Category Archives: Knitting

Knitting. Love it.

Lotus Stitch and a Bunny (of the knitted variety)

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I follow a page on facebook called “New Stitch a Day”.  Last week there was a stitch tutorial on creating the “Lotus Flower Stitch“.  I thought this looked like the neatest stitch.  It looked a little tricky and unlike any knitting stitch I’d ever tried.

The tutorial is a video and it’s very clear and detailed. So I’m making a scarf with this stitch (I think a scarf.  I’m not sure how much yarn I have, and this stitch seems to gobble up the yarn).

It’s really a fun stitch.  It is a little tricky but not too difficult after awhile.  You have to purl 5 together but then leave them on the left needle.  You yarn over, purl through again – repeat this 5 times so it is almost like wrapping those first 5 stitches still sitting on the left needle.

It’s a four row repeat and very easy to memorize.  It really is.  Seems like I always read about people saying “Oh this lace stitch is so easy to memorize”.  To me it looks like a 50 row repeat with 18 jillion things going on.  That is, not at all easy to memorize.  But this really is.

You have to think loose when you do this stitch.  If you tend to knit tightly, don’t with this stitch.  I am also using bamboo needles. It’s become kind of a quest now – will I or will I not snap the needle in half at some point?  It might be easier with metal, but I wonder if it wouldn’t be harder on my hands.

That’s another thing.  I don’t think I could make anything really large with this stitch as I have had to take a couple of breaks due to a slightly sore wrist.  I think that’s the source.  It might be a combination of lotus flower stitch and sitting at my computer grading pain.

I am using a sock yarn.  I think it is Cascade Heritage.

I also made Davey a bunny this week .  I saw a cute free pattern from Lion Brand.

You know, I always forget that the knitting of the pieces is pretty much the easy part.  This bunny required seaming, and it was hard for me to get it to look nice.  I was kind of getting the hang of it again (finally remembered how to do mattress stitch) by the time I got to the legs (I’d done the body and arms and tail at this point already).

Davey loves him though.

and that’s all that matters!

I had to go for a fun close-up of Davey and the bunny as well.

Lemon Drop Cowl

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I’ve finished the final cowl in the Great Cowl KAL!  5 cowls in 50 days!  It was another fun knit.  I had purchased some Misti Alpaca back in Arkadelphia, and I had a few skeins of it.  I still have one left.  I may make a tam or some kind of hat to go with the cowl.

The pattern is called the Blueberry Scowl, but my cowl is very yellow!

Since the yarn is solid, I thought it would be fun to have 3 different buttons.  I found them at my favorite yarn shop Fancy Tiger.

Love the tiger button!

This is my kinda interesting shot of the cowl.

The pattern was not a hard one.  I had to cast on 300 stitches though, and somehow, my brioche stitch got a little wonky for abit.  I got it back on track though.  There’s also a 1 by 1 rib and 2 by 2 rib.  It’s a neat pattern.  I probably should block this out.  I’ve not done that yet.

I’m at the Little Gym right now watching Davey in his tumbling class.  On the way here he told me, “I have so much to do today Mommy.  Little Gym, and then I have a pretend meeting and a pretend class and then another pretend meeting and another pretend class!”

He has been to a couple of meetings with me at achool in the past couple of weeks.  He sits so quietly.  Not a peep.  He draws and plays on my iphone and has done great.  So he’s gotten into the spirit of our school life.  Teaching and meetings.  It’s very fun for him.  “Mommy.  I love to come to Rocky Mountain High!”  (that’s what he calls our school).

If I can just teach him to grade for me.  I’ll be set! 🙂

 

Perpetually Persistent Cowl and my little photographer

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Cowl number 4 is done.  I started this on Thursday and finished it last night.  It went so fast and was a fun knit.  It went so fast because it was on size 17 needles and was knitted with this super chunky yarn (Malabrigo Rasta).  I am thinking it will be suitable for wear when it is below zero outside.  It’s very thick and warm – pretty soft too.

Davey was kind enough to model again for me this morning.

He got goofy and was being silly (the wee tot is also in need of a haircut.  His hair was kinda crazy this morning!).

I also got a close up of him that I really liked.

Then he wanted to take pictures of me.  He took one picture and he then instructed me to move to a better light.  “Mommy, let’s get somewhere where the light is not behind you.”  Then he wanted me to take off the cowl.  It was freaking him out a little.

So he took another picture of which he approved.

Then he wanted to arrange the cowl on the wig head and he knew just where he wanted to place it.

Love having my helpful photography assistant although actually I may have become the assistant at this point!

 

Weeble Wobble Thursday

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I’m at the Little Gym again.  It’s turning into a good place to do a little blogging.

I think we are about to maybe get some snow again.  A 30% chance today has turned into a 90% chance, and we may end up with a few inches.  We love the snow, but we are starting to look forward to some Spring!

On our way to the Little Gym this morning, we stopped by Fancy Tiger to get some new yarn.  (Fancy Tiger is my favorite yarn/craft store in the Denver area. It’s the coolest.) I’m getting ready to start the next cowl in the cowl KAL, and I did not have any superchunky in my stash.  So I just had to buy some.  I ended up buying what the pattern calls for (I rarely do this!)  – Malabrigo Rasta.  So nice.  So squishy.

Just did a little photography at the Little Gym.

I can’t wait to start knitting this.  It should be super fast (famous last words) – on size 17 needles!

I finished the 3rd cowl in the knit along yesterday.  I like it a lot.  It wraps around my neck three times and is so is nice and comfy and warm.

Davey again agreed to model for me.

It’s has curves on one side – hence the weeble wobble.  This was accomplished with short rows.  Really neat.

He was explaining something to David here.

And Davey took some pictures of me.  I always like this.

ok time to cast on this squishy new yarn!

A Very Very Good Cowl Indeed

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So I finished my cowl the other day for the Great Cowl KAL.  The name of the pattern is “A Very Good Cowl Indeed”.  I really really loved knitting it with the Wollmeise.  It was a really fun pattern to knit too, once I got the lace charts figured out, so I have renamed it “A Very Very Good Cowl Indeed”.  It’s turned out to be one of my favorite things that I have ever knitted.

I had fun taking pictures of it.

I have a cold sore on my lip that feels like it is the size of Texas, so I was more than happy to once again have Davey serve as my model.  I’m glad I did, because I got some fun pictures of him.

I don’t get these more serious expressions very often.  It’s not that he never makes them, I just usually don’t capture them with my camera.

And another:

But then he got goofy and started grinning and moving in towards me.

And those grins are the best!

Yikes and Things that are Red

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It’s been almost a week since I last blogged.  Ugh.  Had a batch of papers to grade, a test pattern mitten to finish, and then the Great Cowl Challenge to contend with.

Got the papers done.  yay.

Got the mitten done.  There was a slight mishap on the thumb.  It’s an afterthought thumb.  And unfortunately for me, it became an afterthought afterthought thumb.  I was supposed to put in waste yarn for the thumb.  When you finish the mitten, you take the waste yarn out, pick up the stitches and knit the thumb.  I must have just been knitting merrily along oblivious to the fact that I needed a thumb.  I was decreasing the top and was within a couple of rows of being finished when I think I tried my mitten on and realized my problem.

So I frogged all the way back to where the thumb needed to go. Set it up and knitted back up again.   I’m a dork.

Last night, I told David that the Great Cowl Challenge was over.  I was not going to be able to finish the cowl.  I went to bed consoling myself that it was ok.  This morning I woke up ready to try once more.  I realized that because I had used larger needles than the pattern called for and since I knit kinda loose, that I didn’t have to do as many repeats of the pattern as I thought I would.  So yay, it’s done.  I can’t wait to take some pictures of it tomorrow.  Here is an in process picture.  Gosh, I love that red.

Valentine’s Day and Koko’s birthday fall on the same day.  She turned 16.  We got her a cake and she was settling into a slice of it when we decided to take a picture of her.  The flash went off and off she went.  She hopped up the stairs and was gone.

So we have no pictures of her and her cake.  I did get some video though of us singing happy birthday to her.  Thank goodness!

Davey loved Valentine’s Day.  He loved his card, although in this picture he is holding up my card. He got a new Valentine’s pillow pet too which made him quite happy and then a package in the mail the next day which was icing on the Valentine’s cake!

And finally a picture by which to remember Valentine’s Day 2012:

 

New Shoes (that light up!) and Wollmeise

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Yesterday we took Davey to get some new shoes and clothes.  Almost every pair of pants that he had had almost overnight become high waters.  So we got him fixed up.  His ankles are now covered .

We also found him some new shoes.  He was hoping to find shoes that light up.   He wanted the “Jedi” shoes, but they didn’t have them in his size.  There were “Darth Vader” shoes that would light up, but he said, “those will scare my girlfriend Olivia.”  There were some other ones with Darth Vader only on the back of the heel.  Nope.  “Olivia walks behind me sometimes, and if she sees those, it will scare her.”

So then we found some that are supposed to look like a car.  They light up like Christmas lights.  He loved them.  He wanted to put them on first thing when he got up this morning.  (This picture is not actually of him putting them on first thing.  He was still in his pajamas at that point.)

Then we decided to take a picture of the lights.  We didn’t have much luck, but it was fun trying.

“Mommy, I’ll have to stomp for you to get them to light up.”  He didn’t mind jumping up and down for me at all (believe it or not, he’d had that shirt on for less than an hour).

We got a kinda blurry shot where you can kind of see them.  Davey would say that this does not do his awesome shoes justice at all!

He’s had some cute shoes, but I’m pretty sure that these are his all time faves.

I am very happy seeing him happy with his shoes, but I am also very happy about something else.

Awhile back, I was able to get a skein of the apparently elusive – hard to obtain German yarn called Wollmeise.    The Loopy Ewe sometimes has it.  I watch for posts on facebook as they announce when they have it in stock.  It goes very quickly.  Part of the appeal, I think, is the beautiful colors and their richness.  It might be easier to obtain in Germany.  I might need to make a trip.

I was saving it to knit some socks, but I kinda didn’t want these colors to be hidden on my feet.  I was getting ready to start my second cowl in the “The Great Cowl Challenge”, and it occurred to me to try out this yarn.  I think I am going to like this cowl, and that I will want to wear it.  I think I especially will want to wear it seeing how this is knitting up.  Pictures don’t really do it justice, and it is just so nice to knit with. I love it.

 

The Great Cowl KAL

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Today I finished my first cowl for “The Great Cowl Kal“.  The designer Liz Abinante has designed the cowls for this KAL and is leading it. I could not resist joining this knit-along.  I am going to try to knit 5 cowls in 50 days.  You have 10 days to knit the first pattern which is what I just finished.  If you finish in time and post photos of the finished object to her website, then you get the next pattern for free.  This is a challenge that sounded very fun to me.  So on Wednesday or Thursday, whenever she releases the 2nd cowl, I will have 10 days to complete it so that I can receive the next pattern for free.  I am also going to try to knit each cowl from yarn that I already own.

So here’s the first finished cowl.  This is Plymouth baby alpaca and I bought this yarn several years ago back in Arkadelphia!

I’d never knitted brioche stitch before, and I loved it.  It’s really fun to knit, and I love how pretty it is.

I’m not thrilled with the bind off that I used.  With this kind of yarn – which has little elasticity, I should have made sure that I used a really stretchy loose cast off method.  As a result, it kind of curls under at the edge, which makes it difficult to get it to lie flat.

Of course, regardless, I think Davey’s pretty cute in it!

Tuesday Mish Mash: A little knitting and a little cleaning and Pinterest

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Tuesday morning.  Davey is watching Sesame Street.  We just finished breakfast.

It is a “loki” morning.

I am working on my test knit mittens.  I am on mitten number two.  They involve this Latvian loopy fringe.  When I started mitten number two, I had no memory of how I did the fringe on mitten number one.  I had had to restart it about 8 times too.  That must have been good for me because as I began, it all started coming back to me, and I was able to do a decent loopy fringe in one try. *Knock on wood* that I won’t find a big ole problem when I get the mitten back out.

I am also starting some Podster gloves.  These are fingerless gloves with a flap that comes over like a mitten.  I am making these with the some beautiful yarn.  It is a superwash merino by Shibui.  It has the nicest feel to it, and the color is really rich.

I’ve not gotten too far because I am trying to finish the mittens and then I am also working on Hulda Holly.  I have a long ways to go on Hulda Holly, so I am going to have to find other things to say about it besides the fact that the laceweight makes for beautiful small stitches, but it is slow going.  That’s the last time I am going to say that (no one believes that for a second. not even me).

I also keep posting pictures of Hulda which look exactly the same.

So that’s knitting.

I’m trying a new recipe for dinner compliments of Pinterest.  It looks pretty healthy and hopefully will be good.  It’s orzo with chicken and lemon.  I love lemon in everything.

I have a bit of a pinterest problem.  One of the most valuable things though to come out of pinterest so far is that I’m learning about making my own cleaning products.  I learned that a  combination of Dawn and hydrogen peroxide is supposed to be a great cleaner.  Pinterest also inspired me the other day to learn how awesome baking soda is for cleaning.

An entire container of blackberry freezer jam had tumped over in the back of the refrigerator, and it had trickled all the way down the back wall of the fridge.  It was a mess.  Reading about all the non-toxic cleaning possibilities on Pinterest inspired me to come up with a natural solution as this was the fridge and I didn’t want a bunch of chemicals in there.

So I made a baking soda and water paste.  It was incredible.  Prior to application of the paste, I had scrubbed and scrubbed with warm soapy water and it was not budging.  I was thinking I was going to have to somehow contort myself into the fridge to scrape the jelly off.  Instead, I put the paste on jelly, and I let it sit for a few minutes.  I then scrubbed it off.  It came off really easily.  Amazing.

 

A Cowl, Bracelets and Wee Tot

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I finished my second Gap-Tastic Cowl.  It was a fun knit.  I’d like to make a dozen of them so I could stack them and take a picture.  I guess that’s kind of strange.  They’re not towels.

I love these long cowls.  I want to make another one soon, but with a different pattern.

I got some new bracelets!

I love them.  Bangly and one is green.  The other looks nice with the green, so I love them.

Guess what they are made from.

They are made from recycled knitting needles!  I bought them on etsy.com from Sassafras Creations.  She has a great shop.

Just the neatest thing.  I love the idea of recycling old things into new cool stuff.

I hadn’t had my camera out in a week or two.  So I took some pictures of Wee Tot too.  This one was my favorite.