FO: Wonderfalls Hat!

Instead of posting about the many FO's I've taken pictures of but not posted about, here's a quickie FO I did over the weekend. Literally. On Friday night I finished the last episode of Wonderfalls, the best show you never watched. To celebrate the sadness I wanted to make something whimsical, and so I give you....The Wonderfalls Hat**! I used some random stash yarns, and based the hat (loosely) off the Earflap Hat pattern in "Weekend Knitting."

The centerpiece of the hat is a glittery ribbon yarn I picked up on a whim, and I used a blue Manos dos Uraguay leftover for the main color. White alpaca and green Cascade 440 round out the colors.



I'm considering redoing the earflaps, because I feel like the color changes get muddied with the garter stitch and in such a small space. I might just do them in all blue, but we'll see.




As you can see from the top and the back - I had color join issues. I realized halfway through that I could probably google it and find a solution (I remember reading something about slipping a stitch or ktog'ing) but I decided to keep going. (Yes, I'm an impatient knitter!)

One thing I didn't like about this hat is all the ends I had to sew in - I tried carrying the colors up, and succeeded some of the times, but carrying four yarns up got bulky. And I couldn't figure out how to carry the yarns on the earflaps. Not only was I decreasing every row, but also both sides of the earflaps are pretty visible and I didn't want the carried yarn to be seen.

**In the second to last ep of Wonderfalls the main character, Jaye, wears an earflap hat (with matching scarf) that look like they're made from recycled sari yarn. I didn't have enough sari yarn to use, so I opted for whimsical. I wanted to call it The Jaye Hat, as a subtle nod to The Jayne Hat, from the Firefly fandom (they're even the same type of hat). But I decided against it, and hence The Wonderfalls Hat!

Lelah: The Venus of Our Times

Every time I look at her, I fall in love all over again. *swoon* Alright, I'll stop gushing. Overall I'd say Lelah took a little over a week to make, so it's the perfect short project - I'm definitely tempted to make some modifications (different lace pattern perhaps?) and make another one. There's a very inspiring thread on craftster where knitters have posted their FO's, some with really neat modifications.

I used Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton in #620, Fern which surprisingly knit up to the same gauge as the pattern's wool did. I also lucked into the perfect ribbon in the $1 bin at Michael's - I actually wanted more of a copper color but couldn't find it. Throughout the knitting I was freaking out about the bust - not that I have much in the area of boobage, but still, exposure is not an option. So I measure very careful and cut the elastic very carefully and it somehow (magically?) ended up being literally perfect.
I don't know if you can see from the xcu on the left, but I was actually upset at how much pilling there seemed to be with the cotton. The bottom half of the lace (where I had frequent frogging and lots of handling) doesn't look as clean as the rest of the top, and I actually used a pair of scissors to cut away the worst bits of dangling fluff.

One weird bit: The pattern says to use a bindoff (forgot the name) where instead of lifting one stitch over the other, you lift two. This created an extremely tight, gathered edge (I hope you can see it in the pic on the right) that is hell on your hands and fingers. After doing it for about 5 inches I decided to continue in regular BO fashion and just use the special bit on the back. Once completed, however, it wouldn't even fit over my head. After sighing and breaking out the scissors, I ripped and cut out the offending BO section and then reknit & bound off again normally. This worked just fine, and I'm not missing the gathered look at all.

Next update: My fair-isle camera case!

2007: A Year of New Techniques

A kitty in repose (on my yarn!)

Since I finally have a bunch of FO & WIP pictures, I think I'll ration them out over a few days. After learning how to do cables with "Fetching" (did I post those FO pics yet?) I decided to use my lone skien of Patons SWS in Natural Denim for the cute cabled hat in the SNB:Nation book. I decided to go for the pom pom, because really life's too short to live in fear of pom poms, as I have done in the past. Making the darn thing was much more difficult than I thought it'd be - don't stores sell pom pom makers? If so I'll have to buy one, because cutting my own of out cardboard got really old.

Behold my beautiful cables! I blocked this hat over two bowls in my kitchen - a smaller bowl set over a bigger one, which approximated the shape of the human head well enough. Thankfully Emma didn't decide to mess around with "that strange thing on the kitchen counter" since the bowls were balanced very precariously. I don't think picking glass shards out of wet wool is anyone's idea of a good time.

In case anyone's interested, I still only cable without a cable needle, and it's worked well thus far. After my first disastrous attempt with an actual cabling needle I wrote off cables for months and months, until I learned of this technique and decided I simply had to make a pair of Fetching.


To continue making this an SWS-only post, here's the beginnings of my Danica scarf, inspired by this lovely knitter, who's created quite a splash in blogland with her version. I'm rather annoyed - ok, VERY annoyed at the way the SWS is behaving. The pic on the left shows how much I was able to get from one skien, and though it's supposed to be a three skien scarf I'm a little worried. Not to mention the girl who's scarf is in the photo swears she didn't cut her yarn to make her squares solid colored, but for the life of me I can't get it to work. As you can see in the closeup, almost all my color shifts occur smack dab in the middle of a square. And to make matters worse, my first skien contained three (3!) knots and was missing an entire color. This colorway (Natural Earth - my favorite!) transitions into this really awesome deep navy blue, and instead all I got was a washed out dark grey. *sigh* Of course the second I joined my second ball, what color shows up? The navy. If this end of the scarf looks funny because of it I swear I'll chop it off and reknit it with a brand new skien. I keep consoling myself with the knowledge that very few people will notice any of this once it's done.

On a non-whiny note, I'm really getting a good short row workout. I've done them before in the artyarns tutorials, but it's amazing how easier it is to remember once you start. You don't even have to really count stitches, because you either decrease or increase one every row so you can visually keep track of where you are. I love seeing the entrelac come to life - you work a triangle, a square, another square, and a triangle, and then repeat backwards till you're back on the same side of the scarf you started on.

Ok, enough for now. I probably should get back to work :) Next update: I tackle fair-isle! Do I come out on top? You be the judge!

New Years Resolutions

I haven't posted in so long, I don't know where to begin. First, an explanation. On the last show I was on, I brought my laptop to work everyday. On this show, I have a mac in my office. It's much much easier to manipulate pictures when all you have to do is upload them at night and then mess with them (and post them) at work during your downtime. I find it hard to actually get on my computer when I get home at 8pm...I just want to knit and watch tv and relax.

Enough excuses. Here's my list of Knitting Resolutions for 2007:

1) Learn cabling. Oh wait, I figured this out right before Christmas - Ha!

2) Learn to do colorwork, both intarsia and fair isle. I think I can do intarsia, after using the basic technique on a pair of slippers for my mom for Christmas. Fair isle is another story entirely, and looks slightly difficult. That said, the end result is gorgeous!

2) Finish my $*&^#! poncho! Grr. I need to get to an lys and pay someone to help me get over this hurdle.

3) Stop buying yarn unless a) it's on super-duper-prices-won't-be-this-low-again sale b) it's one of a kind and I'll never be able to pick it up elsewhere or c) I have a project in mind that I'll be able to start within the next month. Leaving myself a lot of loopholes, eh? :)

4) The biggest and most important resolution: BE PATIENT!! SLOW DOWN!! DOUBLE CHECK!! It took me until after bind off and sewing in the ends to realize one 1/2 of my recently completed Fetching was one cable round longer than the other. How does something that big just pass me by? Oy. I believe knitting was put into my life to help me be more patient and methodical, and while I have definitely improved, I'm nowhere near where I need to be.

And just for fun, some pictures!

First, we have the winder I bought before Thanksgiving with a 50% off coupon from joanns.com. Winding without a swift is, well, difficult, but I have a strange system where I hang the hank off my left arm and wind with my right hand, veeeery slowly, occasionally unraveling or shifting the hank so the yarn doesn't get tangled.


And my Top Secret sweater - done!! This is a shot of it blocking. As you can see, the only flat surface in my apartment isn't big enough for my sweater, thus the arms hung off. I believe this is why the arms on this sweater are about four inches too long. *sigh* I'm going to cut and use lifelines (I'm scared!) and take off about 3 inches.

*drool* Patons SWS...I love it! Simple stockinette hat - forgot where I got the pattern. I didn't even bother blocking it, though it's only been cold enough a total of 3 times (all of which were in Florida over the Thanksgiving holidays) to wear it. Hence why I love hats, but have no use for them. Although this weekend it's forecasted to get into the 30's (eep!) in Los Angeles, so maybe I'll wear this one all day around my apartment. Actually, I have a geek*con to go to this weekend, so no hat for me. Geeks unite!

Aww, Emma's helping me knit! Ok, no she's not - she's getting in the way. This is my hideously expensive alpaca yarn that I used for my mom's scarf. Emma somehow a hold of one of the balls while I was gone for Christmas and I ended up being forced to cut out pieces of the yarn from the ball because she had ripped it with her kitty claws.




Projects in the works right now (No, my WIP bars haven' t been updated):
-V-neck sweater. I have the yarn, now I just need to wash it and wind it. (It's that "pre-treated" stuff used for machine knitters, so it's covered in some kind of oil).
-Scarf for my grandma. She requested one after seeing my mom's. Hers is pale pink and it's a "Joann's Exclusive" yarn, which really means next to nothing in the long run. Perfect color though :)
-Knitty's "Danica" in Patons SWS (different color than my hat, I think. Actually, I can't decide). I'm inspired by this knitter's recent creation which I saw in the Knitting Livejournal community. Beautiful!! And I got a $40 gift certificate to Michael's from my awesome sister, so maybe I'll use $15 of it towards the SWS.

Welcome!

In order to see the evolution of this self proclaimed "novice knitter" it seems important to see where I've come from. Technically I've been knitting for around two years, but the first 3/4 of that time consisted of half-heartedly attempting two scarves. Now that I've got the basics (and technique!) down, I'm just flying along. On that note, I present to you a partial gallery of my FO's (finished objects).

First, my new purse. Originally meant to be a yarn tote, by the time I finished I just loved it too much. Made of NZ wool (little known fact: the title of this blog would also work if I happened to move to New Zealand. Just sayin'...) I put a felted flower on it because every purse needs a felted flower.



My next bag, which is actually a yarn tote. And it has a flower too! Though not felted, it's made of yummy Paton's Rumors in the Heather colorway. I still can't decide what else to make with it because I love it so much. Make sense? Of course not.




And my cutie little mp3 player bag. One of the first "real" things I made, hence the design defects.

My very recent handwarmers. I found a pattern online that showed how to knit a rectangle and then seam it up, leaving a hole for the thumb. Using that idea, I grabbed various shades of Noro and messed around with broken ribbing and striping. This picture, and the ones above, prove to me that I need to take better pictures, and more closeups, when my goal is to put them on this blog.


Maybe someday (when I'm not at work) I'll post some other pictures of my first structured needle-felting attempt, and some crafting projects I've made.

*Also, ten points if you know where the inspiration for the name of a blog came from? Anyone? Ok - check out The Lucksmiths "Cat in Sunshine" - LOVE that song. It's off their first album ever, entitled (appropriately) "First Tape."