Ain't No Grinch! The Hat!

Project Name: Ain't No Grinch
Pattern Name: Erich's A&F Knockoff Hat
Yarn: Lion Brand Hometown USA leftovers in Tampa Spice (Red) and Lime. Hat weighed in at 98 grams so about 57 yards of yarn total.
Needle: US 15 for the bulk of the hat and then Size US 13 Double points for the last two rows of the decrease and bind off.
Size: Adult
Love: ♥♥♥♥♥ - Love this so much! SQUEEEE!

You can find my Ravelry Project Notes HERE.

I saw these two left over balls of yarn in my scrap bin and KNEW I had to make them into a crazy striped Christmas Hat for me! I thought it would be a wacky tacky - but the end product is quite pretty actually! Love the every other row stripe look on the ribbing. And I am happy I cast on in red and then did row one in red too. It gives the hat a kind of finished look or something. Don't know - Just like it!

My stash of acrylic is getting kind of low, so I may have to do some stash expansion so I can keep knocking these out. Only 1100 stitches to make this hat, and it keeps me feeling like I am accomplishing things in the knitting world when I really only have time to knit a little here and there.

And now I am set for the holidays! Warm head and holiday spirit to boot!

Plomo Shmomo - Another Cowl!

Project Name: Plomo Shmomo
Pattern Name: Improvised (Just a seed stitch)
Yarn: Malabrigo Yarn: Rasta in 43 Plomo (1 Skein = 90 Yards)
Needle: US 15 - 10.0 mm
Size: Unblocked size = 7 inches deep with a 27 inch circumference.
Love:  ♥♥♥♥♥ Full love on this one!

Find my Ravelry Pattern notes HERE.

I LOVE this cowl. It's hard not to Love all things Malabrigo. And Rasta is one of my favorite yarns. Fat and happy - it knits up quick and it makes your fingers happy to have them rubbing on it with every stitch.  Even Emma giver her approval on this. Two Paws up!

The yarn for this was a gift from my hubby. He went to a Historical Society Event and came home with a ball of Rasta for me. I told him I would take that over flowers any day!

Hooking Away!

We have a guest dog in the house this weekend. We are pet sitting my MIL's dog Minnie. She is just a ball of energy and she has been wearing us all out, but in a good way. Above you will see I was trying to crochet a little blanket for my cat while Minnie climbed all over me trying to see what was going on outside. Emma of course was calm and just hanging out.

 

Once the blanket was finished I placed it in Izzi's cat bed and she immediately curled up and went to sleep on it! She loves it and I was so happy. So often with pet knitwear (crochet wear?) I feel like you knit it for yourself - since he animal tends to not care one way or another. So to have Miss Izzi claim an item I knit for her was pretty wonderful.

Since her cat house has two beds I quickly made another one for her other bed as well. This is not the bed she spends as much time in, but I had the yarn and thought "Why not?".

 

I suspect she will love snuggling into both of these once Winter rolls in. As it is now still summer temperatures, she isn't getting the full affect I think.



Sunflowers!

I am in love with sunflowers!

 

I planted a few sunflowers from seeds I have had in my basement for years. They said they were mammoth - but I had no idea they would get this big! We measured this guy and it was 10 feet 6 inches (Exactly twice my height!) when we took this picture. That is our telephone line from our house that it's next too. It's INsAnE and I just love it too death. I am plotting more sunflower fun for next year already!

i said a knit knot the knitty the knitty to the knitknit knot

 

I finished a little shawlette! It's the "Just Knit it!" pattern on Ravelry by Susan Ashcroft of Stitchnerd Designs. It was given out free during the Olympics and is now a pay pattern. Super cute. Super easy. And I got to stashbust on this (mostly) which is super awesome!

 

I knit this out of mochi and Sheep(ish). For the edge I ended up doing a row of single crochet all the way around the entire thing in gray. Then I went down to the lower two sides (not the neck side) and did a row of double crochet all the way across in the mochi (colored) yarn. I was going to go back and frame it all in with gray again - but I loved how it looked as is - so I stopped.

It is the perfect length and width. I can use it to wrap around my shoulders if I am wearing a dress - or wrap it around my neck like Emma is wearing it below with a jacket in the winter for super snowy day warmth. The mochi and the sheep(ish) went together like a dream and it is just squishy and so warm! I really enjoyed working on it!

 



Nice to have a WIP out of my Queue on Ravelry. I have had start-itis lately. Like RAGING start-itis. It's been killer. I am bored with items I have started already and want to do something New and exciting! Fickle knitter am I! So yay for getting something finished! Now on to the next!

It's Fugly and it's Finished!

I HAVE FINISHED MY FUGLY BLANKET AND I LOVE IT!

This took me four months to hook up and it was a real learning experience. It was really fun to just grab a ball out of my scrap bin and add it onto the growing blanket. I methodically weighed each scrap and ball on my handy scale and recorded that on note cards to enter onto my project page on Ravelry. My yardage ended up being 2620.1 yards although that is a bit of a guestimate since most of my scraps did not have ball bands, but I think most cotton yarns have similar weights and yardage per gram - so I am pretty comfy with my guestimate. (You can read the list with all the weights and stuff on my project page on Ravelry.)

Sometimes I would try and place colors next to each other - and sometimes I would "need to work with pink" and would just add pink yarn where ever it landed. I started out thinking I would just use up my scrap bin, but I ended up running out pretty quick, so I found myself crocheting wash cloths on my lunch hour and then going home that night and hooking the rest of the ball onto the blanket!

Emma enjoyed me placing a blanket out on the grass for her and she had some nice rolling around on it. Any time I lay out a knitting/crochet project she has to come over and lay down on it. It's funny. I appreciate her being so kind to my knitwear though. She only ran off with one hat and no damage was done. And she's just the cutest little model!

I did a test run for possible future picnic's and the size is really good. I can sit here and have a nosh with Emma no problem. I think my hubby could even squeeze in! Nice! :)

Here's a shot of the denim blue border in single crochet. I think I did 6 rounds but it might just be five. I have a hard time counting rows still and I didn't track this as I went. I just added rows until it told me it was done. The corners have three single crochet into the corner stitch for the turns. I think a darker border would probably look better (in hindsight) but this color is more pet hair forgiving - so I call it a win.

There is also a little bit of pucker from my border - but not enough to really bug me. I suspect going from Extended Single Crochet to Single Crochet may have been part of the problem here - but I like the slightly denser fabric around the edge of the blanket.

I did crochet blocks of color together in areas which left ridges all over the back. I decided they bothered me too much and went back and sewed them all down. Not very pretty - but like I said. LEARNING EXPERIENCE. Also - It's called a fugly blanket - so yeah. No pressure to look pretty.

The size is perfect. I can wrap it around my shoulders and it just reaches my feet. Since it's all scrap cotton I can wash and dry the crap out of it. If I stain it I can bleach it. And it sleeps like a dream. I finished sewing in my last stray end last night and within 30 minutes after I did that I was sound asleep under it in bed. Just love it.

It's Just a Triangle - Shawl

FINALLY - I took the time to take pictures of my It's Just a Triangle - Shawl which I actually finished a little over a week ago. Of course I had to wait until the temp was 93 F (33.89C) so .... Yeah. Check out one very warm gal trying to look like she wasn't feeling like a pork roast out in the sun.

I am very happy with how it turned out. The top of the triangle is almost exactly my height and the spine covers my torso nicely.

This was yarn that I originally had designated for a dog sweater for Emma. It did NOT work out and it went for a nice long swim in the frog pond. Now it is resurrected as a shawl for me!

I foresee myself wearing this in the morning's when I have to go outside with Emma and I am still pajama clad. Like this morning when we got up at 3:30 in the morning and the sirens were going off and a storm was rolling in. Miss Emma was shaking and didn't want to go out - but she needed to go out! So out I went in my pj's, robe and crocks. The bummer about robes is they collect grass and water on the bottom edge - NOT so with shawls! So I am pretty excited about this.

AND it's acrylic so I can throw it in the washer and dryer with no issues! WIN!

The pattern is really easy and you can use pretty much any yarn. Wonderful stash buster! The pattern is called "It's just a triangle - Shawl" and it's free on Ravelry or you can go to Laughing Purple Goldfish Blog and find the pattern there. I love the multi colored ones!

Now I am off to make myself another Flatout Pizza and a nice Salty Dog! :)

Because my co-worker said so

I had a co-worker call me this and it made me LAUGH! She then went on to say I needed this on a T-shirt so......

Things are getting done!

About a month ago I started the Figurehead Shawl by Alexis Winslow. The body was very easy to work but the border was a real challenge. That's a knit scallop edge! The design is really really clever - but I hated working on the border. Of course now that it is finished I am in love with it and thinking about other colors and yarns I would like to work this in. It's really cute!

I worked my version in Brown Sheep Prairie Silk yarn - Which is now discontinued. I really love Brown Sheep Yarns. I used just over 1 skein of each color - a lavender and a grey. REALLY love the results! I originally wasn't going to put a button on the project, but after I blocked this out I got more length I found that I could. The way I am wearing it in the picture below is with it buttoned under my chin and tucked under the bulk of the shawl. It was really windy when I took these pictures and the shawlette really kept my neck from feeling the wind!

I have been wearing headbands a lot lately and have been looking for simple headbands to knit. I found this pattern on Ravelry called "Cool Cotton Headband". I knit it up and it took 27 yards (15 grams) of cotton! A perfect use for those left over balls of yarn from knitting washcloths. This is a free pattern on Ravelry and I was able to knit it up in about an hour. (I think it took a little longer than that but I was surfing the net and drinking coffee....) It's still a little thicker than I would like for everyday wear - but I think it would be a perfect headband to throw in my make-up caddy for wearing at night when I wash my face. Would make a great instant gift or stocking stuffer too. I knit this with Debbie Bliss Pure Cotton. (I could make three of these out of one skein and still have a little left over yarn!)

And I finished my Sari to Drop-In Scarf knit out of Frabjous Fibers Millefiori yarn. (The recycled Sari yarn.) The pattern I used was Barb Bettegnies Drop-In Scarf pattern from Creative Knitting, Fall 2010: Accessorize with Style. I had made this scarf a couple years back in ribbon yarn and loved the pattern. It's really fast and easy and the results are quite pretty! This was another stash buster for me and I am very pleased with my results!

Not much progress on my vest this week. I have had a lot of insomnia and I won't work on that project when I am tired or lacking focus. I don't want to mess it up!

In other news - We are breaking records for our warmth here this weekend. It is just amazing out! Yesterday it was 67F  - our normal average high for this time of year is 37F! That's a huge difference! I saw kids biking outside the house in shorts and t-shirts! Amazing! I will be out in that garden before I know it!

Lucky Scarf

I wore my new scarf yesterday. To work, home from work and out running errands. It's a little scratchy but not too bad. I like how light and fluffy it is. I wear it folded in half and then looped through itself. It fills up the neck hole on my jacket pretty nicely.

I am calling it my lucky scarf because I wore it in to the liquor store to get some wine and when I handed the clerk my card to pay he asked me for my ID. Hu? I haven't been carded in years! I assume it's actually the diet and exercise making me look a little younger, but since I was wearing this scarf for the first time in public when it happened I will claim it was the scarf which MUST hold magic properties.

It also allowed me to catch this giant metal May Fly. You can see it's at least a 15 pounder and I am tired from the fight this bugger gave me.

Of course Emma had to try on my scarf too. As always she looks smashing in it!

Burly Spun Mari 2: The Resurrection

I am continuing on with my effort to sort out my knit goods. My latest reclaiming was a hat I made in 2008 out of Burley Spun. I liked the hat - but again - top down construction made it kind of pointy and weird. Add to this that it's lime green - Totally rocked out an elf thing here.

I didn't take awesome pictures of this the first go around - but you can get a sense of the fit of this hat on my Roger Head. Keep in mind Roger does not have my insane big hair to tuck under this hat either - so you can imagine how high this sat on my head. Not exactly keeping the old ears warm.

This next shot shows a much more relaxed hat. The pointy top is pretty much gone and the length is much better. I did the Eucalin soak for about an hour and then rolled it in a towel to get most of the water out and then stretched it onto good old Roger here. It dried in a couple days.

And lastly - here is me wearing the hat. It fits over my giant crazy hair and is pretty much the perfect size now. So much more wearable!

KAL Cowl Complete!

My First KAL is over and I am VERY pleased with the results! The cowl took just under 300 yards of worsted yarn (2 strands held together) and I am soooo looking forward to wearing this when old man winter stomps on my nuts this winter. (Just kidding, I don't have any nuts!)

In this photo, Emma gives me pleading eyes and begs me to stop making her model my knitting. Sorry Em's. It's the price you pay for being so darn cute!

Here you can see that it has cables and that I found the largest door knobbiest buttons imaginable. I really love the buttons.

And here is a terrible picture of me standing in the bathroom and taking a picture and hoping I don't cut off half my head and that the zit on my chin isn't too noticeable... Drat. It totally is. Look at the cowl people - DO NOT FOCUS ON THE HUMONGO ZIT! (that worked right?)

And because I get goofy after I have been awake 15+ hours, here is the sheep in my den/craft room wearing my cowl. Feel free to gawk at all the crap in the background - Most of the time the background stuff is more interesting than the actual photographed object. Not this time of course, but sometimes.

Happy Knitting!     Happy Thursday!