good-natured ribbing

Luckily, I have today off work – so I was able to finish the wrap “on the weekend.” I must say, I have a couple gripes about the pattern. First, I decided to use the same yarn the pattern called for – Nashua Creative Focus Worsted. It called for 6 balls but being cautious, I ordered 7. Well, as it turns out, I almost used 2. To be fair, I skimped on the flowers – made 3 instead of 4. I might have had to break into a 3rd ball for the 4th flower. Anyway, moving on… Gripe #2: There were no instructions on how to make the flower. It basically said, knit a strip like this, then attach it like in the picture. Wow, thanks for the help. I played with the strip for a bit and think I figured it out. Here’s what I did:

The trick was that the strip needed to be rolled up, right side out, then the fancy edge gets folded over the plain edge. This makes the plain edge the center of the flower and the fancy edge, the petals.

The funny thing is that even though they turned out nicely, I really don’t like the flowers (big surprise there) so I think I’ll remove them. I think the wrap will still look nice with no embellishments. Notice how huge and lush the flowers in the magazine are – my seem tiny and inconsequential compared to the rest of the garment. Here is the final product:

Now that this is done, I only have a short list of 4 or 5 other things to work on (before christmas!).

I don’t know that I’d want to put a raw chicken hat on my child, but it sure is worth a gander ;P

Chicken Viking Hat by Sarah @ Aloha Misc. Media House

And I finished one more pair of handwarmers. These were for Corie, and they’re in my favorite eggplant combination — purples and greens. She’s not sure she likes the fuzziness (they are made with Kid Classic) but admits that they are warm. I improvised and added some flaps so she can convert them into mittens.

She is good-naturedly modeling them against my purple monk’s meditation cushion, which is what I sit on while I knit (on the floor, not the table).

Well, my mini-wrap from the Holiday 2005 issue of Vogue Knitting is almost done. It came together much quicker than I expected. Ava is finally willing to play by herself for short periods, allowing me to get my knitting done in quick spurts.

Anyway, I chose an deep orangy-red color instead of the one pictured in the magazine. I’ll be more likely to wear that color – however, I don’t know how likely I am to wear the finished piece. I chose this project more for the process than the final product. We’ll see, maybe I’ll show it off a bit over the holidays.

Here is the progress so far:

And here are a couple detail shots:

The plan is to finish it up this weekend, flower garnish and all.

I made this last pair using the Natalya gauntlet pattern (see post from 10/10/05 again) and Haneke Exotics (Linen/Baby Alpaca/Merino blend) yarn.

my daughter and her friends want handwarmers! I’ve finished two pairs so far.

These were made with Rowan Kid Classic yarns from a pattern in Interweave Knits, the fall issue, I think.

The second pair was made with Lamb’s Pride navy worsted, the pattern from Stitch ‘ bitch Nation, pp. 196-199. The idea to make them was, I frankly admit, stolen from Kristen (see earlier post, 10/10/05).

Just a brief post to say I profitably used up the remains of some Opal sock yarn to make my Sweetie some interesting socks

Sweater boots, I hardly knew ye. According to my primary print news source (Entertainment Weeky, no. 849, November 11, 2006), Uggs are Out, sweater boots are Five Minutes Ago, and duck books are In.

I went to vist one of my sisters, Kira, and her family last month. Kira and I planned the visit around the D.C. Knit Out (technically, the “Washington D.C. Area Knit Out & Crochet”). The day before the Knit Out, we took a Nicky Epstein class at Stitch DC. We enojoyed the class very much — Nicky was charming and it was nice to relax in the pleasant back room at the shop. Kira recognized a few of workshop participants from other classes she’s taken at the shop. I made a very tiny splash by daring to make my rosette out of a bulky yarn (Artful Circus?). Before leaving, I dropped a modest wad of cash on these lovely hanks.

At the class, I realized that I hadn’t thought to bring something to donate at the Knit Out, so Kira let me raid her Lamb’s Pride stash to make a hat. The next morning, we gathered up my nephew and his Rescue Pack and took the Metro into D.C. It was a gorgeous day and tons of people were at the Knit Out:

Happily, the learn-to-crochet and learn-to-knit tents were very crowded. We dropped off our hats at the donations table, and browsed around a little. While it was great to see that so many people had turned out for the event, there actually wasn’t much more to do so we decided to take my nephew on his first trip to the Smithsonian. Upon entering the museum, an amused but kindly guard searched the Rescue Pack very seriously offered for his inspection. Once inside, we hightailed it to Julia’s kitchen, which the blood-thirsty-pirate-boy-in-tow greatly enjoyed (“She sure had a lot of knives!”).