Good grief, she's blogged twice in two days

Child Legs for DD1

Dunzo!


Completed


'In action' (I am fully aware that I've paired stripes and a floral here...but hey, if you can't clash patterns when you're four, when can you clash 'em? [Do NOT say the Academy Awards.])

I love 'em, DD1 loves 'em...although she thinks they're 'prickly' and, I think, still harbours resentment that they don't go right up to her crotch like real pants. Sigh.

Okay, so let's get into the knitty-gritty of the pattern and how to make your own: Knit a tube of 2x2 ribbing to whatever length you want for your kid.

Need more details than that? Alrightee then...

• Leggings are knitted from the top down.
• 100g of sock yarn should be plenty. These leggings used just over 75g of Trekking XXL.
• Using the long tail cast-on and a 4mm needle, cast on 60 sts.
• Switch to 2.5mm needles (or 2.75mm if you want the leggings a bit looser) and join, being careful not to twist, doing K2, P2 ribbing.
• Continue K2, P2 ribbing until legging is 18" or whatever length suits your fancy. (My kid wanted the leggings to go from ankle up to way past mid-thigh, so she got 18".)
• Cast off.
• Make another legging.
• Fits a slightly shorter- and skinnier-than-average 4.5-year-old girl with room to grow.

Wheelie for our car

It grows:



I measured our steering wheel today and discovered it has a circumference of 47.25", which means the cover should be 26 to 28 3/8" long. I'd originally estimated I needed to do seven repeats of the pattern, but this makes me think I should really do eight. We'll see how it goes once I get to seven.

Stretchy socks for Mom

Well, now that I finished my daughter's shrug, I can, as previously planned, use the rest of the white sock yarn for my mom. It's a cotton wool blend (plus some synthetics for stretchiness) that should be fine for her sensitive feet. I weighed what I have left - 63.5g - which should be enough at least for some ankle socks.

So why wait? (No, I don't want the answer to that. And as for you, Schedule, you shut up.) I cast on.



I would like to point out that the toes are not going to be pink-tipped when all is said and done. (Perish the thought.) The pink is actually a provisional cast-on so that I can graft the toe later. This is to eliminate any kind of seam at the toes so that the socks will be as comfortable for my mom's feet as possible.

They might be a Mother's Day present. Or birthday. Or Christmas. Clearly, I'm not sure.

In which I'm noticed

So Mel pointed out in the comments that my Itchy and Scratchy mittens had been profiled by whipup.net. Thanks for the heads-up, Mel! Right before I read your comment, I was beginning to realise something was going on while peeking at my stats. I hadn't heard of whipup.net before now and am tickled that they discovered the mittens project. It was a super-fun one. The actual knitting of the mittens wasn't too exciting, but doing the duplicate stitch and watching the characters take shape PERFECTLY was really, really cool.

The free blankie pattern I promised in my last post is now available. You can download it if you like, just be warned that it's about 2.4MB (there are nine charts, it couldn't be helped). I posted it on Ravelry on last night, and it pretty quickly started getting favourited and queued, which thrilled me no end. This morning when I checked again, it had received even more attention and downloads...and counting! (Wow!!!) This leads me to the conclusion that there are a lot of really INSANE knitters out there, because honestly, people, this is a real mother of a project to get into. It takes scads of yarn, time, concentration and patience. Proof of this is the story of my own angst with the project, as told on episode #25 of Cast-On (about 39.5 minutes into it if you want skip right to). Of course I'm not trying to stop people from making the pattern, I just fear that anybody who tries is going to get mad at me for sucking them in without giving fair warning. So enter at your own risk, you crazy, crazy people. :)

Valtricotine, you are very welcome for the patterns. I'm delighted when people like them!

And lastly...a pattern I designed has been accepted by MagKnits! GLEE! (At least, I'm pretty sure it was accepted. The editor sent me an email saying "I would love to use it", "it will either be in March or April" and asking me to send the pattern and more pictures. That does seem to hint very strongly that it's going to be published, right?) I'm pretty over the moon about this. Stay tuned to find out which issue it'll be in.

So life would be really great if only I could lock down daycare arrangements for when I go back to work in the spring. (Y'know, Universe, it would just be a lot easier if you could arrange for a lottery ticket to come through bigtime for me. Then I could stay home and avoid the daycare issue altogether. Think you could put that together for me? SOON?!? I'd be ever so grateful. Thanks.)

Child legs for DD1

Ahem. Did I say that Trekking XXL didn't repeat?



Whoops. I eat my words - it totally does. Or, at least, this colourway does. Don't it look nice? I'm now only about three inches away from finishing leg #2. When I do, I'll post a picture of DD1 in them, and detail how I made 'em.

P.S. to Carrie K - Yes. I must have faith that winter will end, otherwise I'll go mad. And thank you for the compliments on the shrug - I, too, thought it looked a touch weird in progress with those braids up the back, but I kept my 'vision' firmly in mind, and the end product matched it exactly. I'm quite pleased.

Churning stuff out

Around the Block baby blanket

So today I devoted myself entirely to the pursuit of finishing the writing-up of this pattern. This included grafting a (much) smaller version of the blanket and taking loads of photos of the grafting process so that I could include them in the pattern instructions.

Result: A finished and published pattern!


Regular view


Wide perspective view

I'm really, really proud of this one. I've been looking, and I haven't been able to find anybody else who's thought of making a blanket like this, so as far as I know, it's original. The blanket is knitted all in one piece on normal-length straights (or a circular, whatever works best for you), using short rows to create the mitres, and using lace to turn the holes made by the short rows into a design feature. I love it.

It's available for purchase - just be warned, it's huge (3MB). I tried my best to knock the file size down, but there's only so much you can do with a 10-page pattern filled with tons of photos to illustrate grafting specifics.

Now I just have to gift tag the blanket itself, and get it over to my friend for her new boy.

I know this makes the third for-money pattern in a row that I've posted. Lest you all think I'm getting totally mercenary, don't worry. :) My niece's mom recently emailed me with the dimensions of the baby blanket that I designed and knitted for my niece several years ago, which means I can now finish writing up the pattern for that...and it will be free. It's this one:

Yellow-on-blue side


Blue-on-yellow side

Child legs for DD1

I surged ahead on the first leg yesterday, and got it to a point where I figured I should try it on DD1 again.

Uh, DUH, yeah, it comes up practically to her crotch!

Fortunately, she likes it that way. In fact, she complained that it wasn't 100% all the way up her leg. (In response, I essentially told her to suck it up, it was already extremely sufficient in the length department.)

So, at 18" in length, I cast off the first leg.



Next up: Leg deux.

The Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

Second extension was grafted. Over 290 stitches were picked up all around the edge. Brief panic was felt at the thought of doing 1.5 inches on all those stitches using 8 DPNs, but then June came to the rescue and VERRRY kindly gave me a 2mm circular needle in return for helping a customer find exactly what she wanted in the store. (June, if you're reading this, I cannot thank you enough, the circular made the edging go soooo much faster and easier. You are so nice.)

Anyway, the edging was finished and cast off, and yesterday I finished sewing in all the ends. Here, therefore, is a frenzy of photographs of the finished product:


Front view (doesn't it look like some kind of eyeless Muppet?)


Back view


'In action', front view (the only way I could get her to do a non-simpering smile was to ask her to try and make her baby sister laugh...this was the resulting expression)


'In action', back view

Wheelie for our car

I'm in a little bit of a weird place with The Schedule. Now that the blanket is done, DH's anniversary socks are done (he likes them, BTW), and the shrug is done, I'm supposed to be working on thank-you sweaters for my best friend's niece and nephew. Their mom gave me TONS of excellent hand-me-downs some months back, thus saving us GOBS of money. When we sent them a greeting card for New Year's, I offered to make her kids totally customized hand-knit sweaters as a thank-you. Unfortunately, I haven't heard back from her yet, so I can't get started on them, no matter what The Schedule says.

So...what to do, what to do? I'm feeling that aimless blasé feeling that seems to come from finishing up loads of projects in a short amount of time. Nothing is really grabbing me right now. But I decided to be good and do something from The Schedule anyway. After all, with the weather being pretty cold right now and not looking like it's going to improve anytime soon, the logical thing to do is to make an anti-burned-hands steering wheel cover, right? Of course.



It's a pretty cool pattern, I must say.

The Schedule is pleased...and displeased

My thanks for the compliments on my baby's cuteness. (But believe me, if you heard her cute voice sounds, you'd plotz even more.) Of course I know she is irresistibly sweet, which is why I keep nibbling her. :) But it's lovely to hear that it's not just the mom in me that thinks so.

Mitred corners blanket for Raymond

It took a few false starts with the grafting before I figured out exactly how I should've been starting it so that everything lined up properly. I will spare you the frustrating details of exactly what I did wrong. Suffice it to say that I was not a happy camper for a while there. It really sucks: a) grafting, b) undoing grafting, c) undoing grafting when the tail is really long (enough to do 99 stitches), d) having to do items a) through c) multiple times.

At last, however, I grafted successfully, and then washed and blocked it to try and stop the braid border from curling so much (it worked). As of Wednesday, I had a completed blanket.

It will, however, still be some time before I can make the pattern available. I have completed the (considerably) smaller sample piece that I will be using as the model to take photographs of the grafting process, and I have also taken shots of the actual blanket. But I still have to document the grafting and finish writing up the pattern, so stay tuned.

Here's a sneak preview, though:

The Girlfriend Shrug for DD1

I have a very nifty story to tell.

Some time ago, I shelved this project because even having put a perpendicular insert down the back three cabled braids wide, the body still wasn't really wide enough to fit DD1 well, and I just could not face the idea that I had to do two more braid inserts - the first one was such a slow slog.

After mulling this problem over and over in my head, I realised that what I really should be doing was trying to find some more of the original striping yarn. Then I could do really fast parallel inserts and some grafting - it would be a pain in the ass, but still considerably less so than the perpendicular braid inserts. The problem was that I hadn't been able to find anyone in the GTA or beyond who sold this yarn, and although I think I did find one or two sites that sold it online, I seem to recall that it was more money than I really wanted to spend.

Enter Ravelry.

I started hunting through people's stashes, looking for everyone who had this yarn in my colourway. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anyone who had partial balls, but I did find someone who had it, had started to do something with it, didn't like it, and now had now idea what to do with the yarn and it was just languishing in her stash. I 'cold called' her with Ravelry messaging, and asked what the odds were that I could trade her something for it...or just pay for it outright.

Delight of delights, she was more than happy to let it go, and refused to take anything for it. Instead, she asked me to make a charitable contribution somewhere worthy, and that would be good enough for her. Isn't she lovely? (She has no blog for me to link to, unfortunately, otherwise I would.)

Sure enough, on Friday the yarn showed up. I gave some money to Médecins sans Frontières and emailed the Yarn Harlot so that my benefactor would get credited at Knitters without Borders with the donation.

Meanwhile, I've already completed the elongating of the shrug back on one side, and just need to graft the extension together with the rest of the shrug on the other side:



After that, I just have to do the edging and ends-weaving, and it's finished! (I am avoiding the thought of where I'm going to find enough 2mm DPNs to go all around the edge. I'll fall off that bridge when I come to it.)

Bella Paquita for moi

There was some time in between finishing the mitred corners blanket and receiving the yarn to continue working on The Girlfriend Shawl. I didn't really feel like going back to existing projects, so - you guessed it - I started up something else.

I've had my eye on this pattern to use with the burgundy/maroon worsted weight superwash I inherited from my parents' neighbour across the hall. It's going to be for me, and I've reduced the bustline a touch so that it should fit me perfectly. I'm working on the yoke right now. This picture doesn't really make it look like much more than a burgundy/maroon lump, but trust me, it's coming along well:

I gotcher good news and I gotcher bad news

Leafy Baby Poncho

I'm delighted to announce that I finished the 12-month size, blocked it, did two photo shoots with my daughter wearing it (I couldn't get a decent shot of the front when she wasn't looking miserable during the first shoot), finalised the pattern, and posted it for sale.


front


back

I think it looks really sweet, and will work with just about any 100g amount of sock yarn (there are some heavy sock yarns that may not have enough yardage; but if you've got something close to 400 yards, you're good). I think it's tremendously cool when you can use sock yarn (particularly self-striping or self-patterning sock yarn) for something other than socks (although socks are, of course, tremendously cool in and of themselves).

If you're keen, you can hit the 'Buy now!' link for it on the side bar.

Mitred corners blanket for Raymond

THE KNITTING IS DONE. Ahhhhh. What a fantastic sense of relief.

Alas, following shortly on the heels of that relief was a sense of utter fury. I started to graft the end stitches to the beginning stitches, and had done about 85 of them before I realised that I hadn't lined them up right - the end stitches were shifted 'off' of the beginning stitches by one lousy stitch. A thousand curses. Now I am faced with the unenviable task of undoing all my lovely grafting.

There are no words.

You rest, you rust

Endpaper Mitts for moi

Project whore that I am (that'll get me some interesting hits via Google, won't it?), I could not resist the sudden urge that hit me last week to make Eunny Jang's Endpaper Mitts pattern. I'd been thinking about it for a while, because it's such a good-looking finished product, and because it does get a little chilly sometimes at the LYS, as well as at my office, to which I must return in two months (*SOB*), and in order to stay functional in a chill, my hands need to be covered. And I must say, these mittens are an extremely handsome way to achieve that covering.

Moreover, this project would force me to learn another type of cast-on and bind-off, and it would also be an excellent opportunity to practice stranded knitting holding both strands with my left hand, which has been a goal of mine for some time. Throw in the joy of finding something new to do with sock yarn, and you have a winner.

And so, off I went.

This is a delicious pattern. Extremely simple, with extremely gorgeous results. Despite having (as always) a Schedule, I couldn't seem to put this down (good thing I'm about two weeks ahead of myself).

I just finished off the first one today and am LOVING it:



The stitches are a tad wonky where one of the needle joins was (the fault of my still-inexpert-but-improving-decently skill with the single-handed stranding technique); it's a touch itchy (the fault of the yarn); and the side seams have a tendency to travel because they twist around my hand a bit from their intended side-of-the-hand positions (I think this must be the fault of physics, because the mitt itself fits very snugly indeed)...but those are the only non-gushing things I have to say about it. Despite the indoor temperature of my house being perfectly reasonable, I have been wearing this thing since I finished it (except I did take it off to dump a load of diapers in the washing machine...after all my hard work there's no way I want this thing tainted with urine).

I do feel a little tickle of second mitt syndrome at the back of my brain, but I'm pretty sure I can get over that.

(P.S. For anybody thinking of making this pattern, it's touted as 'reversible'...I'm pretty sure this refers to being able to wear the mittens on either hand, as opposed to being able to turn it inside-out and have it look good.)

Everything else on my plate has slowed way down because of the Endpaper Mitts, though.

Mitred corners blanket for Raymond

I'm on the last eighth! The end is nigh!

Leafy baby poncho

I just finished the third repeat of the self-striping pattern this afternoon. I'm guessing it'll take about five to finish the thing, so not far now.

Silent poetry reading

Apparently, it's the third annual Brigid in Cyperspace Poetry Reading today. Having only discovered this just now, I have ten minutes left before the day is officially up, and this was the first thing that (roguishly) popped into my head:

Distant Hills (Cow Poetry)

The distant hills call to me.
Their rolling waves seduce my heart.
Oh, how I want to graze in their lush valleys.
Oh, how I want to run down their green slopes.
Alas, I cannot.
Damn the electric fence!
Damn the electric fence!
Thank you.

Gotta love Gary Larson.

I promised photos

Carrie K has pointed out to me that although I may have made the Arabesque Baby Blanket pattern available for download, I never actually posted any pictures to the blog itself. And so, here is the remedy for that...

blanket


pattern detail

Whaddya think?

Mitred corners blanket for Raymond

Some years ago, a certain baby boutique sold the crib I'd ordered out from under me, forcing me to crawl around on the shop floor dismantling a store model at 37 weeks gestation in order to actually have something my baby could sleep in. (I won't even try to pretend I'm not bitter. It's been almost 5 years and I still despise the owner - who totally did it on purpose because he wanted to sell it for more than my agreed-upon price - with the red-hot fury of a thousand suns.)

Now, my beloved LYS is a completely different story. It is staffed by lovely people, and the chances that the yarn they set aside for me would be accidentally sold to someone else are astronomically low. Nevertheless, my past trauma has made me totally paranoid about this sort of thing no matter who the retailer is, so I went back to the LYS as soon as I could, and picked up my two additional balls in the same dyelot just so I would have them for when I need them.

And I'm now pretty close to needing them. I'm working on the seventh eighth of the blanket, which means I'm over three-quarters done. It is a behemoth-like sea of purple, and I really like it. I can't wait to finish it, photograph it, and put the pattern up for sale!

Leafy baby poncho

I am fast approaching the end of the ball, and am coming to the conclusion that it's still not going to happen for the 24-month size. No biggie - I figure a baby pattern that goes from 3 months to 18 months is still pretty good.

I don't want to 'spill the beans' yet about something that I want to either sell or submit to a magazine, but I did want to provide a picture to show how the yarn patterns - no harm in that, eh?



(I over-sharpened it a bit to compensate for the blurriness, sorry.)

Child legs for DD1

I weighed what's left of the ball, and I've got really quite a ways to go until the halfway point (of course, my understanding of where precisely the halfway point is would have been improved by weighing the ball before I started knitting with it, but I'm an idiot who doesn't think ahead, so there goes that idea). I guesstimate I've got about 6 inches more to do before the first leg is finished, so I'm not worried at all about running out of yarn.

I've also taken an updated picture:

Oil-slick rainbow socks for moi

Heel is done, leg has begun:

In other triumphs, my husband finished the scarf he designed and started as a Christmas gift for me a few years ago. It's red and cabled and gorgeous and I love it. I'm going to help him write up the pattern so we can self-publish it.