Fun project

I got commissioned to make a stocking for a friend of my mom's. She has a relative who's had a challenging life thus far and is coming to live with them for Christmas and hopefully longer than that. He's a teenager and has never had anyone worth celebrating Christmas with up till now, and she wanted him to feel welcome with their family. She has these wonderful stockings made by her MIL many years ago and wanted one for him to match. This was a fun and challenging project. The two on the right are a couple of the originals and the one on the left is the one I made. She's also got a couple more, one with a Christmas tree and one with a reindeer, so she said the snowmen would be great. My sock wizard software came in so handy for this project! I use that software a lot (if you like making your own sock patterns I HIGHLY reccomend that software!) but this project alone made it worth the money. All I did was measure the gauge and measurements from the original stockings and plugged the numbers into the software. Then I chose my method and type of heel/toe, and voila! I did add increases for the leg, and while the originals were cuff down I opted to do toe-up just because I prefer it that way, but it turned out pretty close to the original I think. I also repaired the other two in the photo. My repair jobs aren't perfect, but they look a lot better than they had. One unfortunately had a large hole in it (hey, it has held up pretty well considering it is over 50 years old!) but I was able to pick up the dropped stitches and with some new, very similar yarn was able to graft it together. I'm thrilled I got to be part of making Christmas special for a family, plus I got some unexpected spending money so YAY!

I hope the things I knit for my children are as treasured down the road as these stockings are for this family. I had planned to make stockings for my family this year but didn't get a chance, I am hoping to have them done by next Christmas especially since I was unable to find a stocking for my newest child that matched the others we had. I like everything to match, I'm a bit OCD like that. :-) This stocking only took me about a week, so I know I can make some for my family for next year over the course of 2010.

I also managed to finish up my holiday knitting. Well, they were going to be holiday presents, but I finished my husband's socks on a particularly chilly day and he was complaining his feet were cold so I decided not to wait (they weren't a surprise or anything, he'd seen me working on them and had even tried them on a few times). Then I finished a pair of socks for my son and wanted to see how they fit, so I let him wear them to school. That pair was started many many months ago, before I learned how to do toe up and magic loop for socks. They were cuff down on 2 circs and had gotten stashed in a front pocket of a bag where they were lost until last week. I dug that bag out to use for my baby girl's first overnight trip (my parents watched her while my inlaws watched the other 2 so my husband and I could attend the KISS concert!). Lo and behold, there were the socks I'd been looking months for! I had the cuffs done, so I did a quick short row heel and a stockinette foot and they were done quickly.

After those were done, I started another scarf for my 3 year old. I think she may be sensitive to wool, she's complained that the other scarf I knit for her is itchy. She picked out a skein of fuzzy fluffy novelty yarn last week and asked me to make her a necklace, LOL, so I suggested a scarf instead. Did a quick garter stitch scarf and finished it at my knitting group this week (it is easy to get a lot of knitting done there when you bring basic garter stitch!). Since I had already given my husband and son their holiday knits, I gave it to her when I got home that evening. She was thrilled but then asked where her necklace was, so being the nice mommy that I am, I'm working on a simple i-cord necklace for her with the leftovers.

Now I'm working on the slip-knit socks for myself after I restarted them to enlarge them. I was going to just frog back to the toe but had a difficult time getting them back on the needles so I just frogged the whole thing and started over. They're moving pretty fast and since I love the pattern and the yarn, I don't mind. I'm also working on a pair of sock booties for my baby girl, and if the pattern turns out like I hope it does, I'll post it here.

I've also decided that 2010 will be the year of the sock for me, and I plan to (hopefully!) have at least one pair of socks on the needles at all times. Considering I have enough yarn to do around 50 or so pairs of socks, I really would like to use up a lot of it. Who knows, maybe if I manage to do an average of a pair a week I can use it all up next year! Then again, that would mean I couldn't buy any more sock yarn next year, and I don't see that happening. But maybe I can try to buy, well, less or something. . . .

Have a Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate. I'm looking very forward to spending quality time with my family and my knitting.

New Moon Review

OK since this is MY blog, I'm gonna post my New Moon review here. If you're here for knitting content only, feel free to ignore this post. :-)

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD--if you haven't seen it, or haven't read the book yet, and don't want to know, then don't read. You have been warned.

OK first of all, overall I LOVED it. I'm a team Edward person but I must say seeing Jacob without his shirt (the first time he took it off, a guy a few rows in front of me yelled "It's about time!" and everyone else responded "Hell Yea!" LOL. Gotta love going with all the fangirls!) WOW. There are no words. That and the fact that Taylor Lautner is a Michigan fan, well, I have to say I've considered switching to Team Jacob. But, Alas, Edward is the perfect guy so I am sticking with him.

As for the movie, it was 1000X better than Twilight. I'm not one of those "judge the movie on the movie and the book on the book" type people. If it is a book I love, I go to see it brought to life on screen. This movie was the best book adaptation I've ever seen in the aspect that it really stuck to the book well, and only changed a few things. The ending left you gasping for more, the cinematography was so much better than the indie-vibe you got from the first movie, the acting was a lot better (although Kristen Stewart still just seems monotone and flat to me, but it fit the role in this movie so it worked.) The actors were a lot more comfortable with eachother too, so there was better chemistry. Another thing I liked about this movie was that it was FUNNY. Billy Burke (Charlie) was hilarious, really did well as a bachelor dad of a teenage girl. The fight scenes were action-movie quality IMO, but thankfully without the gore. They took a lot of lines directly from the book, and the scenes flowed very well together (again, unlike the first movie). Where I would have given Twilight a C at best, I had to give this one an A.

Oh, and as a side note, as much as I'm Team Edward, he really needs to keep his shirt ON. That really wasn't doing much for me. :-)

And just in case you think I'm a nut, yes my husband is fully aware of my Twilight obsession. He even read all the books so that he could understand some of what I was going on about ha ha ha. And he enjoyed them. He's going to see the movie with me next week, he just didn't want to deal with the fangirls. :-)

Oh, and just to insert a bit of knitting content, I wore my new wristwarmers to the movie. They were nice in the chilly theater.

Lacy Fingerless Mitts

I'm BACK! And I have a new pattern for you!! (Plus we got a new charger for our nice camera, so the photos are much better quality than my last few!

Introducing, FINGERLESS MITTS!





These are knit flat then seamed up the side, leaving a space for the thumb. Here's my pattern:

Materials: Less than 100 yards of worsted weight yarn. I used almost exactly 1 ball (had about a yard leftover!) of 127 Print, color #40. (100% wool. I have to be careful not to accidentally felt these!)

1 pair size 7 US straight needles, or size needed to get gauge.

Gauge: 16 sts= 4".


I got the lace pattern from a hat pattern in a book and modified it a bit to knit flat and changed the decreases a bit.


Cast on 37 stitches. Knit one row.

For lace pattern (1 stitch on each end is for seaming up)

Row 1: K1, *K1, yo, s1k1psso, K2, K2tog, yo* repeat to last stitch, K1.

Rows 2 and 4: Purl

Row 3: K1, *K2, yo, s1k1psso, K2Tog, yo, K1* repeat to last stitch, K1.

Repeat rows 1-4 until 1 " shorter than desired length. I did 11 repeats. Do 6 rows of 1x1 ribbing as follows:

Row 1: *k1, p1* across
Row 2: *p1,k1* across.

Bind off in ribbing pattern, leaving a long tail for seaming.

I blocked it, but you don't have to. I dampened it carefully so it didn't felt, then stretched it slightly and pinned in place until dry.

To seam up, hold on hand and use removeable stitch markers or safety pins to mark the beginning and end of your thumb hole. Starting at top with WS facing, use mattress stitch to seam to the beginning of thumb hole. Whipstitch around one side of thumb hole (so you don't have to cut the yarn and weave in extra ends), then continue seaming from the end of the thumb hole to the end of the piece. Weave in ends, and wear proudly!

These are great for those chily mornings when it's too warm for gloves but not warm enough for bare wrists.

Feel free to use this pattern to make these for yourself, a friend, or make a bazillion of them to sell at a craft show, I don't mind. Just please give credit where credit is due, if you share the pattern please link to my page instead of copy/pasting it, and please don't pass off the pattern as your own. Thank you!

And I realized that i had never shared pics of the finished Spiderman blanket! Here it is. I did make a mistake, I got so excited about finally being done that i forgot to garter stitch the last few rows, so I did 2 rounds of half-double crochet. He LOVED it!! He uses it at school for rest time :-) And I finished it at 12:30 am the morning of his party, so JUST in time! :-)

finished projects!!

Just a quick post tonight b/c my alarm is going off in 6 hours and I'm not in bed yet--yeah, that's gonna be a problem in the morning! Ugh. Oh well. I would have been in bed sooner, but. . . .

TA-DA!! It is finished. . . almost. I still need to weave in like a million ends and and then do the webby black stripes on the outside, but it is sooooo close to being finished, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It MIGHT actually be finished in time! WOOHOOO!! He's gonna love it. He's seen the picture on the pattern, and he saw me working on it, but he has no idea that it is this close to being done. I'm hoping to give it to him at his birthday party (he just turned 6! My baby!) on Sunday.

This is my other finished project, a chevron scarf for my 3 year old. She wants to wear it now, even though it is still 80 outside. LOL. This was my car knitting, super simple. I'm working on one for me now, in different colors (U of M sock yarn! GO BLUE!!).

I feel so good about finally getting something [almost] finished! Now I have a couple of projects for a group on ravelry that I'm in, then I'm going to start some socks for myself to celebrate.

YAY. Ok, gotta go to bed or I'm gonna sleep thru my alarm . . .

I'm FAMOUS!

OK, not really, but kind of. My name is in a book, does that count? Anyway, several months ago I got the opportunity to do some production knitting for a book on eco-friendly knitting by Vickie Howell. It is called AwareKnits. http://www.amazon.com/AwareKnits-Crochet-Projects-Eco-Conscious-Stitcher/dp/1600594697/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254267527&sr=8-1 The book came out so now I can say what I did. I knitted the Cloud Cover Wristwarmers on page 38/39, and my name is even in the back of the book on page 124! WOOHOO! I know, I'm a dork for being this thrilled, but hey! This is as close to being famous as I'm likely to ever get, so bear with me!

in other news, I'm almost done with that tedious Spiderman Blanket. . .

Terrible photo, I know, but I was being lazy and didn't feel like getting out the camera. This was taken with my phone. I'm on the last stripe now, not shown in this photo. It's a red stripe, then bind off in black. I'm on round 6 of 14, so getting there. His birthday party is Sunday so I'm gonna knit like crazy to get it done, not sure if it will be done in time or not but I'm gonna try. He knows I'm working on it so it's not a surprise, but he doesn't know I'm hoping for it to be done by then. He's in kindergarten, and since they are there for a full day, they take a rest time. He's got a small blanket that he uses but it's just a plain blue fleece with a bunny on it, not really very cool LOL. Spiderman will be much cooler! I started it several months ago but abandoned it after a horrible case of startitis in which many other projects somehow jumped into my hands. The night before school started we were looking for a blanket to take, and he said "I know, why don't you just knit me one?" although I was flattered at his confidence in my knitting abilities, I had to inform him that it would take me longer than one evening. I assured him I'd get started on it again though and finish it as quickly as I could. Well, that was 6 weeks ago. Hey, I've got 3 kids, not a lot of time for knitting (or blogging for that matter), In fact right now I'm typing while holding a squirming almost 5 month old on my lap. She's making it difficult though, she keeps grabbing my fingers as I type! LOL.

Off to feed my family. Happy knitting!

finally some pics :-)

Today was a big day. My oldest started Kindergarten. I managed to put on a brave face for him, but started bawling as soon as I got back to the car LOL.


This is me and my son just before leaving for school. :*-(

These are his first-day-of-school socks. made out of Pagewood Farms Chugiak. I forget the colorway, but they matched his shirt wonderfully!

This is my new Yarn Caddy 3000. Thank you to John Francis for the inspiration (no, I'm not giving you royalties, but I will happily give you the credit LOL).

I got the plaque at Hobby Lobby and the cheapy wooden TP holder at Lowes. Painted and stamped it myself to make it pretty :-) Totally loved this project, and it works great!

This yarn (more pagewood farms!) is becoming a shawl. The "Go Fly a Kite" shawl from Ravelry to be exact. I'm adding beads too, silver ones. So far it is turning out very nice if I do say so myself. Hopefully I get it finished before I lose interest. That is my knitting-when-I-can-concentrate project, since it involves beads and lace and charts. Not a project to do around kids. I'm hoping that since both girls still nap, I'll have some free time during the day when my son is in school. I also dug out the spiderman blanket, at his request, because he needs a blanket for school rest time. Of course by the time I finish that blanket, school may be over for the year! Ha ha not really, but it will take me FOREVER. I'm hoping to maybe have it done by his birthday in a month. Then I started a pair of socks for my easy, portable project. I'm using Flat Feet, a birthday gift from my friend Dawn. I think they are going to end up having a lovely tye dye effect to them. I'm going to do a very simple lace pattern on them Wendy Johnson's Waterfal Socks.

Well, off to go out to lunch with my hubby and our girls. Hopefully will get some knitting time in this afternoon.

broken needles = NO LACE

I finally decided to jump back into lace knitting after seeing a friend's Fern Lace scarf last week. It was a simple pattern that looked absolutely beautiful, so I thought "I have all that sock yarn sitting there, might as well use it for something other than socks. . . " We were going on a trip to Houston, about 3 hours from our house, give or take 2+ hours for potty breaks, snack breaks, change the DVD breaks, feed the baby breaks, and find-my-toy-under-the-seat-before-I-pop-a-blood vessel-breaks (traveling with 3 kids is SO fun--NOT!). There was also one little stop for Momma at a yarn store I don't get to visit often, Yarnorama in Paige, TX. Great store, and she has sock yarn that my LYS doesn't carry (like I NEED more, but who can resist!! Tofootsies and Panda Silk, mmmmm). Of course I walked away with several skeins. But anyway, so I figured the Fern Lace was a simple enough pattern that I could tape it to the dashboard and, with the use of post-its to mark my place, knit it in the car. It worked great, and the colorway of tofootsies I used (an almost-solid lilac color) it was turning out beautifully. However, I made the mistake of stashing my knitting bag in the narrow space between the couch and the wall at the hotel, dummy that I am. With kids like mine, I should have known that the space was prime floorspace, great for looking out the window at 6:45 am in order to prove to your sleepy parents that the sun IS in fact out, and therefore it is wake-up time. When I pulled my knitting out later I was horrified to find that my needle had snapped in half and the lace was a mess. Luckily I was only about 7" into the scarf, because I never have been able to perform lace surgery and would have been a lot more upset if I was further into it. Made an emergency trip to a local Hobby Lobby (after explaining to my husband that no, it simply was NOT possible for me to just not knit.) I was unable to find suitable needles in the size I needed, so I got bigger ones and some cotton that matched out kitchen and started potholders. The good news was that I got 2 pot holders done on our trip and started a towel! The Fern Lace was frogged and re-wound onto the skein. ::::::sigh::::::

Then yesterday I went to my LYS and picked up some new Pagewood Farms lace yarn. Thought it would be perfect for a lace scarf for my mom, and found the Tiger Eyes pattern online. Started it last night and got 2 repeats done. I carefully stashed my knitting bag under the end table so that it wouldn't get stepped on. However, apparently it was on top of a much-needed toy and was thus removed from it's safe position this morning and relocated to the middle of the living room floor. Of course, when I pulled out my lovely scarf, the needle was broken. ARRRGGGGG. I love love love my knitpicks harmony needles, but apparently the smaller sizes are just too fragile for my household. While I have informed the short people living here that if one of my needles gets broken again, someone may die, I think I will be replacing them with something stronger just in case. If you know of any good metal ones that the coating won't wear off, making them sound like nails on a chalkboard when used, please let me know. Someone reccomended Aero needles, so I'm looking for those. I'm also waiting for knitpicks to come out with their acrylic ones this week, but I think those might only be available in interchangeables. For small stuff I prefer not to use circs.

Off to finish my towel. Good night!