1st pair of the year

I finished my first pair of tessellating socks. I'll think of a snazzier name if I ever write up the pattern. These socks used about 60 gms of yarn total. So, that's around 20gms of yarn for each color. I balanced that out by doing the toe, heel, and ribbing in different colors. I like knitting tessellating patterns because they seem to fly by quickly. Each color section doesn't take that long and I keep wanting to knit until the next color change before putting it down.

Details:
Tessellating sock #1
Yarn: leftovers of Knit Picks Stroll Kettle Dyed in wine, gold, and eggplant
Needle: size 1 (2.25mm)
Method: magic loop, 1 at a time, toe-up, Turkish cast-on, short row heel
Start: December 28, 2009
Finish: January 6, 2010

I've finished one sock and I'm up to the heel on the 2nd sock of my other tessellating pattern. I tried to match up a few variegated yarns to tessellate, but that just hid all of that stranding. My stranding technique still needs some work. I'm holding both yarns in my left hand. I tried doing the one color in each hand thing, but can't get a decent tension or rhythm with the one in my right hand.

I wove a few more scarves. My 12 dent heddles arrived on last Monday and I was off weaving with sock yarns almost right away. These three are made from non-superwash yarns, so they're probably better off as scarves instead of socks. The scarf at the bottom is Knit Picks Sock Landscape yarn in Mesa. I really like the plaid that came out of it. The top ones are Jojoland yarns when you could only find it on ebay. They're both a merino/cashmere blend. The left one has a springy feel to it and the right one is really fuzzy and soft.

I learned how different yarns can really mess with your tension. These three yarns were very different from each other and each behaved differently on the loom. I liked the Mesa one the best. It was the smoothest and easiest to weave. I also learned how to hem stitch the ends. I'm not confident that it will hold, but it looks good for now.

These were all made on my Cricket using a 12 dent heddle. From left to right and top to bottom, there were 92, 104, and 104 warp ends. The scarves measure 7x60, 8x62, and 8x62 inches.

I'll go work on the second tessellating sock while everyone else is sledding. Ah, it's quiet in here. ;-)

Out with the old...in with the cold(?)

It's cold here and it's going to stay that way for the rest of this week. These snowflakes are one of the few reasons why I like it when it gets this cold. I can only take photos of like this when it's well below freezing. The temperature was around 20 degrees when I was taking these.

Here's the recap for 2009 in numbers like I usually do.
Last year, I knit:
9 shawls
49 pairs of socks
2 scarves
1 hat
3 pairs of mittens
2 bath mats/rugs

and wove 4 scarves. Wow, that's a lot of socks. A lot of those went elsewhere because I don't have 49 new pairs of socks in my sock drawer. ;-)

This year, I really want to use up some of the yarn that I already have. I've started that in December with the bath mats and the woven scarves. The mats were knit using a hemp/wool blend yarn that I bought when I first started knitting. The woven scarves used up most of my worsted weight yarn. I'm still waiting for my smaller sized heddles for my loom. UPS is supposed to deliver those today, but I'm not sure if they'll attempt our driveway with all of the fluffy snow on it.

The Sock Knitter's Anonymous group had a leftover challenge during December. I started two pairs of socks using various solid leftovers and I really like the results. I need to make a few more pairs like these to use up more of my leftovers. When I was trying to decide on yarn for these two socks, I laid out all of my leftover balls of yarn (approx. 20ish to 40ish grams each) and found that I had several gallon sized plastic bags full of them! Eek. It's time to use those.

I hope you're staying warm where ever you are. If not, I hope you have pretty snowflakes like these:

Crazy lace at 1am

I worked on this shawl like crazy late last night and early this morning just to finish it. Why? Because I wanted to take a picture of it in the snow. ;-) It's supposed to warm up sometime this week and I'm afraid all of the snow will melt. I don't think we'll have a white Christmas.

This shawl was my first designed by Birgit Freyer. I say first because I bought a set of her patterns and they're all so beautiful! I've had this website bookmarked for over a year, but was always hesitant to buy them. The patterns are a little more pricey than typical lace patterns, but I found this one worth it. The charts were clear and easy to read. As a bonus, this pattern was easy for me to alter. I cast-on fewer stitches for a slightly thinner shawl.

This shawl had a few unique stitches in it. Some stitches changed the stitch count on that row, but will be accounted for on the next right side row. This makes the top points of the little diamonds match the bottom points.

Details:
Pattern: Johanna by Birgit Freyer
Yarn: Wollmeise lace in Granatapfel (235gms)
Needle: size 3 Knit Picks Classic Circular
Mods: decreased cast-on for thinner stole
Blocked size: 20 inches wide by 98 inches(point to point) or 72 inches(straight part only)
Start: November 18, 2009
Finish: December 21, 2009

I'll leave with a picture of the snowman that my daughter made-- all by herself! --wearing the shawl. ;-)

Triinu scarf

This was a quick knit. It only took me about 3 days. The nupps weren't too bad to knit once I got used to them. I did try this pattern with 100% lace alpaca yarn and that didn't go too well. This was my first time knitting nupps and the Dream in Color Baby yarn made it so easy. You can't really see the nupps in the finished scarf, even though I did do 9 stitch nupps. That doesn't matter to me. This was mainly a test run with nupps. Now, I want to do the Queen Silvia Shawl or the Crown Prince Square Shawl with finer lace yarn.

Details:
Pattern: Triinu scarf from Knitted Lace of Estonia
Yarn: Dream in Color Baby in black parade--88gms
Needle: size 3 Knit Picks Classic Circular
Notes: knit only 27 of the 29 repeats of the main chart
Blocked size: 13 inches wide and 67 inches long
Start: November 11, 2008
Finish: November 13, 2008

A large shawl will have to wait though. I have other projects that need to be done. Plus, it's that crazy/hectic/fun time of year. I need to focus on smaller projects. Up next is a stole out of Noro Kureyon sock yarn. I'm using the One Skein a-Stole pattern. I found that while searching for non-sock patterns using this yarn in ravelry. The search function in ravelry is amazing and a lot of fun to use.

Today, we woke up to a winter wonderland. What?! In November? Yes...everything was covered in snow. I think we had at least 3 inches of the stuff. I try to take a few pictures of our house throughout the year. I like seeing how the trees change around it. Everything feels closed in during the summer when the trees still have their leaves. Now, it feels much more open....and colder. ;-)


Aren't these leaves pretty? My daughter collected them in a bucket while the trees were turning. Yesterday, she dumped the bucket out and used it to collect snow. I'm glad that I didn't tell her to sweep those leaves off of the porch.

Late snow

Snow? It was 84 degrees last Tuesday and now we're having days in the 30's again. I was ready for spring and then I remembered my allergies. Then the snow came and I thought I would get a break from my allergies, but they're still driving me crazy. I have it contained, but the allergy medicine makes me feel drowsy for about an hour and then cranky. Dwight wonders how that makes anything different. Funny--very funny.

There is a lot going on around here. We just got the samples for our floor. We have agreed(!!) on one of them, but Dwight wants to look around locally again. I can't wait to get started on that project. All of our little starters for our garden are sitting in the kitchen waiting for the weather to warm up again. I even brought in E's flower pots. All of those are now sprouting. I hope she gets some pretty flowers. I'm doing pretty good with the planting so far this year. I guess practice is good. So far, nothing has drowned from too much water or died from lack of water. ;-)

There has been a lot of knitting. I finished the Cable Down Raglan!! I took some in-the-mirror shots of it. I hope to get better shots when I wear it out on Sunday. I started and finished a little sweater vest for D. I used the cobalt blue bamboo yarn. There will be more details when I get a picture of D wearing it. And finally, I started another sock. This one is a pattern from More Sensational Knitted Socks. I liked the stranded knitting patterns in her other sock book and wanted to start one right away when I saw these in the new book. The yarn is Knitpicks Palette. It's not usually an ideal sock yarn, but I like it for stranded or fair isle patterns.

One down, another to go

The first Cablenet sock is complete! It feels a bit looser than the socks I normally knit, but I'll live with it. My think my cast-on was too loose on this sock. I've started the next one already and did the cast-on much better this time around. I did the piquant heel. I love the way it looks. I'm usually a short row heel person, but this heel fits good too. I changed the toe to be less pointy. I'm happy with this one and I can't wait to finish the pair. My mind is wandering to other mini cabled socks. I'm not too fond of large cables on socks, but these mini cables are perfect for me. And while I was outside taking pictures, I took a few pictures of the scenery from the front porch.

I really like the photo on the left. That is what our porch looks like when some of the snow blows onto the porch. I like how it fades from complete snow to the wood. The blue chair is one that Dwight made a few years ago from a pattern out of ReadyMade magazine. The picture on the right is one side of our front yard. The little roof you see is the roof of the well house. The little tree on the left is what we use as our outdoor Christmas tree. We planted that the same year E was born. I've always liked the way those trees that lean over the sidewalk look with snow on them. The sidewalk didn't do it today, but when it's a little warmer while it snows the sidewalk gets a patchwork look to it. The snow will stick to the weeds between the stones, but the snow on the stones will melt.