A gift for a Neighbor

Here we are at December 22nd and I have done pretty close to nothing for Christmas this year. I have not a single decoration up. I have baked nothing. I have purchased nothing. BUT I have knit/crocheted a couple of things. 

One of those things is a scarf for the daughter of a neighbor. I actually worked on this at school while waiting for class to start for the most part. Crochet goes really fast so I had it done in no time. Since it was for a toddler, I made it with one skein of yarn - Bernat Pipsqueak in the color Neapolitan on a size K (6.5mm) hook.  I don't have many notes on this, but my Ravelry page for this project can be found here. I think this was double crochet? Uffda. Can't remember!

Then when I was at the store I found the perfect gift box to tuck it in. It's all set to take over to them as soon as I buy something for the adults to go with it. I suspect I will be out shopping with everyone else today!

A Hat For a Neighbor

Project Name: Hat for Bruce
Pattern Name: Ed's Hat by Michelle Edwards (Free Pattern on Ravelry)
Yarn: 75 yards of Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in color 110 Navy
Needle: Size 13, 36" circular needle
Size: Adult
Love: ♥♥♥♥♥ - Love it!

You can find my Ravelry Project Notes HERE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a hat for my neighbor Bruce. He brought us over nice neighbor Christmas gifts BEFORE Christmas. (Begin guilt meter here....) And here I am mid February finally finished with his hat. I actually had a box of locally made fancy chocolate to give him - and managed to deliver my "Christmas Neighbor Gift" to all my neighbors except him. I think he ran away for the holidays, and then we had the flu over in our house. It seemed wrong to deliver a belated gift of food from the house of flu, so I decided to knit him a hat instead. 

Well I had to find a pattern and buy the yarn. And then I messed up the pattern, so I had to frog it out and start over. This actually got me to knit this hat on a long circular instead of double point needles. I have never knit a hat on one long circular - so it was fun to figure that out while working on the inches of ribbing.

The pattern itself was really simple and well written. It makes a nice "Manly" hat and I think I will keep this one around to give as gifts to my brother and male relatives. 

Hooking is hard

On my vacation I very quickly whipped out a scarf in my bizarre crochet I do. This is hooked in Bernat Mosaic and I had no idea it was thick and thin yarn when I bought it. The end result is a kind of odd scarf. I made this with the intent of giving it to my co-worker for her Birthday. I still intent to do that - but I am a little unsure feeling about it since it goes thick and thin in the width. Hmmmm. Not sure what to think. Is it "artistic" or just plain weird? Does asking that question answer it for me?

Last night I re-cast on for my KAL shawl and made a little progress. I am pretty happy with how it's going and had the brain cells to quit when I caught myself trying to add random YO's to the pattern.

It is SUPER gorgeous today and I have been inside almost all day doing workout and cleaning. I MUST GO OUTSIDE! Hope you all are having a wonderful weekend!

Not a creature was stirring....

I have not forgotten about blogging - I have just been in full holiday melt down. It's hard work being full of Christmas cheer. My cat Izzi agrees with me and curled up under the Christmas throw I "won" in the gift exchange we did at my parents house this year.

We stopped doing a formal gift exchange and started doing an anonymous exchange where people bring wrapped gifts that can go to anyone and they get wrapped up and placed in a pile. We set the timer for 20 minutes and pass around three dice and shake once in the hopes of getting doubles. Every time we get doubles we get to take a present of our choice from the pile. (No unwrapping though!) When the pile is gone you get to steal the presents from other people until the timer rings. This is always interesting since there is always one gift that gets fought over rather fiercely and since nobody (except the giver) knows what is in it - it's fun to see what everyone fought over. Once the 20 minutes is up we go around in a circle and unwrap the gifts and then lay them out in front of us. When all the gifts are unwrapped, we play the dice part again for 10 minutes - and you get to take the gifts you really want. (And hope the gifts you don't want get grabbed by someone else.) The rule is you don't have to take anything - so that is pretty nice since there is some pretty yucky stuff people try and get rid of sometimes.

Gift certificates are fought over pretty hard. And then there are gifts like the throw above. I grabbed it mostly because I knew "my girls" would love it. My hubby was appalled that I took it - because it's pretty fugly and because we have blankets coming out of our bums. I take satisfaction in the cat curling up in it all cute like though. Vindicated in bringing yet another blanket home.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season! I am hoping to blog more regularly again now that much of the holiday shenanigans have slowed down.

Epic Fail (ok not Epic, but....)

One of the things that my hubby loves is fingerless gloves. Not the kind that end at the knuckles - the kind that have individual fingers that stop a portion of the way up each finger. In all my brilliance - I thought I could secretly knit him up a pair on my lunch hours and present them to him on Christmas. Never mind the fact that I had never done this before, and that other people had noted that the math was a bit off in the pattern, or that I wasn't using the yarn the pattern called for. Gauge swatch?!?! What is that?

So I plunged in (as is my tendency) and spent my lunch hours for several weeks knitting away on these. It wasn't until last week that I realized these are mitts for a giant Sasquatch - not for my husband. I took them home and asked my husband if they looked to big (ruining the "surprise") and he said "Uh.... YEAH." Well crap.

After I got them home I noticed that a row had also got twisted somewhere along the way. This happened every time I have to knit back. I twist my stitches. Garg.

Weeks of secret squirrel knitting and good intentions go nowhere without a little good sense. Lesson learned. (At least until I start my next project....

Being Neighborly

Our neighbors were expecting there first child this spring so I spent some time knitting a blanket and then a little hat to go with it for there Babe. They did not want to know the sex of the child until it was born - so I went with a generic Bee Theme to the items thinking a girl or boy could rock those out. The pattern for the baby blanket was in the Plymouth Pamphlet 636 - The Encore 8 hour baby blanket....revisited. It's an "8 hour" Pattern but I am pokey - so it took me about 24 hours knitting time. (Probably longer as I clocked myself through a pattern repeat and multiplied it out - and there is no way I kept that speed throughout the whole thing.) The pattern is not available except in the pamphlet - but here is a link to the page on Ravelry for more details on it: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/beautiful-texture-baby-blanket

I knit the hat out of the leftover yarn. There was a LOT of ends to weave in as I cut the yarn at every color change rather than carry it up. I used 40-45 yards of each color. It's REALLY hard to take good pictures of baby hats without a cute model. I should pick up a doll at the dollar store some time to use as a baby mannequin. Anywho - I used Susan B. Anderson's pattern for the hat from Itty-Bitty Hats. (Simple Baby Cap 1) I have used this pattern several times and it's well written and very easy to follow. I really like that book. Here is a link to the page on Ravelry for that hat - although again - the pattern is not available except in the book.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/simple-baby-cap-1

The baby ended up being a girl. I made the blanket and the hat in larger sizes in the hopes that this fall/winter they will get used. I was pretty pleased with myself for thinking far enough ahead to realize a baby born in May would not be wearing hats much and that I should not make cute newborn sizes. (Go me!)

Jack Skellington Coffee Cozy

My co-worker S is turning the big 30 tomorrow and I thought it would be fun to knit her a Jack Skellington Coffee (or Bottle of Mountain Dew?) Cozy.

Since I had to make the pattern up from scratch I thought I would put all the details I could in here so if someone else out there in internet land wants to make this, they would have a jumping off point.

The Yarn: I knit this out of scrap acrylic. I had in a big bag with no labels on anything. I know the black yarn was Lion Brand Vanna's Choice in Black 153 because this was the yarn I was originally going to knit Emma's I-Matey Dog Sweater out of. The black yarn was slightly thicker than the white yarn - which made the black yarn a bit raised up in the end product - and I liked that. (Happy Accident!) The White yarn I think is Lion Brand Wool Ease in White Sparkle. Not sure about that - but that is my best guess. The finished cozy weights in around 19 grams - so I am guessing about 38 yards of white and around 6 yards of black.

Needles: Knit on size US 7 Knit Picks Needles. This was knit flat and seamed up the back.

I started off by going to google and doing an image search for Jack Skellington Smile Faces. This took a bit of time to find just the right image. It had to be really simple and translate well to a knit pattern. I finally found one and saved it to my computer. Then I went to http://www.microrevolt.org/ and uploaded the image into the KnitPro pattern generator. I chose the smallest size possible and Knit Portrait. I saved the pattern it spit out into my computer and then started knitting.

I cast on 48 stitches using the Cable cast on method (see great video here on U Tube for directions on this - I was doing it wrong for years!) in the white yarn.

Row 1-4: Knit across

Row 5 and all odd rows up to row 31: k4, p40, k4

Row 6 and all Even Rows: Knit

Row 32-35: Knit

Bind Off.

We then had to make a run to Starbucks for a Venti Skinny Cinnamon Dolce in the Venti size so I would have a cup to wrap this baby around. Such a burden. ;) After finishing the coffee and giving the cup a good rinse out and wipe down inside and out - I wrapped my Jack smile around the cup to gage how it would fit and how to seam it up. I went a little loose on the seam on top where the cup is widest and then went in a bit on the seaming toward the bottom where the cup is skinny. Fit just fine!

The pattern began on row 7 and went through row 27.

The first and last four rows are knit - and the first and last four stitches of each row are knit

Odd rows are purled and even rows are knit.

I tried to carry the floats over the back only a couple stitches at a time and then twist them with the working yarn. Long floats are annoying to me and I was also concerned they would show through in the end. I don't have a lot of color-work experience - but am quite pleased with the end product here.