Some knits aren't meant to be heirlooms

While I'm kind of proud of the more regular blogging I've done lately, I still have more to write about if I'm to bring you guys up to speed on everything that's been happening around here, knitting-wise, over the past few months. One of the things I am saddened to have to report is the demise of my "Wheelie" steering wheel cover. Do you remember that? I finished it in February of last year:

Didn't it look lovely?

Well, unfortunately, after a little over a year of use, it had degraded into this:

That discolouration at the top, by the way, is not shadow. No, it is what can only be described as...filth. And trust me, the photo does not accurately convey how disgusting or tattered the whole thing looked in real life. DH claims responsibility - he says there has always been something about his hands that destroys steering wheels or, in this case, steering wheel covers. (Great.)

So I got rid of it. Our steering wheel now seems to me to be pathetically small. :) Given DH's dire pronouncements about the destructive capabilities of the chemistry of his palms, I suppose I should be casting on for another one...but I so don't want to. Maybe later in the season when I'm sick of burning myself on the wheel on sunny days.

A whole bunch of stuff

A month or so ago, I told the story of the super-nice lady who wanted to know if I was willing to part with my leftover Bernat Sox yarn in the "Army Hot" colourway. In a nutshell, I was willing to just mail it to her as a gift, but she sent me back a 'trade' in the form of freakin' Malabrigo Lace Baby Merino. She felt this was reasonable because she really needed this yarn to finish off some socks she was making for her guy.

Well, recently, the socks were completed, and I have to say, she made the yarn look way more handsome than I dreamed possible. You can see what they look like here. Aren't they great? She did a really good job with the socks and colour integration, and I'm inspired to make a similar pair for my guy, too...uh, once I clear off my plate a little, that is.

And speaking of sock yarn, Carrie K noticed that my daughter's new leggings matched her skirt, and wonders how I managed it. The truth of it is that this was a complete and utter fluke. My MIL gave me the yarn for Christmas - she simply picked something she thought I'd like - and while I was sitting around one day wondering what kind of socks I'd make out of it and whom those socks might for, I realised that it had the same colours as DD1's skirt. Inspiration was born. Lucky, eh?

Also cool is that two people on Ravelry have started making their own pairs of the leggings! I can't wait to see them. However, I still can't seriously refer to this as 'my pattern', since it is simply a tube...neither 'mine' in concept, nor a true 'pattern'. I have merely provided guidance on minor aspects: yarn weight, needle size, number of stitches to cast on, and number of inches to knit before casting off.

The double-faced blanket, however, definitely involved originality, thought and design on my part. :) Thank you, Carrie K, I'm glad you like it. You aren't alone...beyond all reason, people are still putting it into their Ravelry queues, and one poor sucker brave soul has even taken it on as a project. To quote her, "Can't believe how long it takes to do one row." Yes, that is unfortunately true, and I have tried to warn people about this to try and stave off hate mail. :) When I first started the blanket, I was probably doing a row about every hour. Seriously. Mind you, I was also stupid enough to be shoving 482 stitches onto 14" straights, which really slowed me down. I think that the average knitter, using a very long circular to save themselves time and sanity, should be able to do a row in 20-25 minutes once they get the hang of the double knitting and work up a good rhythm. However, with 241 rows to do, that still translates into a whole heckuvalot of time. So tread lightly, folks. This one is really just for people who are crazy like me.

My insane tendencies have not escaped Brigitte's notice, who wants to know if everything in the sidebar list is a WIP. Truth? Yes. Everything below the 'Works in Progress' header but above the 'Planned Projects' header is something I've cast on but not yet finished. Please do not call me your hero, though, because a lot of these projects haven't seen action in years...or they've seen a teeny bit of action and then gotten tossed by the wayside again. It's kinda sad, actually. Fortunately, I do have a good track record of completing WIPs to make up for this. It's not like stuff goes into purgatory endlessly; eventually it will all get finished, even if it takes a decade or more.

This is why I keep trying to knit faster!

To that end, I've been watching as many videos as I can find of the 2008 Knit Out, with the 'fastest international knitter' competition. For those of you who missed hearing about it, Hazel Tindall kicked ass. Wannietta Prescod of Canada came 3rd. (Glee!) I cannot believe how fast all those fingers are flying. I really, really have to sit down one day and get DH to time me. There is no way on earth that I will be able to approach the speed of those ladies, but I'm really hoping I can approach 180 stitches in 3 minutes. I may be totally fooling myself. Stay tuned.

Wheelie for our car

After DH got home from work on Thursday, I went outside into the rather nippy cold and 'tied one on', so to speak.



It's good! It does obscure the dashboard a wee bit, but if I grab the top of it with my thumbs as part of my grip of the steering wheel, all is well.

Socks for Mom

These are coming along very nicely, I've turned the heel and am ribbing up the leg:



But doesn't the provisional cast-on at the toe totally look like fish lips?

Socks for Dad

In an effort to do something else according to The Schedule, I started on my dad's Christmas socks. I decided to use the tweedy 'Wedgewood' Invicta Extra yarn from Schjeepes that I was using for my Bayerische socks (for which I will instead be using my Lana Grossa Meilenweit 50 Seta/Cashmere yarn for those...yum yum). The socks will feature some subtle twisted-stitch cables of my own devising, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out. (I'll make the pattern available once it's done, as long as the socks don't suck.)

I wanted the socks to be toe-up, but I was kinda over the 'fish lips' look of a provisionally cast-on toe-up sock, so instead I turned to my copy of Folk Mittens, in which Marcia Lewandowski describes the 'Eastern' method of casting on for a closed tube. I've never done it before, and it worked bee-yew-tifully:



The camera unfortunately decided to focus on the live stitches instead of the bottom of the toe, but you can still see the seamlessness of it, I think. It is a seriously rockin' cast-on and I'm totally going to use it from now on.

Bella Paquita

This has been seeing some action! The yoke and first sleeve are done, and the second sleeve is getting close to being finished, too.



I'm thinking I should have cast off the middle back stitches instead of putting them on a holder. Damn. Oh, well. I'll fix it later.

Incidentally, DD1 has informed me that I should be using the yarn for mittens for her. I was noncommittal...although the reality is that I'm probably going to have more than enough leftover for mittens in her size once this sweater is finished. So we'll see!

Double-knit hat

Last week sometime, I think it was, DD1's winter hat went missing. This was a serious problem, because it is an excellent hat. It's made of pink fleece, it has a snowflake on it, and it has earflaps that completely cover her ears snugly, which is a huge plus. Moreover, the only other winter hat in the house that could fit on her head was a touch too big for her and kept slipping over her eyes. (Not good.)

So I got out all the worsted-weight or thicker blends of acrylic and wool that I could find, and had DD1 choose two colours, in preparation for a double-knit hat. DD1 requested a horizontal stripe pattern.

The bad news is that I'm still fiddling with getting the number of stitches right for the cast-on. The good news is that I found her hat.

So this project is on hold indefinitely. Hell, I ain't doing non-Schedule double-knit if I don't have to!

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.

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.