Randomness

I've returned to the land of the living...still getting both feet back on the merry-go-round...but much, much, better. As part of the process of reacquainting myself with the world (I know I've sort of "checked out" from everything for the last couple weeks) I was perusing my camera roll on my iPhone last night to see what making I've recorded while in my pneumonia haze. I think sharing the randomness of my sickness journey is a nice place to start this Monday morning.

Making strudel with Grandma a couple weeks ago.

Little pumpkin pies for the pre-k class Halloween party.

Too sick for anything but TV and knitting simple hats and mittens.

Little Bear wears his new hat indoors and out.

Super-secret family recipe baking yesterday.

Last night I dove back into the cables. I'm on the mend.

Pretty heavy on the baking and knitting. So curious. But, I've been doing some dreaming and sketching about some bigger sewing projects. We'll see what comes of it now that I'm back in the saddle.

–Cassandra

It's An Obsession

I hate having leftover yarn. Those bits of skeins that are too large to throw away but too small to do anything with drive me mad. As a result, I tend to keep knitting and knitting until a skein is gone (or small enough that I don't feel guilty about just throwing it out.)

Many of you are now chomping at the bit to give me your favorite "scrap yarn" project. The Beekeepers' Quilt seems to be a current favorite among Ravelers (which, btw, shows that I'm not the only one with tons of these bits laying about.) I'll be happy to take any suggestions/patterns/thoughts on the subject - seriously - but I will mention that I also have a bit of an issue with "mixing" yarn types. I'm so OCD sometimes.

Making 400 of these doesn't really appeal to me.

Anywhoooo... the point of this tirade is that I finished my niece's scarf just in the nick of time. I was, quite literally, knitting the last bit of the tail two hours before it had to be in the mail to make it there in time for Christmas. But, because I modified the pattern and made it quite a bit smaller, I had a TON of pink acrylic yarn left over. Pink.Acrylic. There was nothing to do but to keep knitting for my niece because, honestly, what else am I going to do with 3/4 skein of pink acrylic? I just finished a hat to go with the scarf and found myself with more than enough of this stuff left to make a pair (or three) of mittens so those are in the works too.

I'm pretty proud of this hat.

Look how much of this is left!

The finished scarf ended up 100 rows shorter (seriously) with legs and tail about 1/2 the length the pattern called for and ears that are about 2/3 the length called for. Regardless of it being short and stumpy, I think it still looks pretty good. At one point, when I was obsessing about the fact that I wasn't following the pattern and I was convinced it was going to look really jacked-up, Cassandra said "remember your audience" and truer words were never spoken. My niece didn't know that the scarf was short and stumpy and she was thrilled with the final product. I just hope she likes the hat and mittens as well.

My intention is to write up the hat pattern this week - before I forget what I did - and post it here for you all to download for free. I started the mittens without a pattern but Cassandra handed off a pretty good one that she's making for one of the Things so I can't claim that as an "original Alex design." LOL

If y'all want to send me some favorite scrap patterns, I'll be happy to add them to my binder. I'm one of those folks who hates to waste stuff so throwing out yarn - even the smallest amount - just feels wrong to me.

Hope you had a GREAT New Year's Eve.

- Alex

Curses! Foiled Again!

Mittens are my evil nemesis.

I'm sure that, to most of you, having mittens as an evil nemesis probably seems pretty lame. Kind of like having a baby kitten as an evil nemesis - how can something so fluffy and warm be evil? But they are evil. Evil and soul-sucking.

You may remember, from a previous Ooo! Shiny! post, that I knitted a dragon scarf and dragon hat for my friend's daughter. The scarf came from a pattern but the hat was created totally from scratch by me - no pattern whatsoever. I was pretty damn proud of myself for that. Now, the hat's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. It could have been longer to cover her ears better and the overall design could have been more elegant. But, it's for a five year old and it matches the scarf so, really, I'm not losing sleep over it.

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea for her to have mittens to complete the set.With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I realize I should have quit while I was ahead. "How hard could mittens be?", I naively asked? Pretty damn hard is the answer.

Never trust a mitten. Even a nice one.*

I went to my favorite source for free patterns - Ravelry - and started looking for the easiest instructions available. I specifically wanted to use either circular or double-pointed needles because I didn't want to have to piece the thing together. After slogging through a ga-jillion options, I settled on a pattern that looked relatively easy - and it was! I knitted up the cuff and thumb gusset (the bit where the thumb attaches to the mitten) with no problem. Then, about 1/2 way up the body of the mitten, it occurred to me that it looked kind of big. So I slipped my hand into it. And it fit.

After tearing the mitten apart, I started again - adjusting the pattern by about 1/4 in an attempt to make it smaller. So far so good. The cuff knitted up quickly. The gusset looked okay. And I managed to "guess" my way through the pattern adjustments to end up with a pretty decent looking, 5-year-old-sized mitten. Then I made the thumb.

Evil, evil, evil!!!

The thumb ended up with two giant gaps in the "v" where the thumb attaches to the body of the mitten. ARGH! The only solution I had at that point was to "sew" the gaps closed with yarn. Needless to say, it looks pretty crappy and is not worthy of being a gift.

[Note for those who knit: My mistake was as follows: I had to cast on two additional stitches to start the thumb. I did a M1 for both, which left me with big holes. Instead I should have K1FB on two stitches which would have given me two additional stitches but not left holes.]

So...yeah... I'm pretty much convinced that mittens have an nefarious plot to drive me mad and ensure that I never knit them again. I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to be brought into existence but who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of hand coverings, really?

- Alex

* For the free pattern of the basket weave mittens shown above click here.