Knitting In Public

I suppose it’s old news by now, but I thought I would post the Christmas knitting I did. Very proud of myself that I managed to knit for the Guild’s charity project and get some knitting done for Christmas gifts!

On our sister retreat, Jenny had brought some mittens I had knit for her several years ago. Unfortunately, they were in bad shape, mostly due to the small fire she had a few years ago - and the recovery company had ended up semi-felting the mittens. When she wore them at Larsmont, there were holes in the tips as well! At that time, she requested a new pair of mittens for Christmas. Easy-peasy.

(Unfortunately, not blocked and looking kinda pointy.)

When we returned home, I showed Anne the pattern so she could see what they were supposed to look like, and mentioned there is a matching hat pattern. Anne requested one of the hats for Christmas. I hadn’t made that one, but shouldn’t be too difficult, since I’ve made the mittens on multiple occasions.

It was difficult to tell in a “white” or “natural” color, how yellowish the white was, so I ordered 2 different “white” versions of Galway (one of my favorites, especially for that mitten pattern). I ordered a blue for Jenny and was guessing that I needed 2 skeins since I was too lazy to go find the pattern when I was ordering the yarn. The blue turned out to be waaaay off to match Jenny’s coat, so I bought some Cascade 220 which turned out to be just the right color. In the meantime, I discovered that I supposedly only needed one skein of yarn for the mittens, and one skein of yarn for the hat. So, I merrily started knitting Anne’s hat. You knit in ribbing for 5″ before starting the design/beaded portion, and I managed to knit a couple of rows beyond the 5″ (one of those black hole things in knitting). I decided to just leave it. :(  I ran out of yarn about 8 rows from the end (already into the decreasing). I figured I probably ran out because of the extra one or two rows of ribbing! :(  I called Anne to see if she wanted a pair of mittens to go with the hat - and she said “sure!” so I made the mittens, and had enough left over to finish the hat. I was doing the happy dance!

(This is me, trying to get a good photo. Kind of fun that it was during a snowstorm! I’m actually wearing her hat, too, but didn’t manage to get a very good photo.)

(A photo of Anne wearing the hat, showing it’s lovely beadedness!)

Then I decided that it was unfair to offer Anne a pair of mittens to go with her hat - and not offer Jenny the opportunity for a hat to go with her mittens (except that I only had the one skein). She said, “sure!” so I desperately called the local shop where I purchased the Cascade 220 (luckily only 2 weeks before), and they had another skein in the same dye lot! Yippee!

I must admit that I finished this at 2 a.m. the night before our Christmas celebration/gift exchange, so I didn’t get a photo and didn’t get a chance to block this, either! Apologies to Jenny for the crappy photo (she was not well when this photo was taken). More cabley, beaded goodness!  Woohoo!

 What did you knit for Christmas giving?

I’ve been knitting like crazy, trying to maximize the number of donations I can make to the Knitters’ Guild charity project for 2010. I missed the December meeting (where we were supposed to hand in our completed items) as our time schedule changed due to the death of my uncle Jake. As a result, I have arranged to turn in my items on January 5, at the next service committee meeting. It will give me a chance to finish the last few items. Pictures will be posted when I’m done - I don’t want to take the time now to photograph them when finishing time is short.

I have high hopes and big plans for 2011. I’ve joined the “I Make Mittens” group on Ravelry, and want to participate in the “11mittensfor2011″ challenge, as well as the NaKniMitMo ‘11 challenge. In the 11 for ‘11, the challenge is to knit 11 pairs of mittens (or gloves, or convertibles) in 2011. For NaKniMitMo, the challenge is to knit as many mittens as you can during the month of January, 2011. No prizes or anything (or at least, none that I would expect to win - I am the slowest knitter ever!) but a challenge to get me going for 2011. I really liked the idea of the Yarn Harlot’s Self-Imposed Sock Club although I don’t knit many socks right now - and don’t have much motivation to knit them - I thought I might take the idea and create a “something of the month club” like PinkLemonTwist. She is alternating socks and shawls (no, not the time-consuming, lacy ones). I agree with the Harlot that a sock-of-the-month-club is challenging and can be fun, however I’ve decided that I just don’t care much for mystery stuff. Too often I don’t like the finished product, and while I can give it away to charity, I am just too slow of a knitter to spend my time knitting on something that is not enjoyable. The clubs often include the yarn, and while you get the chance to try different yarns and colorways that you don’t normally choose, it is hard to want to knit with something you find unattractive. Clearly it seems a better idea, especially for someone who has a substantial stash and an amazingly long queue on Ravelry to create my own knit-something-of-the-month club.

I am knocking around a few ideas for my ‘club’ - and wondering if I am (again!) attempting to be too ambitious in my goals. There is always a huge need for mittens for so many charities that you can’t possibly knit fast enough, so I can indulge my desire to try several different patterns, etc. and donate them. This will also fit nicely into my 11 in ‘11 and NaKniMitMo goals. Mittens can usually be completed fairly quickly, so this would leave time for me to knit other things that interest me, or gifts for next Christmas, or any upcoming baby gifts. However, I’ve been thinking for quite awhile that I have had the yarn for the Great American Aran Afghan for several years and have only knit 3 squares. They are only about 12 x 12, and even though they are heavily cabled, knitting one per month seems a reasonable goal. There are also several afghans on my queue, and lots of old acrylic yarn in my stash that would love to become one of these afghans… so is it unreasonable to think I could run concurrent ‘clubs’ and knit one pair of mittens *and* one afghan square per month? How about an FO club? I’m sure I have at least 12 unfinished projects. Could I finish one per month?

Let me know what you think! More on this after the 5th, and Happy New Year!

Happy November!

As this is the month in which we celebrate Thanksgiving - a time to be thankful for the many blessings we have (even though at times it seems we aren’t so blessed). As part of that time of thankfulness for all we have, I will be spending the next 3+ weeks knitting for others.

The Knitters’ Guild has a charity drive this year for hats, scarves and mittens to be donated to White Earth Reservation and the Head Start program (in St. Paul, I think). I also like to try to knit something for the Cheyenne River Youth Project - and that is usually mittens (to coincide with the yearly Mitten Blitz - although those mittens should have already been sent off in September). I have already finished a hat, and have several pairs of mittens that I’ve previously finished and will be donating, but my knitting for this month will concentrate on mittens/hats/scarves to be donated to charity.

If you’re a knitter out there (or crocheter!), the Knitters’ Guild will be happy to accept your donation - you do not need to be a member!

I’ll post photos of the donations before they are given away.

I’ve been distracted from my afghan squares and my mittens by a couple of very cute patterns.

The first is a pair of booties that I heard about on one of my many Yahoo! knitting groups. The pattern is on a blog and I believe the language is Dutch. There was a lot of talk on the knitting group about whether or not a translation is a violation of copyright law…. I admit to being confused about the issue because the pattern is available for free on the internet - I just don’t read Dutch! Anyway, there were a few translation tools suggested and with a better-than-basic knowledge of knitting and how knitting patterns are written, I could figure it out. I did need a little help for the flowers on the ends of the ties (they are crocheted). This pattern caused a storm of emails as everyone thought these were so adorable. Here is my finished pair:

I knit these over a weekend out of stash yarn (I think it’s Lion Brand “Jamie” yarn). My arms still have not recovered from that marathon of knitting!

After I finished these booties, I finally got all the information I needed to replicate a kid’s hat I saw at my Monday knitting group. Sandy had made this hat and it turned out so fabulous that I had to make one for my FGS (future grandbaby stash). I got the pattern name from Sandy, but she didn’t have the ball band from the yarn she used. She did remember that she bought it at Zandy’s, so I stopped over there one day when I was in Burnsville and asked if they knew what yarn was used. They knew exactly what I was referring to, and directed me to the yarn! They had to order the pattern, as they were out of stock. In the meantime, I was finishing the booties, so I had plenty to do - and I decided to look up the pattern on Ravelry to see what others had done. UGLY!!! I couldn’t believe it was the same hat. Once I got the pattern, I thought Sandy must have made alterations, but she insisted she had knit the pattern as written. Once I started knitting, I realized why I had thought she had made changes, and all was well. Here’s the hat I made:

Pattern: Loop d’Loop Hat & Scarf by Chris Bylsma    (I only made the hat.)

Yarn: Nashua Handknits Wooly Stripes (2 skeins)

Needles: Size 8 (5.0 mm)

It took me only 2 days to knit this hat — very fun to watch it all come together! There are a couple of things I wasn’t thrilled about: the pattern tells you to knit until you reach the appropriate measurement, when the work is slightly stretched. What does that mean? How hard are you pulling on it? The other part was that the yarn clearly was the thing that made this so adorable, but the skein is only 88 yards and that’s not long enough to get a complete repeat on the color sequence, so when you add the 2nd skein, you don’t know “what comes next” to be able to continue in the intended sequence. As a result, while this side of the hat is cute, the back side doesn’t look the same, and is primarily blue, green and white. Still “ok” but not as cute as getting all the colors as in the photo.

Inbetween those two projects, I did manage to finish a few more afghan squares:

I got a little lazy on the pictures as I’m uploading these to Ravelry as well, and I’m running out of photo space before I have to start paying for it! I won’t be attending this month’s meeting for the Knitters’ Guild, but I’ll keep knitting (this is a year-long project, after all!) and will turn them all in when I make it to the next meeting. I still have lots of yarn left - and not enough time to knit it all up for afghan squares.

I did finally manage to spend some more time on my Lillyfield mittens (I’m trying to hold off on the Anemoi mittens so I can knit them with Mary). We had a “craft night” at church on Friday and I am now just a few rows from beginning the decreases for the top of the mitten. At last, I can share a photo-in-progress (but this is before Friday night’s knitting). Unfortunately, the magenta does not photograph well. It’s very hard to get the right color, and the yarn itself is multi-colored/shaded and it’s gorgeous in person - the color is very rich - but nearly impossible to capture in a photo. I did upload it to Ravelry on Friday, and have found that the designer has marked my mittens as a “fave”!!!!  

This weekend I’m starting another new mitten (less intense, no chart to follow). Once I get some progress I’ll show it to you. I did end up buying the wrong an unintended color (102 instead of 101), so I’m hoping it will be as cute as the photo on the pattern. I’m also making the child’s small, and the photo shows a woman’s medium. That definitely changes the color sequencing, so we’ll see how it turns out.

There won’t be as much knitting going on this weekend as I’d like….I’ll be mostly working on taxes, taxes and more taxes! Filing all this stuff is getting to be a huge burden (payroll taxes paid weekly, sales tax filed and paid monthly - amidst the year end record-gathering for both business and personal taxes) - it never ends! Thank goodness knitting helps to reduce the stress!

So…how does a weird saying like “Cute As A Button” get started? What’s so cute about buttons?