fo: Plain jane socks

I've changed gears and started making socks again.  I love the usefulness of jumpers, but I have much sock yarn in my stash that needs to be turned into socks, and those socks make for wonderful gifts.  Maybe someone particularity cold-hearted might turn down a pair, but what ice queen wouldn't want a pair of these?

Quick, plain jane socks.  The yarn is Online Supersock 4-ply City Color.  This yarn is fantastic- it's affordable and the 75% superwash 25% nylon blend is just the easy-care hard-wearing for non-knitters who can't be arsed with handwashing their precious.

The colors are fun.  I didn't bother trying to line them up, giving them a charmingly mismatched quality.

Pattern is my basic toe-up two at a time sock with the Fleegle heel, and a couple inches of ribbing at the top.

Best part, they took me all of 8 days to make.  I'm not a speedy knitter, but that's really fast as far as sock knitting goes.  For me, anyway.

FO: More hats! A shawl! And another thing!

Three hats, in fact.

Even though I don't celebrate Xmas, I feel swept up in the spirit of the cold dank weather and whip out gifts to my non-knitter friends.  My stack of hats is slowly diminishing as I send them to the four corners of the earth in time for the Winter Solstice.  Which is still a month away!  I don't even know how the days are going to get any shorter, but apparently they will.  This is the furthest north I've spent a winter.  I feel like I'm atoning for enjoying summertime so much.  I'm actually having a really hard time waking up in the mornings, and one recent weekend, I managed to sleep until 10:30.  Seriously!  That's half my day, gone.  It just wasn't light enough outside for my body to convince itself that it was indeed morning, and nearly afternoon.

I made a Whale Watch Hat from New England Knits.

It's all scraps- mostly Knit Picks Pallet.  For the price, it's a really nice yarn, similar to Jaimison's spindrift in weight and hand.  I was thinking of making the Whales a bit darker, but I kind of like them in the lighter shade of blue- they look kind of abstract, and probably more acceptable that a grown-ass adult might pull this off.

Speaking of which...the trend of grown-ass people wearing spirit-animal hats...why?  Kitten ears and giant false eyes are cute on toddlers, a bit weird on adults who aren't on their way to support a sports team.  Enlighten me.

Last fall when I was in Dublin, I visited a cute knitting shop and nabbed a couple skeins of Studio Donegal Tweed merino.  They knit up perfectly into a set of hats- kind of a his-and-hers affair.  The same, but different enough to not nauseate casual observers if they happen to leave the house together wearing them:

A masculine cable hat called One Bourbon, whose recipient has a smaller head size than my beau:

The brim will actually fold up when it fits properly.

And a lovely lace hat called Magnolia:

Oh!  And here's a shawl:

I usually do a better job of photographing these beastly shawls, but it's been raining like crazy every morning this week, and I needed to get this in the mail.  So you get to see my interior windows.

It's the Cladonia Shawl by Kristen Kapur.  It's written to have stripes and a looped bind-off, which looks fantastic, but I thought it gave it a much different appearance to make it plain and solid.  The yarn I used is Brooklyn Tweed Loft, and it used every last inch of yarn.  In fact, I ran out the very last bit- I needed about 10 inches more.  Panic!  Freak out!  I tinked back a few more stitches and then, gasp, SPLIT THE PLIES.  So there's one edge that has slightly thinner yarn in the bind off, and it survived blocking like a champion.  Honestly though, I couldn't think of anything else to do in that situation.  

The yarn is not my favorite.  The stitch definition is a bit muddled, which can be used to nice effect here with just the small bit of lace.  The one thing that does irk me is that if you tink back at all, the yarn will sometimes just un-spin itself and you are left with a broken strand.  It's lofty and loosely spun, making it great for warmth and texture, but it doesn't hold up to multiple mistakes.  Not that I ever make them.

Finally:

One of my favorite blends to spin and knit would be Blue Face Leicester sheep wool blended with silk.  The BFL is a long, silky soft wool that has beautiful drape and lustre.  Add some silk with that and, oh, I become enraptured.  It begs you to hold it close.

While I loved the colors in this skein of Codex- gold and near-black- they pooled up terribly.  I tried and I tried to do anything with this- spirals, garter stitch, lace, broken rib- and I just couldn't get it to stop with the ugly pooling.  Disappointed, I was.  

Ah, wait.  I know how to crochet.  A quick search and I found something well within my abilities- the Chi-town Cowl.

That's not so bad, is it?

I made a moebius cowl.  Easy as pie, it used up almost the entire skein and only took a few hours.  It's soft and silky and if you have a small-ish head, you can loop it around twice comfortably.

 Now, to bring back the sun...I understand why the 21st December is such a celebratory affair.

FO: Snow Queen socks

Hey!  I made a pair of socks.  Actually, I made them a while ago, but I gifted them had to keep it quiet until then.  

Last summer, my dear aunt who lives in the balmy climes of North Carolina declared, "why haven't I gotten a pair of socks yet??"  

I had no response to that, except I thought there wasn't enough of a winter down south to need wool socks.  Apparently, I'm very disillusioned about regional climates, as they do occasionally get cold and snow, but also 70 degree days in January.  True, her three sisters and both her parents had gotten socks from me, but they all live in places where winter means a range of weather-related discomforts.   I didn't mean to snub, I just plead ignorance. 

I made sure she got her socks. 

The pattern is called Snow Queen,  I wanted to do something mostly plain to show off the gorgeous Regia Ombre stripe yarn (the color is called "Frost").  I'm not a huge fan of pastels, but these were just such a calming, perfectly harmonious color combination, I fell in love.

I knitted these mostly on the trail.  They bring back fond memories of warm sun and wildflowers and blue skies.

Here's to warm toes, no matter where you live.

FO: Orchid Thief Shawl

This was just one of those patterns.

It's the Orchid Thief by Ysolda.  It was so very lovely, and I've been wanting to make it for a while.  It came from a book called "Brave New Knits", which featured a host of well-established but young-ish knitwear designers, and wispy, winsome looking models.  To me, it was the perfect sized shawl- not so small that it would drape around your neck without always coming un-draped, no so large that it might be cumbersome and frumpy.

It also seemed to be rushed through production as the pattern had dozens of mistakes in it.  It seemed like the person who proof read this before printing was bit by a fox (blind drunk) or maybe had no idea what they were doing, or both.  I noticed right away that something wasn't right.  I found the errata online and I was able to get through it, and I went on for quite a bit with no issues, but then the instructions on row 86 made me put down the project and shove it into the darkest recesses of the couch for a week.  The transition from the lace diamond section to the leafy section at the bottom edge was driving me all sorts of batty, and I knit and it ripped it out several times.

Bonus Routemaster double-decker bus action!

Eventually, through a couple Ravelry searches, I found that everyone else was insane over this row as well, as the instructions were confounding and it is hard to tell where things should be lining up.  A few people took the time to actually write out the pattern by hand and were kind enough to share.  This is what saved me.  I ended up following the new instructions blindly as it was my very last chance to get this before I dumped gasoline on it and flamed the whole thing.

Well, it worked out.  If you make this, good luck with it and search around before you get to row 86.

The yarn is Sundara fingering Silky Merino in Summer Sangria.  It's dyed gorgeously, with tones of peach and apricot picking up the light.  It's my go-to yarn for shawls now, and a generous 500 yard skein means that I can do most small shawls with no yardage issues.  HOWEVER, I was tempted, as I am often, by doing another repeat of the small triangles as I thought I had PLENTY of yarn at that point.  I'm glad I didn't, as I wouldn't have.  This is why so many of my shawls have a contrasting stripe at the bind off.  For once, the urge to use up all the yarn was overcome by having a correct shawl of one solid color, and I'm very pleased with the results.    



The finished shawl, along with some tea and cakes, got shipped off to the USofA in a care package to someone in need of a pick-me-up.

 

FO: Barley Hat

The weather has been warmer and sunnier and wetter than I could think possible in one place in one day, but I've been out, walking and exploring and traveling and eating and drinking, and generally having adventures of the amazing variety.

On one such adventure, I met a rather intrepid couple from New York.  She, heavily pregnant.  Here's the thing: on their paternity leave, they decided to move to London and have their baby there, just for something to do for four months.  Seriously!  They were so calm and cool and collected about the whole thing.  They flew over before she got "too big to fly", found a sublet near Portobello Road, found a local doctor, spent a month waddling around and exploring London before having a really uneventful happening in which a healthy baby boy appeared.

Here's a hat I made for them:



It's a quick little knit called the Barley Hat from Tin Can Knits.  It's a free pattern, well-written, and sized from infant to adult, and totally unisex.  I love classic patterns like this which will show off some special yarn and look fab on anyone.



The yarn is Rowan Denim, a cotton DK that I had leftover from a crochet trim that I have yet to show you.  It worked perfectly; I didn't know if they were having a girl or a boy so denim was perfectly unisex color anyway.  It's machine washable, fairly soft, and really durable.



Like my total cynicism in thinking that every baby item I made for friends in Paris, I'm pretty sure that this hat will be yanked off by tiny angry fingers and whimsically tossed off the Tower Bridge.

PS, I hate the new Flickr so hard.

FO: Some Knitwear Catch Up

Baby, it's cold outside!  As we use our semi-frozen fingers to fumble with awkward buttons and zippers and walk through toxic clouds of other people's coughs, try to remember the joys of winter.  The sledding and the hot chocolates and what not.  If you don't have someone making you lots of knitwear right now, you need to start making more friends who are crafty.  There is nothing sadder to me than someone under-dressed in winter.  Almost everything I knit now gets gifted, as I am literally drowning in it.  I don't need another scarf, another pair of socks, another mitten, another hat.  I have.  So.  many.  Sweaters, I will still make and make and make for myself as I tend to get bored with my wardrobe easily.  Everything else, bah.  Go, I send you to the four corners of the earth to keep someone else warm.

I figured I would finally get around to blogging about some knits I've finished in the past, oh, five months or so.  Most of them were gifts and kind of secret, but the fits of gift-giving is well behind us now and I can safely reveal things in a public forum.  Also, as I was boxing up and packing and moving out of Paris, everything that hadn't been gifted got donated to the big charity bin down the road, which later I saw not-homeless people ingeniously fishing clothes out of using hooks and wedges.  Sigh.

First up:  the Xenocryst



This went to a warm-climate heritage friend in a cold land.  He appreciates.  It's got this really interesting textured wee cables, and a picot edging that I didn't find too emasculating.


Another ultra-cute owlet hat was crocheted for a new baby:



Good old Cascade 220 and all the scraps it makes.

This was one of my favorite sweaters to make:



It's the Armas.  It's a really brilliant, fun masculine design.  I really thought I could rock it as well, perhaps with a slightly more feminine color so I don't look like I'm a viking warrior out to pillage.





The cables were just so organic and fun to make.  I did fix the collar since I took these pictures though.  I modified it from the original and it didn't quite lay the way I wanted it to as a shawl collar, so it is now a crewneck.

The yarn is Queensland Kathmandu Aran, a tweedy blend of Merino, silk and cashmere.  It's very soft, but a rustically spun 2-ply that I was picking bits of hay stems out of the whole sweater.



This was an easy garter stitch project called the Pinch Hat from Knitscene.  You make a tapered rectangle, then seam it together and pull your stitches tight to pucker the fabric.  I ended up putting a line of tiny rose-bud buttons down the seam, and I gave this to a friend whom it suited perfectly.



The yarn is Madeline Tosh Merino Chunky, a lovely squishy yarn to fall in love with, so I kept on going with it:



A bandana cowl from Purl Soho, which is really simple and it made for a great gift.  I really fell in love with cowls this year, especially since I did so much backpacking.  Having a pack, a coat, and a cross-body bag meant that if I was wearing a scarf, I was usually tangled in something and it made for awkward moments of choking myself while getting on and off trains and planes and ferrys and trying to sit down for a bit to eat.  Cowls are useful in these situations.  Using short rows, you make a big bib like triangle, which fits as a stopgap down the front of most coats.

Here's another chunky cowl that I would make again:



The Burberry-inspired cowl. It's got these big, lovely cables that make it very warm.  Mine is a bit small as I only had the one skein, but this would work nicely a bit bigger, or really huge as an infinity scarf, which I am seeing everywhere now.

Another manly sweater using Kathmandu Aran:



This one was for my grandfather, whom I had never made a sweater for (!?).  It's the Shawl collared sweater by Martin Storey, and it's easy as 3.14.  It's from a book Rowan published that I've had for years, but I was always hesitant to make anything from it again since Rowan puts a whopping 8 inches of ease in their men's sweaters, which just seems like too much to me.  This worked out- I made the smallest size, and I knit it in the round so I took away 8 stitches total from the body to make up for the fact that I didn't need a seam allowance.

Yet another hat, for a friend:



The Quantoid.  It's very warm, double-thick with an interesting rib pattern that you strand.  Cascade 220 FOREVER!



I crocheted this lovely scarf last summer:



The Boteh.  It's lovely, lacy leafy and the best shade or red, "Tart" in Tosh Merino light.  I need to get better pictures of it eventually.  Oh, and PS, I can crochet now.  It took me ages to get around to learning, and then I'd forget as soon as I taught myself, but I found this project and decided to teach myself to make it because I thought it was pretty, and that was the way to go.  It's easy, and if you find something you like, between you tube videos and ravelry, you can probably figure most things out.

A pair of rather awesome socks:



The aptly-named Porthos socks.  It's a fairly mindless rib pattern and it makes for a good guy-sock.  Or a bad-guy sock, if you must.  The yarn is tres vibrant- Sanguine Gryphon bugga in "Cuban Cockroach".

A twinned pair of Merino Chunky hats for a his-and-her gift:





Above is the "Giftie Slouchie Beanie" for her, and the "Chunkieanie" for him.  They are both the same color purple, but the more masculine of the two is much more saturated with dye and appears to be purple-black at times (it photographed a bit lighter than it is in real life).  I thought that was a nice touch.

A pair of Pyroclastic Socks from knitty.com:



I kind of screwed up the lace pattern, but it ended up working for me, so they look different from the originals.  I loved the unusual arch and gusset shaping, although it took me a while to figure out what exactly was going on in the pattern once the heel was turned.  These went to a friend with perpetual cold feet and a drafty old Parisian apartment.  The yarn is Plucky Knitter superwash fingering merino.

A pattern I chose to show off some really amazing yarn:



The Garden Grove hat in the Verdant Gryphon Codex in the "Beowolf"  colorway.  The yarn is silk and BFL wool, and it has a lovely sheen to it that just shows color so nicely.  I kept this hat.  I loved it so.

I actually have a few more things lying around needing to be photographed, and right now I'm putting a sweater in time-out after I realized that I made two left fronts to the cardigan.  Sigh.  But I'm busy doing all sorts of other good stuff that I will get around to telling you about very soon.   Cheers!

FO: Binary Cable Hat

Another quick gift hat for a friend:

It's the Binary Cable Hat- a functional cabled beanie with a fibonacci sequence of cables for the nerdlings who love these sorts of things. It used a bit less of a skein of Cascade 220 Tweed and FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, WHY CAN'T I EVER GET RID OF THIS YEARN FROM MY STASH. There's always an odd half skein lying around.

FO: Brattleboro Hat

Oh, it's time for the return of the masses of Paris! I've grown fond of having the city practically to myself in the cold dark winter, but, alas, it is not meant to be. The soundtrack of my life now consists of the daily parades of people awkwardly banging along with their wheely-suitcases dragging along the cobblestones. Alas, I live in a good Paris neighborhood with nary a tourist attraction within a kilometer, so it's only when I veture out of the neighborhood that I realize what a crazy lovely place Paris is to visit. And everyone does.

I can't hide, so I join them. A very chill Saturday, picnicking on the Trocadero. People watching and watching the tchotchke vendors occasionally getting chased across the plaza from a rather elderly cop that had no chance at all of catching them.

I also had a total freakout meltdown at how flithy my camera was. It wasn't the lens, but one of the internal mirrors somehow got coated in dust, but I didn't notice until I got home and loaded the pictures up. I suffer no more as I found a nice camera shop that humored my french and cleaned her up like new.

Yet another quick like a bunny, easy as pie hat.

This one is from the book, "New England Knits", which has a pretty good assortment of warm woolies that are slightly more fabulous than anything you could possibly purchase at LL Bean. Since it seems to be still winter-like almost everywhere that I have friends, I'm sure it will get some use.

The hat is made by starting a rib band until it fits around your head, then picking up stitches along the top and working in moss stitch before decreasing for the crown. The pattern calls for working buttons, but I couldn't be bothered and just sewed them into place.

Easy, cute, warm. Another good gift to send off. I love making hats for gifts because I can throw them in an envelope and ship them flat, which cost about half the price with international shipping being what it is.

FO: Snowtracks Hat

Another gift hat!

By the time La Poste gets around to delivering it, there probably won't be much need for such a warm hat, but eh. There's another winter coming up soon.

This one worked up quick-as-a-bunny with another skein of Cascade 220 Tweed. I'm trying to knit my stash down to scraps, and then make a striped hat out of all the scraps. One can dream, no?

It's simple, it's very warm, and a bit oversized for a friend who has a lot of hair to tuck under.

It's called the Snowtracks hat. That made me think of cocaine, so I made it in an un-pure purple color. I made the ribbing at the bottom extra long so you could fold it over to keep the ears extra warm. I found it very much to be a caricature of a winter-hat shaped hat.