FO Friday

Oooooh today I have quite a few things to share.

1) The Boring Baby Blanket

 I made a rather important discovery with this project: My closet doesn't know how to knit. Seriously this sat in there for 3 or 4 months and when I took it out it was still the same size!!! Luckily it was on size 11 needles so once I devoted some time to it, it worked up quickly.

Please don't ask why I put a tiny chick in this picture. This blanket is just so boring, I thought I should put a baby toy. But then all I had was this weird wind-up chick.
Also you may notice this blankie is sort of big. That's because I seriously haven't decided if it is going to go to my newest (not born yet) niece, or to the one who is already 2, since she will be wondering why everyone is giving things to this new little person instead of her. At any rate, it is washable yarn and hopefully it will be a well-accepted gift.

2) English Pastry Socks

 I dubbed these "English Pastry Socks" because the yarn came from England in a swap, and the colors are pastel, which is a word I apparently forgot so I always said pastry instead. Which...I guess the alpaca content makes them sort of decadent like pastries? So it's sort of fitting, almost.

Spiraling toes :)

These were done on 0's and I experimented with new toes and heels. I love them! 

3) Granny square Cowl (if you're a regular reader then you already know. sorry.)

What's really funny is that I tried making granny squares something like 7 times in the past, and could never get the hang of them. This time, I tried working from a chart. I have always avoided charts because I find them hard to follow when I knit. Turns out the crochet charts are totally understandable, and I ended up with 8 little grannies all around my neck. It's made with Cascade 220 so it's very cozy and snug.

4) "Valentine's Day Consolation Prize" Slippers

I added the little crocheted hearts (free pattern found here) just for the heck of it. Since they're a Valentine present, after all. I actually have quite a few balls of Patons that have been sitting in the stash collecting dust and I am now contemplating making about a billion of these.

They are fast and super easy. And oh so cute.

I may have already started another pair in black.

What's really cool is that now that I have successfully crocheted slippers (that actually fit my feet!) I think I can move up to crocheting shoes! I already bought the jute cord for the soles and I am super excited.

What yarn diet?

Anyways, that's it for me.
Check out more lovely finished objects at Tamis Amis.

WIP Wednesday: Valentine Slippers

This year, since I have no Valentine buying me goodies, I decided to give myself a present.
Happy ol' hooker, me, (I swear I still knit, too) went ahead and started crocheted myself some tootsie covers.

Using plain ol' red Paton's Classic from the stash, and a size E hook, I chose some cute Mary Jane Slippers, pattern available for free here.
Turns out that the day was quite busy and there wasn't enough time to finish the pair, but I am quite sure I'll have them done for FO Friday.

 I love these little buttons I found in my stash drawer.

Today I plan on hitting up the chocolate sales, crocheting the second slipper, and hopefully getting to work on my Some Cloudy Days. Yes I do imagine this is how quiet and peaceful my day will be. My imagination is a great and wonderful place. I picture a steaming cup of tea in an all-white background like in yoga magazines. HA!

Anyway, as always, check out more works in progress at Tamis Amis.

Haute Crochet

Okay you guys. I think I found out why I keep crocheting things. It's because I made a "rule" for myself to not cast on any more things until x amount of WIPs are finished. And technically crocheting new things isn't casting on anything new.
So I learned how to make granny squares.

Then I sewed them all together, added a double crochet border and called it a cowl.

My son calls it a "cow" and says MOOO when I put it on. Which is kind of rude, but not really because he's like 2.

(He ALWAYS disrupts my photo sessions, because he loves seeing himself on camera)

I think the main thing I took from this lesson is that I should have checked to make sure the colors don't line up exactly. It bothers me!!! And then also I probably should have sewn it with a twist so that it doesn't bunch up all awkwardly.

But I do have a new cowl, and it does match my crocheted hat:

so haute!! har har har

 So there is that.

Actually, I was planning on adding a bit of white to the cowl as well, so it would be even more matchy-matchy. But then.... I added a row of sc in white and then I thought a nice shell stitch would look neat and well... it didn't. It looked terrible, and of course I didn't think to try it on until after I'd weaved in all the ends and so then I had to unpick it all and rip and ... then I was just sick of the whole thing and called it done!

Then, after digging around on Ravelry for more crochet patterns I finally decided to just deal with the fact that I wanted to cast on something new.
I went to Anna's Yarn Shoppe in Elk Grove (I have made  goal this year to buy all my yarn IN PERSON which, so far, has made quite a difference in how much I spend. I would have used stash yarn for this project, but I really wanted to have DK weight and my stash is seriously lacking in DK.)  and bought some Berocco Vintage DK for a knit-along I want to participate in.

Funky green for some mossy legwarmers.
Since I have already made legwarmers from this pattern, (some cloudy day) I decided to incorporate something new by learning how to knit two at a time.

Success!!! Hopefully having a new and fun project will lessen my desire to hook up a bunch of granny squares and make 'em into cowls. Although the coolest thing about grannies is how they use up all those partial balls....

Organizing....

So I spent a great deal of time working on my "craft area" the other day.

Before now, I never had a craft area actually. But then my sister tossed out this old shelfy thing and I immediately took it to my room and filled it with goodies.

stuff on top- yes those are train bookends(Vyvyan's influence). And that little blue bird is totally a tape measure. And the crab is totally a piggy bank.

The books on top are knitting essays and knitting fiction, which frees up more room in my bookshelf for books on technique. Then, of course, all my straights and DPN's. My exchangeable sets are tucked in with the books, and the fixed circulars are in one of the top drawers. The other drawer is filled with tape measures, buttons, ribbons, elastic thread, extra darning needles, scissors, and other odds and ends.

The box holds all my magazines (yay even more bookshelf room!) and I put a few of my hardcover books as well, just for looks.
Then what's really cool is that the sides pop out so I can put up my ballwinder and swift. Woot!

The bottom drawer holds mostly swatches and extra pens and paper for design work.
The cabinets at the bottom are filled with....

all my WIPs. (And swift and ballwinder, when not in use.)This pile of bags used to be tucked behind my closet door (which had to be propped back with a chair in order to stay closed) and a few of them lived in other places in the house. But now they are all together in one place. I'm hoping that I will become the kind of knitter who works on one thing at a time, and that soon I will replace these WIP bags with yarn.

Speaking of yarn, I actually organized that too.
The main stash is in 2 underbed storage containers.
The bigger one holds all my worsted weights and cotton.

The smaller one holds all the bulky weight and "fancy" stuff. (Like Kidsilk Haze. That's fancy.)

There is also a little pink suitcase holds a whole bunch of Cestari sock weight I got on sale once upon a time that I decided is lacking in quality and haven't really done anything with.

 Then in my closet is this cute little basket purse

which contains all my "good" sock yarn.

This hat box (also kept in the closet) contains all my lesser-quality sock yarn. (Actually, looking at it a second time I guess it's actually just the sock yarn that didn't fit in the basket or that isn't in the queue quite yet.)

Then there's a box I got really cheap at DD's Discounts. I think they sold it as a toybox? But it's totally perfect for my acrylics. Sorry about the dark shot; I was too lazy to remove it from the closet.

And that's all the yarn in my room, except for the 5 skeins of Simply Soft in the laptop bag under Vyvyan's bed. (His under-bed has NO storage at all.)

Well I guess there are also a few bags of yarn scraps: one for fingering weight, one for bulky weight, one for worsted acrylics and one for worsted wools. But I'll save those for another day, because who wants to look at a bunch of partial skeins? Not me! Though they sure are handy for stripey hats ;)

So anyways, now things are a little bit more manageable in here. I'm quite happy with my new "craft area" and that all my yarn is mostly together and sorted. Now if only I could get my Ravelry stash page up to date....

Non-knitting adventures

This week we went on a field trip to the zoo! I knitted all the way there and back, of course, but I'll save that news for Finished Object Friday (hint hint, something might have gotten finished).
So now to bore you with a picture of my kid, in which he refuses to look at the camera:

 Probably refusing to look at the camera because this is way more exciting:

But his favorite animal in the whole zoo? Not the lions, or the tiger, or the anteaters, or the parrot that amused us to no end saying "Meow!" and "Here, kitty kitty!" No, his favorites were the flamingos.

He kept saying "pink! pink!" And then when grandma taught him to stand on one leg and hide his head in his arms, that was it. He has a new favorite animal. haha.

Of course, while I was looking at the flamingo I kept thinking how cool it would be to find flamingo-colored yarn. The second I got home, I started looking into it. While I found several skeins that captured the light pink of the flamingo (manos del urugay and northloopyarn for example) I found very few who got both the light and dark intermixed. Although Lorna's Laces was a good option.
But my favorite flamingo skein was this one by Socks that Rock(aptly named pink flamingo). It seems like a lot of the dyers had forgotten that flamingos, while wonderfully pink, have black under-wings. And I think that's really what I was looking for, that mix of light pink, dark pink and black. Even the Socks that Rock aren't exactly what I was looking for, but who knows. Maybe this will be one of those times when I need to experiment with the dye bath!

So anyways, the obvious conclusion is to combine my love of my craft with the love of my son:  I have to knit him a flamingo.

Ok that's enough non-knitting blogging for ya'll.
Unless you wanna see my new shoes. ;)

Har har you can see the stickers on my floor.

FO Friday

Well, other than my Windowpane Hat (pattern and all) I didn't get very much done this week.
I got a lot of progress done on a baby blanket, and quite a bit of sock knitting done, but nothing DONE done.
I did, however, crochet some washcloths.

WONKY CROCHET!!!

It's so funny! I'm really not a "crocheter." I am more like a knitter who also technically knows how to crochet (sorta) and I never really feel like crocheting just for the heck of it.
Yet this week I was just hooking along! I made 4 washcloths total: one of those pictured was already done, and the stripey one at the end was finished soon after I took this picture. I am giving these to my mom for her birthday in April. She once told me, upon seeing my stash, that I should just make her a whole bunch of washcloths.

 I hope she meant it.

Next week I should have a few more projects to share, but since I'm working on finishing old WIP's they will be SO BORING!!!! haha

Check out more exciting projects at Tami's Amis.

WIP Wednesday: Something Different.

Last year I knit more than 12 pairs of socks. Of those, I can tell you how many differed from the straight up top-down, heel flap, round toe: One. I strayed from the familiar long enough to learn how to do an afterthought heel, and then went straight back to the same ol' same ol'.

Socks I have made

When I cast on for this most recent pair of socks, I didn't think anything of it, but when I got to the heel I realized how boring and predictable I am. So, I dug around in one of my sock books (I have 5 books on socks. Maybe it's the guilt of owning all these innovative sock designs and only working plain ol' socks that got to me) until I found something *new* and **exciting**!

I chose the banded heel from the Sock Knitting Master Class. It is shown in the French Market Socks, but here is how mine turned out.

 It was a very interesting technique, because after you turn the heel and pick up the stitches, there are no gusset decreases to work. Also, because it has been SO long since I first turned a heel, I got to feel that wonder one more time. I quite look forward to doing it again.
Now you might be wondering if that weird band thing gets uncomfortable when you stand on it. And I don't know yet, because I haven't done a lot of walking in my one sock just yet. In addition, due to the yarn's fiber content I think these will be reserved as bed socks so I'll never be able to tell you how this heel behaves in a shoe. I can only tell you that it sure was fun to make!

Then to further spice things up, I went with a star toe from Teach Yourself Visually: Sock Knitting. (Yes, in all the socks I have ever made I have never strayed from a round toe. I am ashamed.)

I had heard tell from a certain yarn harlot that spiral toes look nippley, but so far it hasn't bothered me. (Though I can definitely see where she's coming from.) I am also pretty excited about knitting the second sock(!), because it means I get to reverse the spiral. This is my first time NOT using kitchner stitch to finish a sock. One time I did a 3-needle bind off, but it disturbed me so much that I went back and "fixed" it.

So anyways, the details:
Needles: 0's,with 64 st CO
Yarn: Angels and Elephants Alpaca/Merino sock 329 yds/ 100g (from myTiny Owl Knits summa summa swap partner)

I made my socks pretty short, so I should have a lot left over. (For puffing? Probably.)

Head over to Tami's Amis for more WIPs.