Mittens!

I made mittens once (well twice) when I was very very new to knitting.  They have holes at the top of the thumbs, they were worked flat and then sewn up - thus have an ugly side seam, and they're kind of tight.  At the time, I was like - awesome!  I made mittens!  and then I gave them to my sisters.

Then I avoided mittens like the plague - as looking back - I could see how awful the initial ones were.

That was like 4-ish years ago - and I have not made mittens since!

RIDICULOUS!

Being a Canadian, mittens are a staple in our winter and the capability to make matching toque / scarf / mittens is important.  So, I signed up for a Craftsy class - which I must admit - I am LOVING!  The first pattern in the class is a 5-in-1 adventure - which really just means that the pattern covers 1. mittens 2. fingerless mittens 3. convertible fingerless mittens 4. fingerless gloves 5. gloves.  phew!  So, I decided I would make convertible fingerless mittens with a convertible thumb (yes, iPhone users!  You can use your phone and keep your hands warm at the same time!  Mind. Blown.)

I got one mitten done and posted a picture on Ravelry and was incredibly excited when I received a note asking if my picture could be used for the pattern page!  Well, yes, yes, you may!  *glee!*

This is the colour they really are!

Look how goofy the thumb looks.  Only downside.

Second mitten is fini!

While I was watching the video for this class, I noticed that the instructor had the most beautiful stitch markers that I have ever seen.  So I made some.  :)

And just because I'm on the page of things that TOTALLY aren't knitted.  Here's some random crafty stuff I've done lately.  :)

Ornament wreath
Can't lie.  Got the idea from Pinterest.

Another Pinterest idea.
Menu board.
Just have to make the
recipe cards!

More Slippers

I guess this slipper thing isn't going to stop any time soon.  It uses up so much of my stash so nicely.  There's also a charity drive for gifts for a seniors home going on at work at the moment and I'm thinking the slippers will go to that.

Anyhow, the ones for - I've decided - my mom (the insanity slippers with the cables and the fingering weight yarn) are coming along well.  I finally got one slipper all sewn up.  I just don't have that much motivation to work on them.  I'm sure I could finish them faster if there was a deadline or motivation - but for now - they're  ALMOST done!  WOO HOO!

you don't want me in your picture?

cute button!

cat-attack!

The "unsubstantial - holey slippers" well, those are the ones I'm making for the seniors home gifts.  I know that sounds really bad - but to be honest - I was so mad about the first pair that I used all my ends to snug up all the holes and now they look really good.  (still not terribly warm, but how warm does a house-slipper really need to be ?)  So, I started on a second pair, but I didn't want to have to snug up all the holes on pair number 2 - so my solution was to do the sc row around the slipper with the mc and work my scs through part of the 2nd st so that the holes would go away (and they did!) and then do a sl st round with the contrast colour.  I'm about halfway through slipper #2 of pair number 2 and they're looking STELLAR!  (woo!)

see how much LESS holey they are now?

finished!

And now for something completely different.

You know that shrug that I made for my sister for Christmas a couple years ago?  Well, it was too big (like she couldn't keep it on her shoulders too big).  It makes me sad that something I made is loved, but cannot be worn because it is so obviously the wrong size.  So we spent a few minutes pinning things up and figuring out how big it needs to be and then I frogged the whole darn thing.  Then I had to rewrite the pattern due to the size it required being was 30 sts less than the original!  (omg!) I've been determined to get through this so that her sweater comes back to her as soon as possible - so I've been knitting stockinette stitch on the train a lot (yes, I am *that* girl).  AND!  I finally finished!  I am so excited!  I just have to bind-off and then tuck ends and sew seams (I know, that is where everything gets stalled - but must. finish.)

Slippers

Okay - so who has a really great pattern for slippers?

What I'm looking for is something cute, relatively unconventional, easy-ish, and quick to make.  I'm not asking for much, right?

Anyhow, so after starting my god-forsaken slippers for my family for Christmas I decided that those were TOO much work - but cute!  So I moved on to these incredibly easy crochet slippers.  They're cute too, but I kind of hate them.  There's really not much to them and there are incredibly large holes in them.  So let's do a pros and cons list

Crochet Slippers
Pros:
Took me two days to make a pair of slippers
I got to use scrap yarn - used less than a ball of yarn for the pair
they're really actually quite cute

Cons:
BIG freaking holes in them.
Really rather insubstantial
They don't look like something I would give away as a gift.

Cute - yet holey!

Ballet Flat Slippers
Pros:
These are gorgeous (hopefully they will remain gorgeous when they are sewn up)
They are more substantial as they have a doubled sole
They do look like something I'd be willing to give as a gift

Cons:
Took a ball of sock yarn
Took about a month
There's 6000 ends to weave (well, more like 16... but still!)
Haven't finished them yet

Super pretty - yet so much work!

I'm not sure we have a clear winner.  In fact, I'm fairly certain that neither of these patterns win.  So, I beg my initial question again.  Who's got a really great pattern for slippers??  Please help me out!

Halloween Colours - sort of.

Well, coincidentally, 2 of three projects I'm working on at the moment (well, 4 projects if you count seaming those #%&$ slippers!) are in Halloween colours.

I'm very pleased to report that my husband LOVES his socks.  He put them on last night the second he got home (I might have been a factor in that).  They were brand spanking new and just finished - so on his feet they went.  However, they are apparently "house socks" that will not be going outside of the house due to his fear of wrecking them.  (This means he loves them, right?)  Also, they're black!  GO GO HALLOWEEN!

black socks they never get dirty

the longer you wear them the stronger they get

I'm making huge strides in my Rust cabled shrug - LOVE this.  I am so excited to get finished it.  Currently I've finished the left arm and the back, and am just starting to go down the right arm!  It's actually a really simple "build" - knit the arm, back, arm in one piece, sew up arms, pick up stitches around the rest and make a nice little ribbed "cuff" not really sure how to describe it aside from "cuff" but that's not really what it is... Anyhow, once you've finished the "cuff" bit, you're done.  The majority of the "hard" stuff is the cables in the big long piece you make (arms / back), so I'm thinking I'm about half-way done?  Also, rust is approximately orange, so Halloween, right?

Starting the right arm!

And then there's this cowl.  You know, the one that wanted to grow up to be the cowl it always dreamed of being?  God, do I love this thing.  I am beyond excited about the progress I've made on it in the past couple weeks.  It's currently blocking on my ironing board.  It will require some grafting after that, but really, it's pretty much done.  LOVE!

blocking!

The second it was sewn up, I wore it to work. 

See, Halloween and lots of love.  This is a great post.  :)  I'm assuming the next one will focus on these god-forsaken slippers (so, it will be less full of love and more full of frustration / rage).  I have this funny feeling that I'm not going to make 3 pairs of these.  Maybe just one.  We will have to see how these ones come out because if they're really THAT gorgeous and I can figure out how to sew them together properly, I MAY make more.  However, they're a TON of work and I could make so many other more amazing things that don't take NEARLY this kind of effort.  GAH!

Cabled Ballet Flat Slippers

Okey (sorry, I've been reading a lot of Raymond Chandler novels lately - so okey is definitely the way it is spelled at the moment)

Well, that was a total aside, so let's just start fresh.

Okey... I got it in my head that I was going to make Christmas gifts for my sisters and mom - sort of.  Not their whole gift - just a little something to go with what I am getting them for Christmas (but I don't know what that is yet... lol).  Then I had this really adorable Cabled Ballet Flat Slipper Pattern in my queue on Ravelry.  My head thought that these two sentences were made for each other and I got excited, bought some yarn, and cast on.  Nice going genius.

So, now that I'm just about done pair number one (of three! good god) I have some questions.

Question #1 - who makes slippers out of fingering weight yarn?  Are they masochistic?
Question #2 - who makes CABLED SLIPPERS out of FINGERING WEIGHT YARN?
Question #3 - who makes cabled slippers out of fingering weight yarn that are in 4 different pieces that you have to sew together????
Question #4 - why did I think this was a good idea??????????

Okey, now that I'm done questioning everything.  They're super super cute!  But I've been at it for about a month (a month with a lot of travel involved - so plenty of time to work on them) and I am JUST finishing my first pair.  Good grief!

Cute!  Slipper Top

Blocking the bits

Of course, being who I am, I've been making slight edits to the pattern as I go.  I hate seaming and there was a seam at the back of the upper part of the slipper that I thought was stupid since I could just pick up the stitches and work from there.  Well, I "forgot" that the pattern is not written to be worked in the round, mostly because up until the point I am at, it hasn't mattered.  I haven't BEEN working in the round - but now I'm picking up stitches around the foot opening and making the edges all pretty like.  So, I just worked it like the pattern said to.  oops.  Oh well, it said to knit, so I was supposed to have a nice garter edge but I have a stockinette edge.  I just don't care that much to go back and fix it.  I did however, start casting-off and find that my beautiful edge started rolling and that I did care about so now I'm casting off knitwise in the round on the WS.  lol... this is awesome.

I am hoping these slippers turn out amazingly because they have been a lot of work.

Excuses and Catch-up: cue the project dump

Woops!

So, I think I may have been trying to squeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of the summer this year.  I'm going to blame that for my languishing blog.  Another good reason?  Well, I've been doing a lot of travelling.  I had a family reunion to go to that was promptly followed by a week at the lake and lately I've been recruiting for the company I work for.  Thankfully all of those are short trips and most involve airplane time where I can knit to my heart's content.  I've been getting a lot done - like - A LOT a lot.  Not that I have a ton to show for it.  I'm "In progress" in most things.

ANYHOW... projects!

I finished the socks I was working on.  I think I started them while I was doing the mystery crochet along.  Dunno.  Socks are awesome, but I just don't have the patience to be dedicated to them as my main project, so they take me a while...

Still not terribly impressed that they dyelots
don't match - but otherwise, cute!

yay for pretty socks!

Actually - on that note... I'm almost finished the socks I'm working on for my lovely husband - who really doesn't want or need socks.  He's just having a pair made for him.  If he wears them once, it will be a victory!

Bryce's bear is done.  He turned out creepy-stick-neck-y, so I made him a scarf.  The sewing up was really not as bad as I thought it would be - even if I did do the neck wrong.

So, my mom is a teacher - er... WAS a teacher.  She retired this year, and along with bringing home all of her lovely classroom stuff she brought me home two very very full grocery bags of yarn.  Not the best quality yarn, but they will make a nice afghan.  One of the balls is the ugliest variegated yarn I have seen in my entire life.  I decided that I was going to make this insane little afghan that takes 618 motifs (I KNOW!!!) and everything in it was going to go well with the ugliest yarn on the planet.  Thus, it is going to be an insane and ugly (hopefully in a good way) scrap-ghan.  I made a lot of progress on this one at the lake and then realized I needed more scrap yarn (my mom's mostly didn't go with the yarn.  I have a couple projects that I could work on in my stash that would create appropriate scrap yarn.)

see the crazy variegated yarn!  CRAZY!

I'm on a bit of a baby craze too right now - and not really because anyone's having babies.  I'm stocking my drawer.  Though I'm thinking of depleting the stock in my drawer for my cousin who is having a baby girl this time, so it's not such a bad thing to be stocking up.

I made this adorable baby-hoodie because I loved the pattern, but I wanted it to be uni-sex, so I didn't add any of the ribbons yet and I nixed the ruffled bit at the bottom.  Definitely not a 1 skein pattern as it says, but I had been doing my homework on ravelry and there was a lot of "not one skein" going on, so I thankfully, had two.

love this!

Goldie- my baby sized model thinks that she needs an undershirt!  *gasp*

And then, a girlfriend of mine is learning to knit and LOOOOOOOOOOOVES these booties (as does everyone else on the planet).  However, she's scared of starting them and it being too hard for her, so I gave it a test run with some scrap yarn.  OMG.  THE ENDS! THE HORROR!  But they are seriously adorable! Since I made these, I have found some lovely person's post regarding how to do these in the round (I kiss the ground at your feet!) and will probably make another pair - later.

They match that frou-frou vintage baby dress I made a while ago.

Oh right... and WIPs...

SO... Here I come Mary Maxim projects!  (so excited and LOVING this.  VERY VERY MUCH.  Hopefully I will love it just as much when it's done.)  My cabled shrug.  OM NOM NOM.  Loving the weight of it (definitely a winter weight) and the colour and the pattern and HECK even *my* part of the whole job.  That never happens.  My stitches are even and it's working out really well so far.  (Wait... does that mean I might *finally* be getting the hang of this knitting thing.  NAH!  That's too good to be true.)

Pretty cables!

And my WIP - sort of.

I made a Chalice Lace Tank.  Oh so pretty, because I had leftover yarn (yes, the reason for all these incredibly random projects *is* a stash-purge, bet you hadn't guessed yet.)  This one is "sort of" in progress because I finished it and found it was too large.  I also have a plethora of edits I'd like to make to the pattern, so I might have torn the darn thing all the way out for the second time.  Ya know, maybe.  Still love it.  Less inclined to work on it at the moment.

HUGE!

Yeah, so I guess that's everything I've been up to... not much for a month, eh?  lol

OH... and in other news - I got the YARMA app for my iPhone which means all my FOs are going directly onto ravelry with no "camera" step in between.  That might have something to do with the lack of posting on the blog.  umm... tee hee?

Where did July go?

I think I missed a month.

No seriously.  I don't really remember doing all that much in July.  I know there was a week or two - one of those being Stampede of course.  And then it was August.  Huh.  It's a sign I'm getting old - that I'm sure of. Remember when every single day was packed full of amazing things to the point that you were on the verge of exhaustion at all times, but had so much fun doing it?  Yeah, I just don't have the energy for it anymore.

Stampede!

Anyhow, projects!  I've been busy - but still suffering from project ADD.  Ooooh... that's fun - oh! oh!  I should do that - how about this? - wasn't I supposed to be working on socks.  Right. socks. - NEW YARN!

And that... is my downfall

BUT... I still got a couple projects finished.  It's amazing I get anything done at all.  Seriously.

Anyhow, working my way through single balls of yarn lately.  For no purpose other than I have them.  So, I started a bajillion projects.  They're small... how much trouble can it really be?

So, there was the amazing cowl that I'm working on that I do not have enough yarn for.  :(  The problem being that I really like the cowl.  It's turning out beautifully, so I'm going to have to order one more ball of yarn so that it can be the cowl it always dreamed of being.

And then there was that strange neck-warmer thing.  I think it's supposed to be actual outerwear - like to wear with your winter jacket?  It is FAR too tiny and tight for that.  Thus, it will be more of an accent piece for my winter wardrobe (yes, I know it's the middle of freaking summer - so what if I'm working on winter projects.  The only one who suffers is me.)

See, kind of hard to wear, but cute.

THEN... I went to Pudding Yarn at lunch.  OMG.  That is evil.  Who on Earth suggested that it would be a good idea to go to yarn shop on my lunch break, thus informing me that it is possible to get there, shop and back to work during lunch hour???  Craziness.  When I was there, I found this one little gorgeous ball of watermelon (I think it's the right colour and it looks delicious, so why not call it watermelon?) yarn.  It is Schulana Kid-Seta, so incredibly soft and incredibly airy.  So, I made a shawl.  But, I only had one ball of yarn and it didn't quite make it to the end of the pattern, but it'll do.  ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS.

Blocking blocking blocking

Detailing

I totally don't have ADD...

Squirrel!

Or at least that's what I feel like I'm doing this week.  I think I'm overly excited about everything and when I'm working on something, I want to be working on something else.  So, the only progress that is being made is in fits and starts on multiple projects.  I'm not actually accomplishing anything.

I have these socks (yes, they are what's occupying my sock needles) that I am working on - I'm seriously about 1/4 inch from the toe decreases and I just can't find the motivation to keep working on them.  They should be done!

sooooo close!

Pretty twisty pattern!

Then you know how I mentioned a scrap-ghan?  And you know how I was attempting to make that woven blanket that got shelved?  Yeah, well, I took the colours for the woven blanket and started something else instead.  Does that count as a scrap-ghan?  No?  Ok then... still no scrap-ghan in progress.

I like the colour combo

... you know how there was a baby Bryce and he got a pretty cool baby blanket made for him?  Well, I decided since I had some time I would make a bear amigurimi for him too...

Nearly headless?

AND THEN - there's the ball winding.  I'm loving it...

SEE!  It looks red now!

And of course, when you're ball-winding and you've got little sample balls - since I bought that grab-bag from Yarns of Italy - you're looking for smaller patterns that will turn out amazing and allow you to test those single skeins of yarn, so here's where I've ended up...

Ready to go!

Really, all I should be doing is finishing those socks and starting on Mr. Pitt's socks for my husband - since I was SO gung-ho to make those for him when I brought home the black merino superwash yarn that I nicely wound (see above).

Oh well, at least it means I'm excited?

Wound and wound we go!

So, today I tried my hand at something that I thought was insane.

A friend of mine told me she bought a nostepinne (prompting a "what?"), which is a really cool thing for those of us who can't afford to / don't want to buy a ball winder.  Admittedly, I don't really want to buy a nostepinne either;  for one, because I'm only guessing when I pronounce it, and of course, because I have lofty dreams of owning a ball-winder at some point.

So, I used a toilet paper roll.

I started with a gorgeous ball of Cascade Yarns 75% merino superwash, 25% nylon sock yarn.  Like so:

I loves me this yarn.  <3
This skein should be black though?

Then I spent a couple hours winding and untangling and generally fighting with the yarn - I'm assuming this will get easier with practice - and ended up with something that I'm amazed at, but I'm sure is really just an ugly-duckling hand-wound center-pull ball of yarn.  I think it's pretty awesome though!  Socks !  I'm ready for you!  (Just got to free up my sock needles.)

So, I thought this yarn was burgundy.
Looks kind of more purple, eh?

VOILA!  I'm quite proud.  :)  Go go toilet paper roll!

Blankets are soft... and done. :)

So, while I was doing the 2012 Bernat Mystery Crochet along afghan - well more like before - I was working on a blanket for my sister.  Actually, what really happened was I ordered my yarn for the CAL and then got bored waiting for yarn and waiting for it to start, so I started another afghan.

It's a pattern I've been dying to try because it looked so pretty, but until now I've lacked confidence in my skills as a crocheter and thought it might be a little hard for me.  I love the colour combination that they put together in the pattern - the purple, blue and green - but when looking for yarn, I just couldn't find a green that went with my blue and purple, so I chose a grey instead.  I think it'll be more timeless with the grey anyways (or at least that's what I keep telling myself).

Pretty colours

I am having a lot of trouble getting the colour to come through in the pictures (I'm betting it's because it's spring, which means it's very very very grey here right now) but these are the best I've managed to pull off.  They're really very rich colours that go very well together, they just look kind of dull and grey in all my pictures.  :(

Nice big afghan!

Then!  My husband's cousin had a baby, so I started a blanket for him (the baby is a boy).  :)

I started a baby blanket with this pattern and ended up tearing it out because I hated it.  It was so boring!  The pattern does specifically say that it is meant for variegated yarn and I am using a solid colour.  So, I'm betting it was my fault.

dislike!

Then I found a baby blanket pattern that had cables in it.  That made me a touch wary, as I'm not a huge fan of cables, but I thought I'd try my hand at it anyways!  SO glad I did!  This turned out fantastic!  I was working on this a lot while in hotel rooms on our fantastic Utah road trip and there wasn't very much left to do by the time we got home - so WOO! I'm done!

VOILA!

All folded up and ready for baby Bryce!