personal designs – Behind the Smile

September 29, 2009June 24, 2010

Hatapalooza 2009, an Epilogue

And so, we come to the end of my crazy hat making. I really have no particular desire to knit any more hats any time soon, though I did promise Sam I would knit him a hat in Redskins colors for his birthday. I will have to suck up the courage and fortitude in order to knit a boring man hat. I know the recipient will like it when it’s done, however… meh. Though, I do think I already have the yarn in my stash somewhere, so I don’t have to run around looking for it in a store. I am tempted to do some sort of colorwork on it to keep my attention. I wonder if there are any sort of terrible Indian motifs I could use? Haha! Well, they ARE the Redskins…

Anyway, so here is the hat I knit Stefanie at work. She paid me for it in February and I only just finished it, but she was cool with the delay and had a great reaction to finally receiving it. There were squeals of joy, so I have my suspicions that she liked it. I am hoping to get a picture of her wearing it at some point. But here are some pictures of the hat, which I designed to have cables going up the earflaps and in the front.

It’s super cute, if I say so myself. One of the things that I did differently for this hat was I tried out using applied I-cord for the edging. I’d never done it before, and it worked out just as I’d hoped – it smoothed out the rough edges and even flattened the stockinette areas of the earflaps which were popping out funny.

The color is very wrong in all the photos I took. It’s actually a deep periwinkle blue in worsted weight Malabrigo. Mmm, Malabrigo.

I must confess, I did buy some awesome brown Dream in Color Classy to make myself a similar hat with cabling and flaps but I have lost the will to knit hats at the moment. So, we’ll see.

Meanwhile, I finished my Lacunae Socks I knit out of Miss Babs sock yarn in the Terracopper colorway. I love Lacunae socks (a knitspot/Anne Hanson pattern) and I think they may be my go-to “vanilla” socks, since they’re mostly ribbing. I still have to take a picture of those, though.

August 31, 2009June 24, 2010

17 Months

After a healthy 17 months on the needles, I finally finished ye olde Berry Nice Socks.

I used Knitpicks Felici in the Mixed Berries colorway on size US 1 DPNs. For my sizing, it was 80 stitches on US 1 needles with a 3×1 rib over the whole thing. Easy peasy but I guess I was bored by them. At any rate, they are finally done!

I like the yarn a lot, so the fact that these took so long is stupid.

Speaking of Felici, I cranked out a quickie stockinette scarf on the knitting machine on Friday.

Felici Scarf

It’s also out of Felici, and knit at a loose gauge. It’s an experiment that worked out all right, though I’m not in lurve with it or anything. I will have to tighten up the gauge a bit for future experiments.

But all things considered, I made a six foot scarf in a half hour, so whatever. I blocked a little bit and it curls less. I’ll probably block it a bit more another time to see if I can kill the curl some more. Hopefully that will work. I just pinned it this time; I didn’t use the blocking wires.

It’s a good way to use up that self-striping yarn, because despite its flaws, it turned out fine, so more will probably be on the way.

I also finished a scarf I knit the summer of 2004 while I was staying in Leon Springs, TX – house-sitting in BFE, basically. I’ll post pictures of that another time. I found the scarf when I moved again in January, and I finally wove in the ends and blocked it this weekend, so technically speaking it is a 2009 FO. Heh.

Right now I’m working on some socks and also thinking about a sweater with all this dark grey Wool-Ease I got on sale awhile ago. We’ll see. I’d knit the front and then machine knit the rest because I am super lazy and product oriented when it comes to sweaters.

I also got a bee in my bonnet about hats, so next time: a finished Norah Gaughan hat from the latest Vogue Knitting, and maybe, if I crack the whip, a Koolhaas, which is a hat I’ve wanted to make since its debut in the 2007 Interweave Knits holiday issue, and finally found the perfect yarn for it – the blue lagoon Dream in Color Classy I got for my birthday. The Norah hat is also knit with Classy, in Spring Tickle. It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t really been home when there’s been good light, so no pics just yet.

June 5, 2009June 24, 2010

Sockssss

It’s Design-Your-Own month at Ravelry’s Sock Knitters Anonymous group, and for the first time in months (February) I’ve been compelled to knit along with the group. Actually, I would have in May for the Anne Hanson KAL but I have been hit in the face at work, thankyouverymuch so I’ve been super busy.

Anyway, so I cracked open my Japanese stitch dictionaries and chose a really elaborate cable motif for some socks. I needed to invert it and convert to in-the-round stylin’, so it’s pretty involved. I also didn’t take into account the fact that because it’s basically all cables (1×1 and 2×2), the sock really tightens in on itself. Therefore, I had to add a bunch of stitches to make it fit!

And I had to choose a yarn that I thought would work. I first used some awesome Araucania Ranco Multy that is having a hard time finding the right pattern. And it looked awesome in the turquoisey-brown colorway, but alas, it was an original swatch over 68 stitches that was just too small! I’d also ripped out this yarn a couple of times, so I started to go fresh, and finally chose Dream in Color Smooshy in Flamingo Pie.

Yes, please, can I have some more?

Okay!

Yeah, it’s turning out pretty nicely. I’ve got some interesting design elements up my sleeve for the heel and toe, too. I hope I can figure everything out and keep track of what I’m doing because I hope to release the pattern eventually (if anyone wants to test knit it, that would be awesome) in three sizes. That’s the goal, anyway.

Here’s what else I’m working on:

Those are another pair of Hearts Afire socks (for Malvina, who expressed some love for the pattern) out of Shibui Sock, and a plain jane pair of stockinette socks out of some Cherry Tree Hill Supersock I had lying around. That yarn (in the Life’s a Beach) colorway, I had always intended to be a plain sock, but I’m not really motivated these days to knit a plain sock, even though they are nice to wear. But after all the last few socks that I’ve made (pretty much all the ones I’ve been working on this year) I needed a break – no ribbing, no pattern, no nothing. Now of course, I cast on for that ridiculously charted and complicated orange sock, but… whatevs. Heh.

I’m also working on an Ishbel shawl, but I apparently didn’t upload those pictures to Flickr. It’s out of Malabrigo sock in the terracotta (way orange) colorway. That Malabrigo sock is super fabulous. I don’t know how it will hold up for socks but it should work all right. I do have some plans for my other skeins in the stash, and since the shawl is knitting up so nicely, I could definitely see a couple more shawls in the future.

And, just for kicks, here is a pic of my current work space, that I finally more-or-less finished (I put up the cork board). It’s where I do all my jewelry stuff and computering (drawing/writing – I use my eee PC for internets).