Socks!

I first knitted a sock, not a pair but ONE sock, a few years ago and I didn't like the pattern the yarn (self patterning) formed so I didn't knit the other one.  Fast forward to last month.  I bought a sock yarn that looked OK so I thought I'd try it.  Turns out, I love the stripes.  Of course, it was difficult to make both socks match but I did my best because I knew I wouldn't wear the socks if they weren't as close to identical as possible.

While I was knitting the first sock, I tried it on with the needles still in it.  My son saw me and insisted I make him socks, but not just ONE. He pointed to his feet and said "I need TWO socks!"  Hahaha.  He gave me a look that said "look, I have two feet so I need two socks!"  It was quite hilarious.  I didn't have enough yarn to make the socks like mine so I used a different sock yarn. He LOVED them and wants to wear them all the time.  For my socks, I used Patons Kroy Ragg Shades in Gray Brown Marl, and for my son's I used Patons Stretch Socks in Licorice.

I did find a mistake in the child's sock pattern. For the toe, it says: “Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until there the following stitches remain:
Needles 1 and 2: 6 sts
Needle 3: 12 sts”

It should be until Needles 1 and 3: 6 stitches. Needle 2: 12 stitches.  Needles 1 and 3 make the bottom of the foot, and needle 2 makes the top (where the ribbing has been).

My socks are from the same pattern I knitted the one sock years ago.  Turns out, I love knitting socks.  That said, knitting the second sock is not nearly as fun as the first, which is how the Second Sock Syndrome happens.  Now I want to learn to knit two socks at a time on circular needles.

Hello, Baby!

Baby knits are so quick!  I pumped out this sweater, hat, and booties set in about 3 days (clearly, not knitting three days straight!).  The set is so cute, and my nephew looks pretty cute in it too.

Everything was pretty easy and I don't really recall any issues.  This was my first top down, one piece sweater, albeit a tiny one, and I have to say, WHY AREN'T ALL SWEATERS/CARDIGANS DONE LIKE THIS???  The sweater pattern is the Baby Boy Five Hour Sweater, which took longer than five hours but not much.  I am a very slow knitter, so it's probably me and not a misnomer.  The sleeves are worked flat and then seamed together, which brings the yarn back up to the body to continue knitting.  The instructions go like this "With right sides together slip stitch sleeve closed being careful to close up all the holes at the underarm."  I couldn't figure out what a slip stitch was in knitting, but it turns out it's a crochet thing.  I didn't know that, but I ended up using a crochet hook anyway.  I put the right sides together, then picked up a stitch at every selvage stitch, going through both selvages, and put them on the knitting needle. It's easier to show than to explain, but suffice to say that it worked great.  The only issue I have with this pattern is that there are no instructions for button holes, and I didn't notice this until after I had worked the yoke, and there was no way I was going to rip all the way back to make a button hole.

The other patterns are Just Hatched Booties and Hello Baby Hat.  I added the pompom.  The entire set used about 250 yards of worsted weight yarn.

Snowman Hat

As I have hinted in the last couple of posts, I've been on a knitting kick lately, ESPECIALLY now that only is my sewing machine still packed but I'm also unemployed.  There are other projects I haven't blogged yet but I'm so crazy about this one that I can't wait.  I saw this snowman hat on the Winter 2012/2013 issue of Knit Simple and I KNEW I had to make it, nevermind that we live in Miami.  I did have a justification though, The Monkey's preschool is having a holiday party tomorrow and they asked that the kids brought their holiday/Santa hats...so he'll wear this hat!

Working with the white yarn on the body, Lionbrand Jiffy, was a pain in the butt.  It's really horrible to knit with that yarn; it's squeaky, doesn't slide well on the needles, etc. I can't complain thought, it's all cheap acrylic yarn, which is fine by me as it washes well and I don't want to spend a small fortune on nice wool yarn when he will wear this only a few times.  That said, the other yarn, brand Caron and also acrylic, knits like a dream!

The pattern calls for the hat to be knitted flat and the seamed but I prefer to avoid seaming as much as possible so I knitted the ribbing section flat, then joined in the round for the rest.  At the end, I only had to seam the ribbing section.  If I was to knit it again, I'd knit it all in the round.  The pattern also says to knit the snowman's scarf flat and then seam it but I chose do knit a 5-stitch icord instead.

All in all, I absolutely love this hat and The Monkey did too.  He could not believe it was for him.  He's over the moon with it and I'm SO glad he loves it; it was well worth the effort.

Cabled Mini Scarf

I have been on a scarf-knitting kick lately, but at least this last one is one I can actually wear in South Florida.  It's a skinny scarf, made from this pattern. I had wanted to try knitting cables for a while but I was scared because it looks difficult.  It wasn't difficult for the most part.  The part I did find difficult was ripping back when I made a mistake.  I couldn't figure out how to arrange the stitches on the needle so I just ripped back a few rows until I got to a row where the cabling wasn't an issue.  I probably wouldn't know how to fix it either if I dropped a stitch.  I don't love the yarn, it's already pilling (it's cheap!), but I do love the scarf.  I still have to weave in the ends but that should take just a few minutes.

I completed 100 cable repeats and knitted 6 rows of garter stitch at the beginning and the end, and held the cable needle at the front.  The scarf is about 52 inches long.

Knitting Scarves

I recently moved...again...but it's only a temporary move so all of my stuff, including sewing things, is still in boxes and will remain there for the next couple of months. Since I'm now sewing or doing school work, I've had a lot of spare time, which I've employed knitting.  I am a slow knitter and I am not a process knitter, I do it for the finished product, and I've managed to finish two scarves in the last twenty days.  One of them was for a coworker, as a parting gift (I got a great new job, which I start on October 29th).  She loves red and is going to New York for Thanksgiving so I made her a really cute bowtie scarf.  I loved the scarf so much that I wasn't sure I wanted to part with it once it was finished!  I may have to make another one for me, in a lighter yarn so it's not so warm (who needs scarves in Miami?!?!?!).

The scarf on me

Knitting this scarf was fairly simple but not boring.  it was enough of a challenge to make it interesting but not too much that it required mu complete attention; I caught up on tv shows while I knitted.  I don't know if you can see in the picture, but one of the sides of the scarf (on top) has a pocket knitted by putting every other stitch on a separate needle and working only half the stitches for some rows, then going back to the stitches left behind, knitting for the same number of rows and then knitting them all together again.  That was interesting for me as I'd never done anything like it.  This way, you can thread one side of the scarf into the other to "knot" it.  This is the pattern I used.

After that, and going against the "who needs scarves in Miami?" thing, I knitted another scarf and this time it was for me.  The appeal of this scarf was not so much wearing it or how it looked on, but rather, that it looks like a sushi roll when rolled up!  I think it will probably just sit in a drawer and look pretty but I love it anyway.  Here are the project details.

Rolled up.

 

I already casted on another project, let's see how long it takes me to finish it!

Sewing Problem #4

Simplicity 2613

When I was making the blanket buddy from the previous post, my son came up to me and said with a gleam in his eyes "Is this for ME?"  It wasn't, and I felt guilty, so I put on a poker face and pretended I did not hear him. This worked, until he saw it again so I told him I'd make him a toy. He's also started to complain about monsters in his room at night so his dad thought that maybe having a stuffed animal would help, like a security blanket type deal.  I'd much rather sew than knit so I showed the kiddo this pattern and asked him which animal he wanted. He picked all of them except for the two pink ones LOL.  I found that hilarious because we have never enforced any type of gender role stereotypes, yet he's drawn to "boyish" things.  Anyhow, I told him he could pick only one so of course he picked the most intricate, and difficult to sew, one, the elephant.

It is not a difficult project nor time consuming, there's just a lot of curves.  I'd say that it took about two hours of actual work, including cutting out the pattern, ironing it, etc.  I trace patterns onto tracing paper rather than cutting the actual pattern tissue 99% of the time, but because there is only one size per animal here, I didn't feel cutting the pattern tissue would compromise anything.  This saved me a lot of time.  I also did not iron most of the seams because it's a pain in the pattootie to iron so many deeply curved seams. 

The kiddo has not seen it yet, he's at my mom's this weekend, but I can already picture the huge smile on his face when he sees it.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and I'd definitely make it again.