Twisty Turns, mitts, and Windy City

Talk about an exhausting couple of months, and the best part is that none of this will slow down for quite awhile now. Sarcasm. Well, I've been knitting up a storm the past few weeks, but now I'm at the point where I don't know what to knit. Scratch that, I have a lot I want to knit but since I'm moving in a week (or so?) I am trying to pick a project that is going to take me awhile, until I get all of my knitting stuff back. I was thinking a sweater or a shrug but am somewhat hesitant.

I finished my Twisty Turns finally. I actually had the entire thing accomplished by the end of April, but couldn't bring myself to seam it all together until last week. After seaming, it looks amazing and I am very proud. I know that my mother will love it. Also, I knit the Windy City scarf (from SnB) and matching convertible mittens (my own improv, and my first pair of mittens) for a friend. Enjoys some photos!

Twisty Turns, as modeled by my friend, it's Knit Pick's Andean Silk in color "olive". So soft. So warm. I'm in love.

My own design for convertible mitts (that turned out pretty good!), made from Knit Pick's Shine, in tan, turquiose, and cream.

Windy City Scarf (from SnB), in Knit Pick's Shine, cream, tan, and turquiose.

Well that should be all for now. I might be MIA for a month or two until the move settles, and we find a place to live, but I'll be sure to update when I have some time! Later.

Updates on Twisty Turns

I've been working a fair amount on my current WIP, Twisty Turns. It's an endurance challenge, really, and definitely the largest project I've done to date (even beating out the wonky pinwheel blanket). It's 48 stitches per row and, by the end, 615 rows long. I have about 330 rows done as of now and just wanted to show my current progress. It seems I couldn't get a good natural light photo, so I had to take it with flash, and it seems to make the color look weird on the close up. Anyway here we go.

Obviously, that's the whole thing so far (about five feet long) and then close up. It's a pretty easy pattern once you get it going (my first attempt on cable cast ons, it went beautifully!), but I'm excited for it to be done. It's for my mother, and it needs to be finished by the time I see her (about three weeks from now), so I've got a lot to do in that time.

But that's all for now! I have a lot to do today, just wanted to update. Later.

Twisty Turns

I didn't get too far on the cable I was working on in Korea. I did do some of it, but mainly it was just for practice and I think I have it down now. Knowing how easy cables actually are and how complex they look, I'm going to try to find a pattern soon to display them in, but I already have a few projects lined up that I need to finish first. And speaking of new projects, I got a huge bundle of yarn in the mail yesterday and promptly started my long-awaited Twisty Turns (from Wrap Style). This is a stock photo, I'm doing mine in green (Knit Pick's Andean Silk in "Leaf").



I'm supposedly making it for my mother, but we'll see if it ever actually gets to her. Hah. So far it's going along well. It was my first time doing cable cast ons, and they look pretty nice. Also my first time slipping stitches, but so far so good with both of those. The finished product is about 92" long (before assembling it) so I'm sure it's going to take awhile, but the pattern is interesting enough to keep me held, and repetitive enough to not mess me up constantly. After I'm finished with that I'm starting a scarf and hat set out of Knit Pick's shine colors. I bought a pretty new addi circ just for it. Also, on the slate somewhere are socks. The yarn is here but no needles, those are going to be an online purchase because my LYS had none small enough in the length that I needed, but those would have been put off anyway since I'm very excited to be doing the wrap/shawl thingy.

Other than that, I don't really have any updates. I only really wanted to post and give some sort of status on my knitting! I swear I'm not quitting, even if I am turning into the world's oldest 21 year old as we speak. That's all for now. Later!

Pinwheel Baby Blanket

I've been a busy knitter these past few weeks, emphasis on busy, so busy in fact that I haven't had time to post any photos of my WIP or finished objects. So this massive update will serve to that, while I procrastinate packing for my vacation. Yay!

First up, the pinwheel baby blanket, pattern found here, my biggest project to date, no doubt. This thing, when finished, is 34" in diamater, and took me about a solid week of knitting (I didn't count, but probably about 20-25 hours, most of which was done at work or watching the olympics). It was knit entirely on my size 9 24" circs, which by the end, was seriously pushing maximum density. I used approx 300 for the main color (purple) and about 100 yards for the other color, both semi cheap but soft acrylic just from my stash so I don't remember what brand. Anyway, I had really high hopes for this project, and am gifting it to a friend who is due in a few months, but ... I don't know what the hell happened to it. I'm going to try to fix it when I get back, but am running short of ideas how to do such. For the record, this was my first attempt at both seed stitch (the border) and yarn overs. Both were a lot easier than I anticipated, which is never a bad thing.



BLEH!! Anyway, next project. I finally got around to finishing Chantelle's homespun (ew) scarf. It matches the hat I made (look back a few posts) and has mostly been done for a few weeks but I was being lazy about actually finishing it. I didn't get a picture of it before I rolled it up and considering rolling and decorating it takes about 20 minutes, I'm not about to undo it all, but it's about 60" long by about 5" wide and is super soft. That's the thing with homespun, I despise knitting with it but the finished product is always great. Oh well. Here we go.




Last, but certainly not least, I sat down last night with my new knitting book (Wrapstyle, oh how I love thee!) and taught myself how to cable. I'd tried once before and it was a miserable failure, but the instructions in wrapstyle are so easy to follow that it was a piece of cake. I did a braided cable 22 st across, but it turned out awesome. So I decided to grab some left overs and knit up a panta with a cable in it for practice. I just started it tonight and only worked on it for about an hour, but here it is so far. I'm going to take it with me to Korea and hopefully finish it there. Sorry about the flash, it's blinding but it's the best I could do at 11PM.


Alright so that's all for now, I need to finish packing, er.. start packing. Damnit, I suck at this stuff. Okay. Later! :)

Another Panta

I've been terribly busy in the past few weeks, so my knitting has taken a backseat to a lot of other things. But I'm pushing through with the little spare time that I have, so since my last post I've finished another panta (pictured below), which is a gift (with a matching scarf--not yet completed) for a friend, and I'm about 75% done with two other scarves that I started a few weeks ago. I'm hoping to finish those before I leave for Korea on the 21st.

Made from Moda Dea yarn (color: Rave) on size 5 straight needles. My fingers were almost dead by the end of it, argh!

Anyway, I just wanted to post a photo of my recent panta. I think I'm going to whip another one up in a cream color for my mom who is visiting me right now. But we'll see. And yeah, I'm sorry about the photo, but it's nearly midnight and I am very sleepy. That's all for now! Later!

Panta

I finished my panta today. Well I finished it last night but did the blocking and sewing today. It turned out really great. There are four increase sections in the pattern but I only did three because I thought it would turn out too wide if I did four, which I was correct about. At the widest point it's about 4-1/2" wide and it's total length after blocking was 19", which was about perfect. My head circumference is about 2" more than that, so it stretches just the perfect amount. I'm extremely happy with the way it was finished. It's made from Knit Pick's Wool of the Andes in Asparagus.

Now I just have to live with that damn fanta song in my head. Fanta fanta dont you wanna fanta fanta. GAH!

More Hats Again (and a new year)

With a new year come new resolutions, and since this is a knitting blog I thought I would post here, my knitting goals for 2006. It's real simple, as I only have one actual goal (beside the hope that I improve in general..). I want to learn how to knit socks. I don't care if they are deformed and too loose, missing a row of stitches, or just plain ugly, I want to learn how to knit socks. There. It is done!

Anyhow, more finished projects! I finished Scott's hat (previously shown in the post behind this one). I went through the trouble of knitting ear flaps, grafting them to the hat, and then blocking the whole thing (pain in the ass) before Scott told me that he didn't want earflaps. Argh. He's lucky that I like him so much. So I ripped off the earflaps and reknit a 2" strip (22" long) and grafted it to the bottom of the hat. It actually turned out better than I thought. However when the hat is laying flat on a surface the hat looks horrible, so you get to see a photo of yours truly modeling said hat to prove it doesn't suck.

Ugh.. excuse the horrible photo of moi.

The next finished item is one I made for Chantelle, I'm making a matching scarf which I just started yesterday. I'm hoping to get it done by the end of the week and make a fair amount of headway tonight while I recover from the gym. I'm so sore. Oi!

Okay, so I'm off to lay down and enjoy the night. Night :)