag I was replacing was my original Starling bag I made almost 4 years ago. That bad boy has been through a lot.

Anyways... the lining. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, honestly.

This portion will hold my phone and ipod. My ipod is cozy at home, my phone is taking photos.

PENS! I'll also shove needles in there a lot, I'm sure. I'll probably forget them too and stab myself when I reach in for something. That'll be fun!

Here it is all cozy in it's new home! The fabric is just stuff from Joann's. The yarn is from our LYS. It was a funky yarn that was super cheap and I couldn't resist it. It'll make a good purse as it won't show dirt at all! Time to swing it around at somebody.

>_>

It's terribly simple

Hey hey!  Here's one to cross off on the ole knitting goals list:  Terribly Simple.

I'm not a big scarf wearer, but sometimes I want a little sump'n sump'n around my neck, to which you may cry COWLS!  But I'm not a big cowl person either.  I hate having to pull something down over my head (picky much?).  I liked the look of this scarf a LOT, but I'm kind of particular about using garter stitch when I can easily change it to stockinette.

I'm a tight knitter, which I think affected some of the pulling that you can see in the scarf.  The scarf is worked by increasing one stitch on each side every single row.

I wrap it from the front and tuck the little ends inside the front for that puffy look.  I'm really happy with it!  And so's my neck.  Ravelry link!

(Also, I technically finished this at the very end of last year, right after I made my 2013 knitting goals.  Is it really already February?)

No cold iPads on my watch, no sir

My man surprised me with an iPad for my birthday (and a smart cover!  Clever boy).  Jesse already had an iPad that I occasionally borrowed.  It's something I would have NEVER purchased for myself and would have poo-pooed the thought of, but it's awesome.  I don't have to print out recipes anymore, I just use my iPad in the kitchen to try out new meals!  Knitting patterns or charts?  Easy to mark up with the Goodreader app! 

I named her Helper, after Helper from Venture Bros.  We name all of our electronics after robot characters from shows we like (mostly Futurama), which also may tell you that my husband is an Apple fanboy since we have multiple electronics.  There's Tinny Tim, Hedonism Bot, Calculon, Super Collider (I hardly know her).

Enough chit chat, I'm keeping Helper nice and toasty with her new sock  (Ravelry link): 

Jesse REALLY loved this cover, which I'll admit was a little more fancy than the one I made him when he needed something asap so it wouldn't rattle around in his backpack.  The pattern I used for his first one was really great (the flap was genius) but the yarn was a quick buy from Joann and nothing fancy.  (You can see the first one right here.)  He's definitely a knitter's husband now that he's learning which types of yarns he likes.  Mmm.  Sexy.

I really loved the Gina yarn, and the ribbed black top was using Lamb's Pride Worsted, which was a little thicker than Gina but just as lovely.  I went down two needle sizes for the ribbing so it would be nice and tight.

Here's the one I made for Jesse: (fyi, these pictures kind of blew out the color a bit, the yellow is much more tame and greenish) Ravelry link

These were WONDERFUL quick knits, and the beautiful yarn made it so easy to rock that stockinette.

Quick Crafts

Whoa, that was quick!

-Birdy

Had to go to the craft store today to buy some needles. I just can't wait to finish those gloves so a quick run to the store was necessary.

While I was there I found myself wandering the jewelry aisle and looking at some of their charms. I found some really cute ones but I'm not really into jewelry making. I am, however, in to super cute stitch markers!

Sorry about the lighting. So these are just little metal charms attached to the Knit Picks stitch markers. These took about 4 minutes and turned out so cute. Can't wait to attach them to another one of my wips.

While shopping for glove needles I also found the buttons I will be using.

Ooo I love that woodsy look. :3

Another one gone!

Another on bites the dust

And another one gone, and another one gone

Another one bites the dust.

Hey, I'm gonna get you too,

Another one bites the dust!

- Queen 'Another One Bites the Dust'

It's always a nice feeling to finish a project. The yarn slides off the needles and they are once again free for some other project. There is always a point in the pattern that I feel like i'll never reach the end, but it eventually happens. Ah, how joyous!

Project: Two-Tone Socks

Pattern: I didn't use a specific pattern, just used what I knew worked for socks in that past.

Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Tonal Sock Yarn. I used the colors Gypsy and Canopy. This yarn is nice and soft and the skeins are 100g for a decent price. However, towards the end the yarn was splitting a lot and I found some "soft spots" in the color. 

Details: CO: 64 stitches. I decreased this down to 60 half way through the cuff. Heel was an afterthought short-row (to get the opposite color) and the toe was also short-row and for them I used this pattern. I started this project the day after Christmas and finished 1/20. Not bad for me, as I get distracted a lot and play way too many video games on my day off. :)

I've already started my next project: Ringwood Gloves. After knitting socks on size 2 needles making dk weight gloves with size 6 needles is so much quicker. I can hardly believe it!

I have to wait to borrow some size 6 dpns to finish the fingers so I'm starting the other hand already. These should be done in a few days, which will be nice for the cold weather.

I'm also in love with this color. Aah so pretty.

Double the pleasure double the fun

Double double your refreshment,

Double double your delightment

- Double Mint Gum Commercial

I'm really having fun with this two sock knitting. I've been sending my Nana updates as she was curious on how I was liking it. Only now did I realize I should show the internet too! The internet cares, I just know it.

THEY JUST KEEP GROWING!

I've decided to go with an afterthought heel with these guys (my first ever). My reasoning is that I have encountered a few people giving me weird looks because I'm knitting two different colors. I even had someone ask if I realized that I was doing it.

Oh my gosh, how did I make that mistake! ;)

I decided to make it blatantly obvious that these were meant to be a pair and I'll give them the opposite color toes / heels. I think it'll be great and I'll be able to wear them as Christmas socks when Christmas comes again. Boy, I love Christmas.

I'm about to lay something heavy on you guys: I've already planned a lot of gifts out in my head.

I need help. Send some quickly.

Cowl fever

Birdy and I decided to make cowls for our husbands as Christmas presents.  My husband was basically bursting to have one (he brought it up CONSTANTLY).  He uses public transportation for school and work, so his neck does get cold a lot.  I blatantly lied and I told him I would try and make one for him after I was done with my Christmas knitting, which was okay because my mom always says it's okay to lie if it's regarding presents.

Bird and I picked up the yarn from Yarn Garden.  Bird was a magician and had finished all of her Christmas presents like 3 weeks before Christmas (people do that??) and I did mine about a week before.  This pattern moves very quickly, and I finished it in a week, and that was without pushing myself too hard to get it done.

twelve's cowl

Birdy's cowl

Me: Smile Baby!

Bkins: Maybe I am.

Darn! These photos really wash it out, but it is a nice bright blue, as modeled by the darling husband above.

I had a ton of fun making this cowl. It was quick and easy but had just enough of a pattern to keep me interested until the end. I ran into a mishap when I was casting off, though. 12 or so stitches to go and I reached the end of the line. For realsies. What the blob. So I just found a blue in my stash that was similar enough and finished off this bad boy. 

I was excited to do a project with Twelve. Our husbands are total buddies so this is a good gift for them both to enjoy. 

Shablam!
The end!

Hotpad for my sister, and my misadventures in double knitting

(My snippet regarding my goals is at the bottom of this post)

I decided to make this potholder/hotpad for my sister for her birthday.  I planned on making two, until my learning process for double knitting became a HUGE HASSLE.  Seriously.  I did not have a clue.

The pattern is roughly written by the designer, which is fine.  I don't expect someone to teach me how to knit every time they write a pattern.  However, I was shocked by how many people said, "this was my first double knitting project!" and yet I didn't find much help regarding the actual technique of pattern work within it.  (Also, this was mostly last minute, so I didn't have time to check out resources from the library - my bad.)

Essentially with double knitting, you are casting on both sides of a project at once by casting on twice as many stitches, and you knit every other stitch (which becomes one side of the work) and purl the other stitches (which become the back of the work).  Then you have a reversible piece of work that's really cool!

Here are the resources I used to help me through it: (all short videos)

How to cast on for double knitting
Knitting the first row with double knitting (by the same person as above)
Doing a pattern within the work  in my case, a teapot

I got really frustrated when I didn't understand casting on twice as many stitches (do I cast twice the number told in the pattern or did the creator already account for that? I ended up restarting 3 times before figuring it out). I went with the original cast on number in the pattern so it's a smaller hot pad that I'm not too thrilled with, but I get the process now.  I purled the last stitch of each row and slipped it knitwise the beginning of each row (you can partially see in my pictures that I didn't do this in the beginning, one side has a nice braiding and half of the other side is kind of twisted).

(My Ravelry link for this project)

Goals:
This gift fell under my "buy everything local for gifts" goal, which, womp womp, we didn't do.  I already had this yarn on hand from Michael's last year (which I don't feel bad for, stash yarn is okay!) but my husband designed her some Batman stationary, and we ran by Fedex Office to print it out instead of a locally owned business.  Doh!  It was only a few dollars and it was the first week in January so I have to get in the swing of things.  Not a huge deal, but I have two birthdays next month I'll (hopefully) be better about!  Here's the stationary Jesse designed for her:

Keeping everyone's hands warm

The Niece

My sweet 12 year old niece has been into crocheting for a couple years now, and recently picked up knitting as well!  I'm really proud of her (and impressed!) and it makes her a great receiver of handmade gifts.  Last year I bought two skeins of a kinda hideous yarn (mostly black, with purple, green, pink and blue accents) for $1 a piece on sale.  I thought it would be fun to make a simple ribbed scarf and probably just donate it somewhere because I'm not a big scarf wearer myself.  My niece saw me working on it one day and was fascinated by it.  She asked what I was doing with it and when I told her I planned on donating it to a shelter, her face dropped.  Insert deciding to give it to her for her birthday.  A few months later she said "Hey...did you ever finish that scarf?"  I played it off, cuz I'm a playa, and she got to open it on her birthday and was thrilled.  So, kids out there who could care less for handmade items?  She's not one of them.

I decided to make her and her brother some gloves for their birthdays in 2012, and I made hers with

Plymouth Yarn Happy Feet yarn in a beautiful red colorway (beautiful, yes, and hard to photograph!).  I bought it a week before her birthday, because I'm a masochist, deciding to knit gloves with sock weight yarn in a week on top of work and other plans.  Her party was at noon on Saturday and on Friday night I only had one glove done.  I started knitting around 7pm that night, stopped at 3am, got back up at 7 (and had to make a treat for the party, nice job planning there) and I finished weaving in the ends just after 11am.  They were a labor of love.

She loved them!  She said they reminded her of Coraline's gloves (which I later looked up, and Coraline's had green stripes in them, but I'm at least glad I inadvertently made something she liked even more because of that comparison).

The Sister

My sister loved the gloves I made her daughter so much she asked for handwarmers in the same colorway, and this time I did not wait until a week before Christmas to work on them (not too close, anyway).  Ravelry link.

The Nephew

In a not-as-interesting part of our saga, I made my nephew some gloves too.

Knitting goals for 2013

I thought I would mention my 2013 main knitting goal, which is to finish all of my unfinished projects.

This is the story of some of those projects.

Some of these I started in 2010.  I'm distracted by things!  Namely soft, beautiful yarn and cool patterns.  My goal for 2013 is to finish a lot of the crap that I've started and left in the lurch, hidden in a bag or a tub, unfinished.  Alternatively, I can decide which ones I don't want to make and go ahead and scrap the project already.

Here's my list, which I plan on updating as they happen:

• Bike Basket (only the bottom is done, with stitches cast on to start working up the sides.)

• Sprinkles hat (the main body is done, and I knit a band that was FAR TOO LARGE and threw it in a box for like a year.  I finally picked it up back, took off the band, picked up the live stitches and now feel healed enough to continue.)

• Jesse's socks (One is finished, and the other one has been started.  He has been not at all patient about getting his own handmade socks, and really, being married to a knitter, he should already have some!)

• Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks bag (I'm improvising a bag with this stitch pattern. "Improvising" was apparent when I had to keep restarting it to get the number of stitches right...the Manos yarn I have chosen is BEAUTIFUL with this pattern.  I plan on sewing in fabric, which is really what's worrying me.  New territory!)

• Terribly Simple Scarf (this one IS terribly simple, but had to be put on hold for Christmas/birthday knitting.  Instead of garter stitch I'm using stockinette because I'm kind of a St st stickler.)

• Miss matched fingerless gloves (basic fingerless gloves pattern, one red and one green - would have been better if finished before Christmas, but so is life.  Green glove is already finished knitting, ends need to be weaved in.) 

• Pumpkins I started making over a year ago.  I finished one and never got around to finishing the other ones.  Should be a cute decoration come Halloween (there are orange pumpkins and glow in the dark white ones).

On my "maybe" list is a slouch hat I tried to make for Jesse and it was HUGE.  He thought it looked cute on me (sans, like, 5 inches circumference), but I'm leery of joining the slouch hat club. 

A new project that I know I want to make next year is a sweater!  I have a few sweater patterns in mind, but I would like to make the one linked, Basic Black, first.  Birdy and I got a bunch of yarn at a second hand craft store, which should be enough yarn (fingers crossed) for a sweater like this.  We are planning on doing a knit-a-long for our first sweaters!

I also have a friend who has a baby due in February, and now that I know he's a boy I want to work on a little something for him.

Here's to 2013's knitting!

In a giving mood

“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” 

― Mother Teresa

As I have said before I love Christmas. Most years I try really hard to make a fair amount of my Christmas gifts, but I usually fall short on that goal. This year I found the secret to success: use nicer yarns. I lose steam pretty quickly when it comes to a project, doesn't matter what it is: hats, scarves, socks(always the second one... always!), even simple bags! But this year really nailed down the fact that if it's a soft luxurious yarn I will work on it as often as possible!

Earlier in the year I had made a hat and matching arm-warmers out of the Wurm Hat pattern on Ravelry. Bkins seemed slightly jealous and hinted several times that he thought the pattern would even be masculine, if made in the right color. Hint hint, amiright? So I went on down to Yarn Garden and bought me some more of the beautiful Chalet yarn I used on my hat. Obviously, a more Bkins color choice was made. 

Here it is in the sun. It's a really pretty blueish gray, that can almost look purple if paired with the right colors.

Or it'll blend into my couch...

Here are the ones I made for myself.

I love this Chalet stuff! The photos make it seem a little more white than it is. It's definitely a creamier color in person.

I also made Bkins a lovely Cowl (you can see it poking in on one of his hat photos) but that post will be shared with Twelve, as it was a joint effort kind of project.

And then... the big daddies. The gift that I could not wait for him to open. The pattern twelve just HAD to show me when I thought I was done with gifts. The perfect gift for the nerdy husband...

The Tardis Socks!

This last photo is a little more true to color. It's not quite that bright, but it isn't as dark as the above ones either. 

These socks were difficult. I had never tried fair isle knitting and I had no flipping clue what yarn dominance was, but if anything was going to make me learn it would be Tardis socks.

The first one was the roughest. I'm a tight knitter and for fair isle you want to keep things loose so that you're non-dominant yarn doesn't get sucked into the dominant color. In this case it was white nondom and black dom. On the top right photo above where I have it on my foot you can't see the middle of the B. I knit it too tight and had to go through and fuss the yarn up to show. It was tedious, but I had the hang of it by the second sock.

It went much smoother and it's the easiest to read. 

He loved them. It's so nice to have a husband that just loves these nerdy crafts. Right, Twelve?

 I'll have a post later of the stuff I made people that aren't my husband. Unfortunately I need them to send me photos... I kind of finished them and wrapped them. Whoops!

Happy New Year, internet!

EDIT: Almost forgot this guy!