Keeping Up With Life

An Apple for Teacher

I knitted this a couple of weeks ago. Today it went off to school with my daughter, a present for her teacher on Teacher Appreciation Day.

Dolly Skirt

Some kids have an imaginary friend.  My daughter has an imaginary daughter.  Who is currently represented by her faux-Cabbage-Patch doll.  Whose name is Cinderella.  Cinderella wanted a skirt with pants underneath; with some design help from my daughter, I managed this little number.  Not so coincidentally, it also helped use up a couple of stashed leftovers that I had not previously known what in the world to do with.

Now she wants socks.  And a hat.  But mostly socks.

Experimental Socks

Finished only a month and a half late.  Er.  Well.  They turned out well, though.

What I learned from this project:

• How to do an afterthought heel.
• That I kind of… like afterthought heels, maybe.
• That I can perfectly well come up with a sock pattern on the fly and turn out a decent product.
• The joys of stainless steel DPNs.

Yay.

Local Handspun Hat

My favorite yarn store randomly got their hands on some yarn from Breezy Manor Farm in Mooresville.  Handspun from the coats of animals raised on the farm and hand-painted, it’s the sort of stuff I don’t often get an opportunity to pick up.  I had a gift card burning a hole in my pocket, it was delicious yarn, and there was even a lovely green colorway that seemed to call out to me.  (“Kniiiiiiit meeeeee!”)  So I got it without having any idea what I was going to do with it, even though I’ve promised myself not to do that anymore.

When I found the Chance of Flurries pattern, I realized that it would be a perfect way to also put to use the handspun from Spring Mill State Park that I’d picked up a while ago.  Being only 55 yards, it wasn’t enough to make anything out of on its own, but it could perfectly well be an accent.  Plus, it would be an opportunity to dip my toe into the world of colorwork.

Unfortunately, it’s one of those times when swatching was no help.  I swatched, went down a needle size, swatched again, and set off happily thinking I’d gotten the perfect gauge.  The I got most of the way through the hat and actually thought to measure my gauge again, and…  I should have stuck with the larger needles.

So the hat is a bit on the small side.  Still, I’m very happy with the way it turned out.  The yarn was wonderful, the finished product looks really nice…  I just wish it fit better.

This is a hat. It is being knit on a 16” circular needle.

It has come to my attention that in an inch or so I’ll have to start decreasing. And then it will be too small for the circular.

I could get DPNs in the appropriate size (which I do not currently have).

Or I could break down and learn Magic Loop.

Either way, I love this hat.

bgalrstate:

starcr:

Okay.  This cable-yoke cardigan of Suzanne’s.  It caught my eye as we were going through Mad Men again preparatory to the new season starting.  I kind of really like it, and it seems like it should be a pretty simple thing to find a pattern for (well, it or something quite similar), but I can’t for the life of me find any such thing.

Anyone got ideas?

(PS—I have no idea how to make this answerable anymore, sorry…  Drop me a message/ask/whatever or reblog, I guess?  Sigh.)

That’s going to be a vintage pattern.  But Karabella KK219 (Google it) comes close.  That’s such a simple cable you could probably find a more complicated version somewhere and just replace their fancy cable with the simple one, swatch and math but still.  

Ah!  You’re right, I think that’s close enough that I can modify it to what I want without much trouble.  Thank you very much!

Okay.  This cable-yoke cardigan of Suzanne’s.  It caught my eye as we were going through Mad Men again preparatory to the new season starting.  I kind of really like it, and it seems like it should be a pretty simple thing to find a pattern for (well, it or something quite similar), but I can’t for the life of me find any such thing.

Anyone got ideas?

(PS—I have no idea how to make this answerable anymore, sorry…  Drop me a message/ask/whatever or reblog, I guess?  Sigh.)

A while back, I posted about a WIP I had on my needles, a lacy shawl/wrap in variegated blue.  The plan was (is) to start in the middle, work down to one end, then pick up stitches at the cast-on edge and do the other half to match.  I finally, finally got back to it and finished the first half.  Here’s the bind-off edge, with beads placed.

I’m also trying out some new bind-offs.  This one?  Appropriately enough, it’s a lace bind-off.

The Theoretically-For-Christmas Sweater

Okay.  So it’s… almost three months late.  But I did finish it.  And it’s not such a big disaster as I was half-afraid it would be; it actually looks rather nice except that the last few inches fit really strangely.

I think there’s still a part of me that’s worried it’ll, like, fall apart without warning or something.  A sweater seems like such a huge project to me, it’s unreal.