Labor Day Weekend...what did I do? What else, knit of course!

As the summer comes to a close, I have been diligently working on projects for the upcoming holidays, as well as for my Etsy shop.

But before I can do that, I had to finish a charity knitting quota I volunteered to finish.  I read an article about Willow's Place, an organization that helps feed the homeless in my local city of Kent, Washington and contacted one of the sponsors to ask how, as a knitter, could I help. I was asked to see if my Wednesday night knit group would be willing to knit 100 hats and scarves by October 1st.  My group has gladly accepted the challenge and are all knitting away.

Here are my finished contributions:

Earflap Hat from Lion Brand, 2x2 Ribbed Hat from Fiber Trends,
and Skull Hat for Service Members from Knitting on the Net
My designs: Single crochet scarf and 2x2 ribbed scarf

Reverie Beret from Knitty and Garter stitch scarf

Design adapted from The Question Bag pattern:

Row 15: P2, S1, K2, PSSO, P2, S1, K2, PSSO, P2, (K1,P1) 7 times,

P2, S1,K2, PSSO, P2,S1, K2, PSSO, P2, SM, K to end.

Row 16: P2, K1, YO, K1, P2, K1, YO, K1, P2, (K1, P1) 7 times,
P2, K1, YO, K1, P2, K1, YO,K1,P2, SM, K to end.
Row 17: P2, K3, P2, K3, P2, (P1, K1) 7 times,
P2, K3, P2, K3, P2, SM, K to end.
Row 18: Repeat Row 17.

Two-color Earflap Hat with pom pom made for my son

The blue hat with the red and white band above and the red and black hat are my first attempts at knitting two or more colors at once. Now that I've tried it I found that it isn't as hard as I first thought it would be.

Knitting and enjoying the sunny weather was how I spent my holiday weekend. Love to hear from all of you how you spent this glorious weekend, drop in and leave me a comment, tell me what's on your needles!

Shout Out Time Again

I know its been a while since I've given a shout-out to some of the blogs I like to follow, so here are a few to check out:

First up is Dr. Chop Suey Knits, a blog about a research technician who is addicted to yarn and knitting! Who is still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up. Stop on by and check out her Indiana Trip posts, I had fun reading along with her and her husband.

Next is, I live on a farm.  The reason I really enjoy reading this blog is because the author, J. L. Fleckenstein talks about my home state of New York; living in upstate on a farm, which is witty, always entertaining, with some really great recipes. She also has great pattterns to try out, my favorite is 1Bag. Her blog also links to her website, Etsy Shop, and Facebook page. I really like her story about how she ended up living on a farm, from the author, I lived in Los Angeles most of my life. LA is hot and cranky with too many people and too much summer. In late January of 2006 I met a man online. By the end of April we said “I do” at a drive-up wedding chapel window in Vegas. Now I live on a farm in upstate western New York. I live on a farm … and my husband drives a tractor.  I hope you enjoy reading "I live on a farm" as much as I do.

Ah and who wouldn't want to read the Java Gibber? Just some gibberish about my adventures in knitting, baking and life in general... whilst drinking my coffee. She's a coffee drinker!! And I'm a coffee addict, it's nice to know I'm not the only one! So, stop on by and check out Emicat at Java Gibber.

Next up, Kiwiyarns Knits. I just stumbled across her blog and was hooked [no pun intended there!]. About the author, I am one of those mad crazy knitters out there eats, drinks and breathes knitting.

In 2006, I moved back to Wellington, New Zealand after living the corporate life overseas for 20 years.  My new life in New Zealand was like suddenly finding oneself in a grey zone.  Where had my life gone!? What had I done!?  The time was ripe to find a new interest in life. 

One day, my sister asked me to teach her how to knit again.   After my grandmother taught me as a teenager, I had taught her when she was a little girl, but she hadn’t picked up needles since.  This required a visit to a yarn shop – like her, I had stopped knitting for many years.  I had even given my needles away after all that time.  Out of the phone book, we picked one of Wellington’s local yarn stores.  Walking in the door, I was overcome – all that colour!  All that texture! The sensory overload was too much!  I was hooked!  I too, bought some needles and yarn that day, and since then, barely a day has passed without knitting.

I love reading about people who just make dramatic changes in their lives and seeing where those changes take them. I'm a romantic that way and when I stumbled across this blog I was intrigued about her life in New Zealand.  On top of her life in New Zealand, she has lots of great patterns, good information about the different wool yarns out there and some wonderfully cool photos!

Well I hope you get a chance to check out some of the really great blogs above and for more you can always check out the blogs I follow. And if you know of a blog that would be of interest, drop me a comment with a link, I'm always interested in new blogs!

Just finished today:

A friend asked if I could make the Reverie beret from my blog post "Thinking about my holiday knitting already..." in a size to fit her six seven year old niece. I calculated and tested [knitted swatches] and re-tested [knitted even more swatches] until I found the right brim size that would fit a six seven year old child size head.  Here is the result: made from Cascade Sierra [80% cotton, 20% wool] with a 15" brim.

Thinking about my holiday knitting already...

I know, I know, nobody wants to hear about the holidays this early - when we are barely into the summer season! But I found each year, no matter how early I start my holiday knitting I never seem to get it all done in time.  So, I decided to work on a few gifts in between my summer projects, just so that I'm not too far behind when August rolls around and I'm trying to decide on patterns, colors, and who is getting what.

This weekend, I worked on this really great slouchy hat/beret pattern that I found on Knitty.  This was a test run on this pattern to see how long it would take to complete.  And well I was able to complete two of them over the weekend.  The first one, I had almost completely done on Friday evening, but when I transferred it over to double-pointed needles (dpns), and was getting to the end of the decreasing, a few of my stitches slid off one end of the dpns! I couldn't seem to figure out how to get the stitches back on the needles, so I frogged the whole thing and started over again at around 7 p.m. and finished at around 3 a.m. on Saturday morning.

The second hat was easier than the first, because I didn't have to have the pattern right there, I could easily remember the steps, because they were just that simple.  I worked non-stop on Sunday afternoon, starting around two in the afternoon and by 11 p.m. was posting pictures of the completed hat on my Ravelry page. That is how quick and easy this pattern is. The only tricky part for me was when it got down to the last three decrease rows and I had to make sure I didn't lose any stitches off the dpns like my first time around.  But I worked carefully and a bit slower and the pictures below shows you how spectacular this pattern looks in many different color designs.

From the Knitty Spring 2009 edition
Reverie by Amy Swenson

Used Caron Jumbo Prints in Country Basket Ombre

And since these slouchy hats seem to be really popular with the teenagers they will be perfect for my three nieces this Christmas.  And now that I have the pattern pretty much memorized, I can whip them up fairly quickly without having to keep referring to the pattern. I'd like to give a shout-out to Amy Swenson, the designer of this fabulous hat and for more of Amy's wonderful creations, check out her website at Indigirl.

So, how many of you out there have already started on your holiday gift-giving projects?  What is on your holiday knitting list? And if you haven't gotten started yet, when do you start knitting for your holiday gift-giving?  I can't wait to hear from you, stop by and drop me a comment.

So you CAN teach an old knitter new tricks!

So I was on Ravelry yesterday trying to scope out a new knitting circle to join.  Because I live in between Seattle and Tacoma a lot of the groups are located either in the South end or the North end and poor me is stuck in between with no place to go.  So I happened across a forum that has a knitting group "The Renton Knitters" that meets locally (well Renton local) once a week and I figured that was going to be as close as I was gonna get.  So I joined the forum and asked if I could join their knitting circle. 

I'm happy to report that they were very welcoming and it just so happened that they were meeting tonight (last night) in Kent!  Well I was exstatic to be joining a new knitting group - they were even showing a few new techniques that I just so happened to want to learn - knitting two socks at the same time, toe-up socks (two at a time no less), and the magic cast-on - being a self-taught knitter some techniques are not so easy to learn by reading instructions and looking at pictures. 

I prepared my knitting bag with what I thought I would need and made my way to the designated location.  It was a small group - a few people had already left by the time I made it there at 8:40 p.m.  But those that were still there welcomed me and I'm sorry to say that I never did get to learn everyone's name - but hopefully next Wednesday I will get introduced to everyone and will be happy to remember their names.

So the lesson was quick and seemed to be easy, well anything is easy when you have someone standing right there instructing you on what to do.  But I've been wanting to learn how to knit two socks for a while and I was eager to learn this technique, I only hoped that I would remember what I learned when I got home.  I so didn't want to go back to knitting one sock at a time on double pointed needles (dpns) or even circular if I could help it, because everyone knows that knitting one sock at a time (even on circular needles) is very time consuming and from my own experience they take so long that I end up not even doing the second sock - I have at least two different socks still on dpns that have not seen the light of day for a very long time and forget about starting a second one!

So I listened diligently and followed the magic cast-on instructions from Knitty and with guidance from the instructor, I had two toe-up socks started on my needles - how cool is that?  I couldn't wait to try this new technique out on this really cool yarn [Rowan - Calmer 75% cotton, 25% acrylic/microfibre 50g/175yds] I bought about a year ago intending to make a pair of socks for my nephew - at that time was two years old - but never got around to it, well now he's three and I still intend to make him his socks and now I can make them both at the same time.

I went home excited to put my new knowledge to work and after much trial and error, because of course I couldn't remember all the instruction and I kept having to pull my work apart I finally got the toes started and at 12:59 a.m. I finally put my work down and called it a night. Here is what I've got so far:
 


Yep those two triangular shapes are the beginning of
a pair of toe-up socks!