the fiber fetishist

I knit these two guys for the twins of a friend of mine. While I do have the Jess Hutch book, it’s (dun dun dun) in storage, so I just winged the robots.

The problem with winging it is that I ended up with robots not nearly as cute as hers. My husband said that I should “keep them because they look like chickens.” E (Poking My Eyes Out) said they look like aliens. Yeah. Oops. They’re squishy and soft anyway!

They were knit on US5 needles in Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted. I stuffed them with acrylic polyfill and then tossed them in the washer and dryer to full them lightly (they didn’t full that much since I knit them very tightly to prevent the stuffing from coming out).

[my ravelry project notes]

I came around to knitting four years ago because crochet was wrecking my wrists. Knitting — at least the way I knit, which is a little strange looking to others — generally doesn’t hurt my wrists (rough cotton aside). I still really liked crochet, but given my career and other hobbies, I needed to limit wrist pain as much as I could. So while I would still work the occasional crochet edging, crochet-heavy projects were out.

E (PokingMyEyesOut) and I ended up at Hilltop Yarn Queen Anne for their moving sale this past weekend. We checked out the antibiotic acrylic yarn — Hamanaka Bonny. Yes: antibiotic acrylic[?!]. Apparently it’s treated with silver ions or something… it’s an inexpensive, bulky, scratchy, squeaky acrylic.

E and I bought a handful of colors of Hamanaka Bonny to share and we each bought a Tawashi book. Kawaii!

I couldn’t resist the siren song of the tawashi and crocheted three within 36 hours of purchasing the book. No wrist pain. I think the bulkier yarn and larger hook size helped.

Hey, tawashi make cleaning fun!

cleaning is fun!

Or maybe I am just a little bit crazy.

angle, baby

I love interesting garment construction. When I saw Angle, a modular baby sweater designed by Tora Frøseth (k n i t t i n g a l o t), I knew I had to make it [ravel it].

button detail

One of my cousins and his wife just had a little girl. I knit this for her in Sublime Soya Cotton DK. The yarn is soft and smooth and cool — and washable! It is splitty and 4 of the 5 50g balls had 3 or 4 knots in them! This lead to a lot of ends to weave in.

Tora recommended a lightweight wool yarn for this sweater but I used the much heavier Soya Cotton, knowing it was going to change the sweater quite a bit. I think it will be easier for the new parents to deal with, however.

Miscellaneous Details [ravelry]

• I only used two colors, MC and CC1.
• I used the crochet provisional cast on.
• I had gauge issues (MY fault, not pattern) and had to adjust the pattern and cut the sleeves so they were not so wide. this was in part because I used the easy-care cotton-soy yarn which is a lot heavier and more drapey than the pattern-specified lightweight wool.
• I worked the garter stitch edgings on US3 needles
• There were a lot of ends, in part because the soya cotton has a lot of knots in each ball.
• I wish I had slipped the first stitch of each row to make picking up stitches for the edging a bit more neat.
• instead of kitchenering the top of the sleeves, I worked a three needle bind off. I love kitchener but this yarn was so slippery that it was not coming out right. The 3NB looks fine, even though it is definitely more bulky than kitchener.
• I worked a plain old bindoff instead of the sewn bind off.

Overall: cute!

I’m a week late blogging this — mostly because I was back on the east coast for Mom’s birthday!

squishy garter

I knit Mom a triangular shawl in Berroco Ultra Alpaca [purple triangle on ravelry]. I worked a standard center and outside increase and finished the edge with feather and fan. I like how it turned out, though I never took any finished pictures of it (oops). I think she likes it too — hopefully it will help keep her warm in the office air conditioning this summer!

cut!

After spending Sunday evening watching episodes of er online (a show I haven’t watched in years, but watched all through college), I decided to cut the sweater.

It was pretty simple. I strung waste yarn through the stitches at the new edge, then snipped the yarn just before that point and methodically removed the section I didn’t want. Done!

Then I had to rip back the other side of the sleeve so that the front/back match. Now I’m moving along the center back of the sweater, which I suspect I need to knit a few more pattern repeats of now to make it all correct. I also anticipate adjusting the asymmetric front so that it is even more asymmetric due to the width of the front panel.

Or I suppose I could cut it as well…

not so wee baby sweater

This baby sweater (Angle) is too big in such a way that I have a few options to fix it.

Mostly it is just the sleeve that is too wide. It’s 5″ across when it should be closer to 4″– my row gauge is off by a lot, and with the modular construction, there’s less opportunity to fix while knitting. Please note that this is purely MY fault, not a fault of the pattern.

The options:

• 0: rip it all out and reknit on a smaller needle.
  
• 1: rip back to near the beginning and adjust the pattern
  
• 2: cut the part that is too big off and continue
  
• 3: feign ignorance and keep knitting.

Right now I’m leaning towards option 2. Oy.

This year I have a huge list of babies to knit for. I started one of the sweaters earlier this week.

angle [the lime green is waste yarn]

This is Angle (ravelry), designed by Tora Frøseth of Knitting A Lot. I’m not knitting it in the lightweight wool yarn she suggested but rather Sublime Yarns Soya Cotton DK, a machine washable cotton and soy blend. The fabric is definitely much less lightweight but I think it will work out just fine. Fingers crossed!

I finished the plain socks of brightly striped goodness:

look! I finished them

Hooray!

Simple toe-up socks, short row heel. Yarn is Lovesticks self-striping and I knit them Magic Loop style on a Knit Picks fixed circular, US0 sized. The yarn is very thin.

oops

I don’t even mind that the ribbing of the original sock (back) is a huge, ugly mess. You can’t tell when I’m wearing them, in any case.

I started these socks back in August 2007 (ugh!). I finished the first one in November 2008, right before we moved across the country. I set the yarn for the mate aside and moved with it. I am finally getting around to finishing the pair.

home stretch

I’m about halfway up the leg. With any luck I’ll have a completed pair of bright striped socks within the week.

E (PokingMyEyesOut) and I have planned to see the Elsebeth Lavold exhibit at the Nordic Heritage Museum but various things seemed to conspire against us making it in time. Finally we decided we would go on Saturday and that’s what we did.

First we stopped at Honore Artisan Bakery for some tasty treats (we even took them home and shared with the boys):

tasty pastry

Then we drove a few more blocks to the museum.

nordic heritage museum

E and I enjoyed the museum (she had been there before; I had not)! The Elsebeth Lavold exhibit was very, very cool. Some of the pieces displayed were the ones from the Viking Pattern books, which was extra exciting, in a really knitgeeky sort of way. I would love to knit one of her patterns nownownow, which is unfortunately not in the cards for me just yet.

I also loved the few examples of Rosemaling they had as well. Gorgeous!

Aside from the Lavold exhibit, there were plenty of fiber-related details in each of the various country exhibits. They had examples of everything from crochet to knitting to spinning to embroidery to weaving to bobbin lace (and a few things I am sure I am forgetting).

If you’re in Seattle and have a couple of hours to spare, it’s worth the visit (I recommend pastries from Honore, as well).