Wraps and babies-baby wraps?

Ahhhh, my poor, poor little neglected knitting blog. Someday I will truly post more on a regular basis. Alas, 2011 was not the year to do that!

Actually, I was looking at my goals for 2011 post, and, well-yeah. Haven't even begun to try to organize my stash, I don't think I finished any UFOs lately. Eh, it's only September, right? ;)

This year has not been a total waste craft-wise. I did sew a purse and make a Steampunk Elephant pin (which I need to post on Wandering. I've also been working on several different projects this year.

Here's an updated pic of the Rainbow Wrap I started in 2010, using Jo-Ann's Rainbow Boucle yarn:


I don't know why I continue to try to work with boucle yarn-it's difficult to work with-thin and tangley. Yet I keep trying! I've already put one boucle project on hold-I'm determined to finish this one!

In March and April (actually, I may have started as early as February this year), I worked on headbands for our Relay for Life team at CWRU. I thought I had some pictures uploaded, but apparently not-will have to get some!!

This summer I have been working on a baby blanket for Persephone! She is due towards the end of this month. So far I am 1-1 on finishing baby blankets before the little tots are born. I finished Mal's baby blanket a mere hour before she was born-and poor Bella-her's is not finished yet!! As with the Rainbow Wrap, I am determined to finish that blanket-even if it has to be a babydoll blanket. ;) As long as Perseph's little one decides not to come early, I should be okay. This time I picked a simpler pattern to work on-a blanket which has 81 3 inch knitted squares, like so:

(square knitted in Lamb)

The yarn is Lion Brand's Vanna's Choice Baby:

It may be a simple blanket, but it is being knitted with love, and, as an added bonus-part of the proceeds from the purchase of this yarn is donated to St. Jude's Childrens Hospital, which I think is really awesome. :)

I have finally finished the squares:

(Colors from top to bottom are Sweat Pea; Duckie; Goldfish; Bluebell; Pink Poodle; and Lamb)

I'm currently working on sewing the squares into strips, then sewing the strips together. Since my squars are not perfect 3x3 squares, I may end up crocheting a border around the blanket, to make it look more even. In any case, I did not need all the required yarn at all-in fact, when the pattern called for 2 skeins, I ended up only using one. I'll have some more yarn to add to my stash (which I really must organize, LOL).
(and no, I am not posting a pic of the completed blanket until I give it to Persephone!) ;)

Bleeding the Green and Gold: Super Bowl XLV Hat &Scarf

Okay, so not being a native of Green Bay (or Wisconsin for that matter), maybe I don't have the right to say I bleed green&gold. However, The Green Bay Packers have been the team that I have rooted for for as long as I have been a football fan (much to the dismay of my Viking-lovin' sister). :) Was I excited when they made it to the Super Bowl? Heck, ya!

I decided in honor of the occasion, I would make a hat and scarf in Green Bay colors (very practical for when my dream of seeing a game at Lambeau Field comes true. ;)) Since I loved the Ribbed Earflap Hat pattern so much, I decided to use it again for this project.

First I checked out Lion Brand's yarn to see if they had colors in their Wool-Ease Thick &Quick line that would work out...I thought Cilantro and Citron would work well. Unfortunately, when I went to JoAnn's, the only color they had in stock was the Cilantro, and I felt Butterscotch was too orange. Not to be outdone, I wandered around the store to see if I could find the equivalent (or another display, as the T&Q was on sale). Instead, I came across Lion Brand's Hometown USA, a 100% acrylic super-bulky weight yarn. Picked up a bright yellow skein labeled 'Pittsburgh Yellow'. I hesitated a bit-was it right to make a hat for the BIG game in a color named after the opponent? Then I spotted these shiny green skeins near the bottom of the rack. Picked one up and discovered it was called 'Green Bay'. No. Freakin'. Way.

This was just too perfect.

Casting all doubts aside, I purchased the yarn. Even the cashier appreciated the irony of it all. :-D (of course I purchased more green-it needed to be the dominant color!)

To adjust, I simply started knitting in yellow, then switched to green when I had knitted enough to make the brim:

(click to embiggen, if you like. :) )

I made the ear flaps green as well, but added a strand of yellow for the braid:


Of course, the pom-pom was yellow, with a hint of green:

(isn't it cute?)

Put it all together: Ta-daa!


I made the scarf out of the yarn I didn't need for the hat. I made a guess and divided the yellow into two smaller balls. The plan was to knit a k2, p2 rib-2 rows green then 2 rows yellow for one end, then knit the rib in green for a bit, then switch back to green and yellow stripes. I almost had enough yarn for 8 yellow stripes on both ends! (the last stripe of yellow is only one row).


The results weren't too bad:

(I like it!)

Some details:
Yarn: Lion Brand Hometown USA: #130 Green Bay, #135 Pittsburgh Yellow
Needles: Size 13 (14" straight for hat, 10" straight for scarf)

Hat start date: 01/29/2011
Finished: 02/01/2011

Scarf start date: 02/01/2011
Finished: 02/03/2011



And just because I think it's cute:

(Krismutt, Fashion model extraordinaire :)

I'm also linking to this for the first time:

Super Bowl XLV in a word: AWESOME!!!
Go, Pack, go!

Ear Flap Hat and Scarf

Yay to finished projects!!! Even though I purchased the yarn for this hat just before Thanksgiving, I really didn’t get around to starting the hat until the 17th of January. This pattern was super easy-I finished it in a week!

Starting out:


Finishing the crown:


Yay, earflaps! (seriously, whoever came up with the idea to add earflaps to hats was genius):


Ta-daa! (click to embiggen):


So the pattern called for 2 skeins. Looking at comments from folks who had already worked the project, I read that if you left off the earflaps and the pompom, you’d only need one. I kept the earflaps and the pompom and still had yarn left over from the first skein (which did worry me a bit-turns out I had nothing to worry about at all!) Since I always seem to follow up a hat with a scarf, I decided to use the second skein for a scarf (good thing I didn’t purhcase yarn for the scarf before I had finished the hat!)

I didn’t use a specific pattern for the scarf. I just decided to combine a k2, p2 rib with garter stitches making a border on each end:


Since I wanted the scarf to match the hat, I added pompoms to both ends:


I managed to finish this in 4 days! :)

Me modeling the hat:


Kristmutt modeling both ;) :


Details:
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick& Quick #154 Gray Marble (2 skeins)
Needles: Size 13, straight (14 inch for the hat, 10 inch for the scarf)

Hat start date: 01/17/2011; Finished: 01/25/2011
Scarf start date: 01/25/2011; Finished: 01/29/2011

Notes: only used one skein for the hat-I would still by 2 skeins-use what you don’t use to make a scarf. Only problem with holding off on purchasing yarn for the scarf is that if you need more for your scarf, you might not get the same dye lot.

Pattern said to fold 3.5 inches for the rim-I only did 2.5.

I finished this scarf just in time for that mega winter storm that hit most of the U.S. earlier this week. They win my approval!!!!


I loved this hat pattern so much I decided to make one for the Superbowl! Details on that project coming next week!

Pattern links! (geeky and non-geeky!)

So today I came across two more patterns I would like to try.

For Firefly fans:
Jayne's Hat
I really like this pattern-it uses Red Heart Super Saver Yarn-an inexpensive yarn!!! It does require knitting in the round with circular needles, but I gotta improve my knitting in the round skills sometime. ;)

The second I came across in one of my Caron Connections emails:
Xian Knit Kimono Jacket
I especially like this pattern because it includes plus size measurements! It does require alot of yarn though, and one of Caron's more expensive yarns, which can blow my yarn budget apart. ;) One of these days I'm going to make a goal to knit a sweater or jacket, and start setting aside a little bit of money here and there so I can purchase the yarn requirements. :)

Knitting Goals for 2011 (and 2010 in review)

Well, it occurred to me that maybe I should post some goals for 2011. Some might seem pretty easy, but you’d think different if you saw the complete list of UFOs that are in my project book. ;)

So, without further ado (and in no particular order):

-knit a pair of Tardis socks (those socks are AWESOME!) I need to learn not to be afraid of completing a project that is knitted in the round.

-complete all projects started in 2010 (there’s only one left, so this should be easy)

-complete at least one UFO started prior to 2009. Bella’s Blanket, multi socks, K-9, I need to finish something! An interesting side note-I didn’t start a single new project in 2009. I may have worked on a couple of things here and there, but no new projects.

-use leftover yarn from Pearl-Ribbed Slipper Socks to make hat from yarn label. A few years ago I made three pairs of these socks-I had quite a bit of leftover yarn-I think I have enough to make a hat whose pattern was on the yarn label. ;)

-enter all projects into Ravelry.

-update blog sidebars

-do an inventory of needles & hooks-type, size, length. Back in Dayton, I thought I needed an E-hook. I had searched everywhere, and couldn’t find one. So I go ahead and by one while at Hancock Fabrics, get back to Cleveland, and guess what I found-my E hook. Ha!

Completed in 2010:
I did work on my multi socks and my crocheted Dalek, as well as a poncho I had started a while back, but I didn’t finish any of them. I did however, finish three projects I had started in 2010:

-my weekend scarf: I’m only calling it my weekend scarf because I completed it in one weekend. LOL.

-Relay for Life Headbands: Oooh, I don’t think I posted pictures for these. I made headbands for everyone on my Relay for Life team. Turns out they were a hit-even the guys wore them! ;) It also helped that it was a pretty chilly Relay. They helped keep folks warm! I’ll have to post some pictures.

-Steampunk Spatterdashes: as a part of a Halloween costume! Not only did I use yarn from my stash, but I managed to whip these up pretty quickly in time for Halloween. I’ll be using them again for Marcon this year.

-Rainbow Wrap: I started this back in September. It’s not finished yet, but the pattern isn’t too difficult, so I should be able to finish it. This yarn had also been sitting in my stash for quite a while.

Well, that’s about it. I started my first new project for 2011: Ribbed Earflap Hat! I’m using Lion Brand Thick & Quick, so it should knit up fairly quickly. I was looking at some online posts, and it sounds like I might have quite a bit of yarn left over. I’m hoping I’ll have enough for a scarf. :) WIP pics soon!

Welcome, 2011!

Happy New Year!

December got away from me in terms of knitting-I didn’t get the chance to post anything, but that’s ok-I didn’t get the chance to knit at all. (good thing I wasn’t knitting any Christmas presents this year!)

So back in September I started a wrap with yarn I had purchased a few years ago: JoAnn’s Rainbow Boucle (dark blue). Back in November, I traveled to Kettering with the Ice Hawks so I could hang out with K while her mom played hockey. I brought my knitting with me and K was fascinated with my big ball of yarn (which, at the time, was bigger than her head...in fact, it probably still is bigger than her head. LOL)

BIG ball of yarn

The wrap itself is a very simple pattern-garter stictches, yarn overs, dropping the yo’s. It’s a great thing to me to work on while watching tv, riding in a car, and hanging out wiht people because it’s easy to find out where you are in your work if you get distracted and loose your place. ;) Here’s one of the first pictures I took of my progress:


Here’s a more recent one, with more distinct color changes:

(I love blue!!)

While in Kettering, we had some time between hockey games, so we stopped at Hancock Fabrics (they have them in Minnesota and Southern Ohio, but there aren’t any here in Northeast Ohio-boo!) They happened to be having a sale on Lion Brand’s Wool East Thick& Quick, so K and Tina helped me pick out some yarn for the ear flap hat I want to make:

Ear Flap Hat Yarn-not the pattern, the yarn. LOL

The pattern looks simple enough. Next weekend is me and Perseph’s annual Girls Weekend-I’m planning on starting this hat during the weekend (as well as continuing with my blue rainbow wrap). Who knows-I might actually finish the hat-after all, last year I started and completed a knitted scarf. :) I can’t wait!