I'm 2/3 "real" knitter

I've joked before that I'm not a REAL capital "K" Knitter (despite knitting for 5 years and crocheting for over a decade) because I've never made myself a pair of socks (the kind with tiny yarn on tiny needles that can actually be worn in real shoes) or a sweater. In fact, I said so here at the end of May. Here we are now at the end of August, and I'm almost there on both counts!

 

I've got socks with heels turned, and a sweater with sleeves finished (FINALLY!) and over half the back in progress! My socks live in that orange bag (which is actually the packaging that a set of sheets come in from Target - fancy and thrifty!) in my purse, so I only pick away at them here and there. Mainly I knit on them during my lunch break, as a passenger in the car, and even in a few meetings when I just want to keep my hands busy. I worry that it makes it look like I'm not paying attention, so I make a conscious effort to keep my eyes up on the presenter or screen. I'd wager that I'm far more engaged while knitting than if I was checking email on my phone! 

That being said though, it feels like they've been taking a long time since I never work on them for more than an hour. Even so, I've turned both heels with a TON of mistakes (seriously, I ripped one almost completely out), but I was glad to be past that, mistakes and all, because now I'm on to the cuff and I don't have to think about that at all. Just keep knitting, keep your mind busy. I think working two at a time may have contributed to my heel mistakes, but that could just as easily be due to lack of experience at that particular technique, as well as always only paying half my attention to what I was doing. I've tried them on (oh the beauty of toe up and circular needles!) and decided it didn't bother me enough to make them perfect. In fact, the lesson learned may be that I need to start the entire heel increases a few rows sooner. Live and learn!

I think a potential lesson learned on the sweater side might be sleeves first. That may definitely be true in a sweater like this where the sleeves are done in a texture pattern while the body is a straightforward stockinette. I cast this on back on June 30, and didn't finish the sleeves until last Friday night, August 15! That's a long time! It didn't help that I made a ton of mistakes, and ripped a LOT. (There have been many rows and half rows taken back one stitch at a time - far less dramatic than a big ol RIP, but painful nonetheless.) The pattern definitely wasn't hard, but it needed to be focused on, at least a little. 

In contrast, all the knitting on the body so far was done in little scraps of time on Saturday and Sunday - it is positively FLYING in comparison to the sleeves. I think if I'd knit the body first, the long slog of the sleeves would have been tough to bear. I'm glad I did the sleeves at the same time too. If the first one had taken a month, it would have felt like a pretty big job to start the second one. I guess I just like doing pairs of things together! When you're done with one, you're done with both, and I like that. 

I considered doing the body all together in the round, but didn't think through needing a longer circular needle, and just wanted to get going already. Still, I might do the fronts at the same time, similar to how I did the sleeves. Yep, I'm a little worried about confusing my left and right side, but we'll see how it goes. And the bummer is that in the end, I'll still have to get that longer needle - I've left the bottom edge as a provisional cast on so that I can assemble and finish the whole sweater, and just do the ribbing on the bottom until I run out of yarn to make the cardigan as long as possible. Bah! I wish I'd remembered that before casting the back on to work in pieces. Ironically, the reason I started the back in the first place is because I realized I needed different needles for the sleeves of my Wonderful Wallaby. Oh knitting. You can certainly be an expensive hobby. Lucky I love ya!

Howard Hoodie sneak peek

I'd planned to have a more finished and polished reveal at this point, but when summer evenings beckon in a land where winter seems to last 9 months of the year, you roll with it. That being said, I do have a little something to share!

 

About two weeks ago, I shared this even smaller sneak peek:

 

It hasn't always been a full fledged intention, but I'm dipping a toe into pattern design. I suppose, it was only a matter of time - I design in my day job, I've been knitting and crocheting for long enough now that it doesn't feel false, and I've got a head for details. Plus I took an even smaller step in several months ago with my free pattern for an infinity cowl that has been fairly well received. I started out with the sketch you see in the photo above. I was inspired by a couple of things. The shape of the hat, or "hoodie," as is a popular term around the cozy cape cottage these days, is reminiscent of the twin baby bonnets I made a few months back. I modified it to be a bit larger as I wanted it to attach to a scarf or cape of some sort, and I love the rolled brim detail on a small sweater we were given a few years back. For this winter, the attached scarf detail has definitely been something I've been percolating for awhile. My sister has really gotten into snowboarding the past few years, and she brought her balaclava with her last time. I really enjoyed teasing her about it because it looked so silly, but it's actually really smart because it doesn't let in any of that cold air or snow, so I'd put it in the back of my mind that a cuter version of that would be GREAT for kids. It would keep them warm, and you wouldn't have to worry about them getting tangled up or choked by a separate scarf. Plus there's the added benefit that you can't lose it if it's attached! I went back and forth about some kind of infinity scarf, maybe it looped once or twice, but eventually I settled on something that looks more like a cape and buttons at the neck - off to the side so it shouldn't annoy little chins or cheeks! I'm a fan of a little intentional asymmetry.

I think there's definitely an alternate design in here where the whole thing is worked in garter stitch. It would have the benefit of almost no purling (I'd still keep the stockinette in the front for that little rolled brim), and garter is a bit warmer in my opinion. For this self striping yarn though, I swatched a garter version and I just didn't like the way the colors fell as much as in stockinette. You can see in the photos above the outside pattern versus the inside - garter stitch would have made both sides look more like the bottom photo, which I just didn't like. I think it could be great in a solid though, so I'll probably write up that option as well.

I finished up the sample last night, and immediately decided I wanted to change it. I think the second set of increases is a little too much, so I think I'll go back and re-do those. While I love a ruffle, I don't like it in this context - the bottom needs to lay a bit flatter under a coat. I know how I want to change it though, so I should be able to have the pattern written in legible, not chicken scratched out notes to myself in the next day or two. I have one tester all excited to cast this on, so let me know if anyone else out there might be interested in test knitting this as well! As far as details, this took a single skein of Universal Worsted Tapestry which is just under 200 yards, and fits a 2-3 year old. I'm planning to work up sizes for 6 and 12 months as well, and maybe 4-5 year olds, though that might take more than a single skein. A contrast color edging would also work if you didn't want to buy two skeins and do a little stash diving instead. So there you have it - a sneak peek of my new design, the Howard Hoodie! Let me know what you think!

Etsy shop update!

My goodness, it's been ages since I updated my poor, neglected Etsy shop. The largest part of this is due to the fact that I really want to completely overhaul it. Once I get my basement studio completed, I plan to set up a few areas where I can easily take product photos. I can't wait to get good lighting, a tripod, and some consistent props and backdrops. We (ok fine, mostly my husband lately) are making pretty solid progress on the space, but we have busy jobs and other responsibilities that make it hard to just dedicate a few solid days to getting a lot done down there. Despite these setbacks that make it easy for me to make excuses, I got myself together to show off a new product line!

About six months ago, I was contacted by a friend on Facebook to make a pair of baby booties for her sweet baby girl who was born this summer. I loved them so much, I always planned to list them in the shop...but I couldn't hold on to them long enough to actually get them up there! I think in all I've sold four pairs so far, which is pretty good considering they weren't technically something I was offering!

 

Aside from the fact that these are tiny (I can do sizes 0-6 month and 6-12 month) which automatically make them adorable, the yarn is a real star. It's a long repeating gradient yarn from Knitpicks called Chroma, and it's gorgeous. It's 100% wool, which means handwash and lay flat to dry, and it's one of the softest things I've ever felt. There's just a slight fuzzy halo around the fabric which makes them perfect for sensitive little baby feet, and a total bear to rip back if someone makes silly mistakes while crocheting them....don't ask me how I know.

Because of the gently transitioning colors, I couldn't take the "make to order" approach that I do with a lot of my other listings, because this makes each pair totally unique depending on where in the color repeat I begin and end. I didn't exactly want to start out a new line by stocking every color line, so I started with one color that lent itself to boys, and another to girls. I'm not a stickler though for strict gender lines around colors though, so to each their own.

As of Tuesday, I've got one of each colorway listed in the shop - you can find the PINK here and the BLUE here. Check back on the shop (you can always find a shortcut at the top of my blog) for new versions of these colors, and new ones in the future! I'm excited to see how these will be received, and thanks so much to the lovely ladies who have already purchased for giving me the push to make these cutie booties!

There simply aren't enough hours

Do you ever feel....just...overly inspired? I swear, there are just NOT enough hours in the day to do everything I'd like to do! In terms of knitting, I have three projects on the needles (I'm working on the Bleecker Street Cardigan, the Wonderful Wallaby toddler sweater, and a pair of socks) right now, which is a lot for me. In addition to my ever growing Ravelry queue, I've been toying around with some of my own designs. I've got at least two fairly concrete design ideas, and images of sweater designs are dancing just at the edges of my brain, not yet developed enough even for a sketch. But they are there, waiting.

Sewing, oh sewing. I've made a top recently that I'll be blogging about in a few weeks for a pattern release. I have one completed toddler dress that I'd like to do a review of (no one asked me to, just my opinion), but I actually have fabric to do another one from the same book, so I feel like I'd like to complete that before doing a review as that might be a little more comprehensive. I have a really good (in my opinion!) idea for some burlap baskets both for my house and my shop. Sadly I feel like most all of the sewing projects would be so much easier to do in my new space. I feel so cramped in my sewing room now, and so annoyed at having to do cutting on the dining room table. So, skipping in line ahead of all of these projects is some drywall taping, and mudding, and painting, and cutting-table-building. Just a few things...

Have I mentioned I'd love to try screen printing? Have I ever done screen printing? No. Not yet anyway....wait, that might not actually be true. I think I did it once in high school. Anyway, I'm totally enamored with the idea of it and I've been doing some internet research. Because I'm crazy.

Realistically, while I want to do everything right this second, I don't have any kind of timeline on anything, with the exception of toddler sized garments, because, you know, kids grow. I feel somewhat guilty for neglecting my shop so much this summer. I had grand plans to get ahead, and mostly...I just haven't. Personal projects have just been too tempting! I'd really love to have my new photography studio set up so that I can re-shoot everything and do a complete overhaul of the shop's look. That's so silly. I have a few things I could go ahead and list, but the perfectionist in me just wants to wait until everything is just right. And so it languishes, all sad and forlorn.

So with all of this pent up creativity just tugging at my brain, what am I to do?

I wish I was one of those people who ritually cleans when they're stressed out, but that is definitely not the case. (Or for fun. I've heard there are people who clean for fun? That would be nice!) I guess it means it was REALLY busy in my head if I felt the need to lash out at the dust bunnies below my couch.

This helped too. Multitasking my knitting and relaxing.

And then?

I decided to cast on the smallest of those design ideas to see if it's as cute in real life as it is in my head.

I've got the blues

At least you would definitely think so by looking at my knitting lately. It didn't happen on purpose, but there is definitely a theme. (Sorry for the uninspired and poorly lit photos....it's evening, and my desk is pretty much the only clean surface...and only this half!) First off, there are the very naughty Bleecker Street sleeves from last week. (Also, they are naughty not due to the pattern, but due to me and silly mistakes.) I've made a bit of progress on them, but I'm not quite back to the point I was before the giant RIP.

Totally by accident, and out of a completely different yarn, I'm also working on a Wonderful Wallaby toddler sweater. It has a hood and a pocket, which I think are pretty much universally loved by the pre-kindergarten set. This has been less troublesome than the sweater for me, but I do wish I'd picked up the pocket differently than the pattern calls for. It's kind of cool though, because the pattern ranges in size from 2 all the way up to XXL (the WISCONSIN wallaby, of course. It was slightly less insulting when I saw the designer is from WI, but still!) so this means I can work out any changes I might want to make for future sizes while testing it on a mini version.

I've been toting around a pair of simple toe up socks for a few weeks now. Technically these are in shades of gray, but there are definitely hints of blue in there as well. I've just been picking away a few rows here and there on lunch breaks, during chatter at book club, today getting an oil change...I'm about 3/4" away from turning the heels though, and then it's straight on till I run out of yarn. (And at least two more squares for my sock yarn blanket too! No recent progress to show there though.)

And if that weren't enough blues....I snapped up this destash yarn from one of our knitting group ladies. I feel a little bad about scooping up pretty much everything she was getting rid of...I'll have to take a back seat for the next couple. But she had several full skeins and I couldn't resist!

I've had an idea swimming in my head for a couple of weeks now, but I'm low on funds with a few unexpected expenses and couldn't justify the splurge on picking up yarn for myself. I weighed out the balls of this Berroco Lustra wool/tencel blend, and only 1 oz was used! So that's just under 400 yards of aran weight...it's a little thicker than I was thinking, but it just might work anyway. It's going to take me a couple of weeks I think to get into it, as I'd like to have these other two sweaters I'm working on off the needles before I really get started. We'll see though!

That sinking feeling

So last night, I'm knitting on the sleeves of my Bleecker Street cardigan, and it's going pretty well. I just finished the first ball of yarn, and I had also finished the fifth of ten repeats.

Then....I noticed something.

The texture stitch is supposed to make sort of a checkerboard effect with straight stockinette columns and purl bumps every other stitch of every third row. Except, well, my stockinette columns looked drunk.

Even closer, you can see why I just couldn't handle looking at this on my forearms. Nope.

So, being evening, I made the wise decision to put it down and deal with it again in the light of day. I had a very bright idea about dropping down the columns and turning the problem stitches.

While I was pulling up that first stitch, I could see that technically, yes, it would probably be possible to fix my mistake this way. However, it was taking a long time, it was making my tension pretty wonky, and I was going to have to do it on every. single. stitch.

I knew what I had to do. First, some liquid courage.

Then I ran my needle into the row of stitches just below the beginning of my drunken, wandering column.....and......RIIIIIIP.

Yes. I ripped my sleeves out AGAIN. This is starting to get ridiculous. This isn't even hard! I know exactly how I screwed it up, so I won't make that mistake again. I should have been incorporating the pattern into my "make one" row, and rather I started it up again after the make one, which was definitely not right.

Sigh. So here we go. Sleeves. Take three....

Yarn Yarn Basket

When I make these tall slipper socks, I use one skein of yarn per sock so there aren't any joins or knots in the sock. This means that over the years, I've amassed a whole bunch of little balls of scraps like this:

 

As they got to a point where they would topple out on me every time I opened my stash closet, I wanted to think of something I could do with them. I tried out a few headbands and a slouchy hat, but I didn't really love the results. The super bulky yarn creates a really firm fabric if you knit it tightly, which does keep the cold out, but makes the ear warmer headbands not quite stretchy enough. The hat was done at a looser gauge which meant it looked really cute, but the wind went right through it, which is not ideal for a hat. Then I came across an idea...I could make it into a basket! It would use up a bunch of it, and joining scraps together wouldn't be a problem since it's not a garment and I didn't have to worry about knots being irritating. The yarn is washable, so if (when) my pets get ahold of it I can toss it in the machine. And best of all, it would be useful! See - useful even during construction, already holding the yarn:

Right now I've got it holding the start of my Bleeker Street Cardigan, so this large size basket is easily corralling a sweater's worth of yarn in sport weight.

I tend to knit and decorate with a lot of the same colors, so it fits in to my home pretty well. Oh, and a yarn yarn basket and a dog using a stuffed dog as a pillow? Is that meta?

The sweater itself is going pretty well. I'm working with a yarn I got from a ravelry destash, so I got it for a steal, and it turned out to be cashmere! Nice! Especially since I can't count to 6 (the number of rows in the texture repeat) and I had to knit a few inches twice.

I'm back to the point that I ripped out now. I'm starting with the sleeves and working them two at a time so they are identical. I'm also counting now, so they aren't messed up identically as well. Then I plan to work the body in one piece rather than three as called for, so I hope I don't regret that later. It's knit bottom up, but I like my sweaters to be as long as possible. I'm going to start above the ribbing with a provisional cast on, knit up to the shoulders as directed and do all that finishing (the button band is worked at the same time as the body), and then go back and knit down the bottom until I run out of yarn.

I'm hopeful it will be ready for fall! What do you think of the yarn baskets? I'm thinking about listing them in my Etsy shop in the future. I think I could fold the whole thing down and ship it pretty easily in a flat rate box. For the smaller sized basket I might be able to ship it first class if I can find the right sized box.

the never ending project

And I mean never ending in the best possible way. One of the women in my knitting group has been working on a sock yarn blanket for a few years. It's basically a time capsule - it's little squares of bits of yarn from every pair of socks she's ever made. I believe she's a 30+ year knitter, prolific at socks to boot! There's something about projects like that, that are a piece of your life, your history, that I just love. Like the quilts made from baby clothes, or concert t-shirts, or denim scraps. (A lot of those are on my lifetime project wish list too.)

Here is the original project. Cool, right?

I favorited the project on Ravelry about three months ago, but I've been thinking about it for longer than that. It looks like the original was made with an end in mind, and the knitter solicited yarn donations to make that happen. That's kind of cool too, the community contribution. But for me, the project will be personal. It's the kind of project that I'm not sure will ever end. I don't plan to buy or acquire anything specifically for this project. I want it to grow organically from yarn I've already used, or plan to soon. Just a little piece to keep, as so much of my knitting doesn't end up staying with me. So the other night, with yarn leftover from my toddler socks, I started a square.

Each one only seems to take an hour or so. It's pretty mindless, and will probably go quicker now that I've memorized the simple pattern. Once you have two squares, you start joining them together.

The blue yarn is for some preemie hats that I intend to knit. I have for some time, but I haven't been able to get myself into a baby knitting place recently. I wish it had done a color transition in the square, but it didn't. I'll have to add another one when I've made a few hats. As you can see based on the scale of my (slightly overexposed, slightly actually that pale) legs, this is going to take awhile. And that's cool with me. I don't have a plan for it at all. I plan to let it grow sort of amoeba-like, in whatever direction. I plan to leave it out once it gets large enough, to actually be used while under construction. I'll just knit a square now and then when the mood or the materials strike. This one is going to be around for a long while - I'll post an update in a few months and see where it's at!

Book Review: Metropolitan Knits

Would you believe that I don't own a single knitting book? I get most of my patterns and skills from various blogs, podcasts and Ravelry. I frequently check books out from my local library, and occasionally end up purchasing single patterns via Ravelry or Etsy. While many books are beautiful, I don't find more than one or two patterns that I feel like I MUST own. 

That is, until I picked up Metropolitan Knits by Melissa Wehrle. I love this book. I love well over half the patterns in this book. I've renewed it two times from the library and either plan to buy it myself, or to hint liberally that someone should. 

I love, in no particular order, the cover sweater, the Meier cardigan, which looks great for work 

The Brooklyn Bridge cardigan is a fingering weight that would be great for summer days

The Carriage house cardigan is even lighter in lace weight, though I think I'd omit the ruching from the back and just let it hang loose

The cobblestone hoodie will be a weekend staple. I would make it long enough to cover the tush so I could wear it with leggings

I had a sweater like this several years ago, and still love it. It's the magnolia cafe, and I think the chunky cables look so cozy

Speaking of a cozy chunky knit, the Washington square cardigan calls for bulky yarn, and would be perfect for winter 

Another sweater perfect for pairing with leggings if I make it another inch or two longer is the Skyline tunic

Perhaps one of the first things that I will knit is this super cozy looking cowl

And finally, perhaps my first adult cardigan that I already have the yarn for is the Bleeker street cardigan. I'm not sure how I feel about the pockets, but they are attached as one of he final steps so I can make that decision later

So there you have it! The knitting book that captured my heart enough to become the start of my library!