Stuff I Made That Is Awesome

The end of year crafting extravaganza has begun. I love making presents for people. “People” also includes myself. Okay, mostly myself, haha. Seriously though, I have started two of the three knitting gifts I plan on giving this year, one of which is about 75% completed.  So I’m way ahead of my “OMG it’s December 15th??? I should get started on the present making!!” I usually wind up with.

So no pics on those till after Christmas. They’re awesome, though.

Hey, so I finished Liesl and I love her.

You can also get a nice view of my sassy wood paneling up in there.

She fits nice. Here is a crappy picture I took of myself in my “vanity” area, and it is a mess so ignore the laundry all over the place.

Not only is that a fairly crappy picture, but it’s an “in the mirror” picture, haha! But as you can see, Liesl looks super cute on.

Though I will fess up to the fact that even though there are six buttons they don’t all close. I should have stopped making button holes after four, but, whatever.

Basically I knit the 46″ size, but didn’t, you know, swatch, or use the right needle or anything, so it’s a miracle that I like it and it fits! And I did the picot bind off, which is kinda twee but I think works for this highly girly knit. The buttons are from the La Mode vintage reproduction line. I found them at JoAnn’s. They cost more than the Vanna yarn, heh.

The other thing I made is this awesome beret:

I made this out of Fleece Artist Merino 2/6, which is an awesome fingering weight yarn. Very silky feeling. I used a #3 US needle. I should have used a smaller needle for the ribbing because it blocked completely ridiculous. Like, too huge to fit. So, annoyed that all my hard work had been negated by a very necessary block, I bought some red elastic thread and sewed it into the cast on edge. You can’t even see it, but it salvaged the knit spectacularly! I noticed that a lot of store-bought berets have elastic in the edge, so it must not be that uncommon for the edge to be a little too big. But that would be my recommendation on this pattern (#24 lace beret in the latest Vogue Knitting Holiday mag) to not be lazy and actually knit the edge on smaller needles. I think the pattern actually tells you to do this, but, whatever. Now it fits great.

Anyway, so aside from the Christmas projects, I have also cast on for a sweater out of some gray wool-ease I had lying around. Much like the Liesl yarn, I suspect that I bought this way on sale. Here’s the initial design for the sweater:

I’m winging it, as usual, so we’ll see A) how long it keeps my interest and B) if it even does what I want it to. Basically I want it to have a yoke of some sort, whether garter stitch or cabled I haven’t yet decided, sort of blousey sleeves with a narrow cuff and a sewn hem for neatness. Worked top down. I already have the top rib started and need to look in my stitch books for the yoke part.