Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Handspun mitts finished!

I finished these fingerless mitts about a month ago. They're made from this handspun yarn.
They are very cosy and nice in symphony rehearsals, and they don't impede my cello playing.
The first time I wore them to rehearsal, some people were telling me when their birthday is ... unfortunately, I don't usually knit for people I don't know that well.

Now I just have to figure out something else to make with the rest of the yarn!

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I have been woefully absent from my blog lately. This photo is from almost two weeks ago (since last Thursday was Thanksgiving), and I have so many other lovely projects I've been meaning to post about. The tea cosy is nearly done - since this photo was taken, I've finished the top, so all I have left to do is the lining. However, it has been put on hold so some more urgent projects can be completed.

I've been thinking a lot about quilting lately. I'd like to make a full-sized quilt for our bed, and I want to do it block by block, since I don't think I can handle quilting a huge quilt on my little machine, and also I want to put different batting on Robert's side and my side. But before I do that, I'm going to make a lap quilt with materials I bought at the quilt show my mom and I went to this month, and I feel like I need to make some quilted placemats for machine quilting practice before I can do that.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Mending my pink sweater

Robert and I are going to his cousin's wedding this evening. This pink ballet wrap sweater is the only nice sweater I currently own (and the color is much nicer than the picture shows - it's a lovely tulip pink). When my mom was visiting last weekend, she helped me pick out a new dress to wear with it - a grey knee-length dress with lace and bead-work. The only problem was, the sweater had a hole. Right under the armpit, where a seam opened up a few months ago (it's kind of a sculptural sweater, and not super-easy to get on and off). As Robert can attest, my usual reaction to clothes with holes is to toss them in the trash, but this sweater is way too special for that, and it was only in the seam, so I just stopped wearing it until I could fix it.

Of course I lost the extra thread that came with the sweater, but instead I used one ply of this sock yarn - I figured that since the sweater is cashmere, wool yarn would be more suitable than cotton embroidery thread, which was the only other remotely matching yarn/thread I have. The repair is far from invisible, but it's pretty good, and it'll be hidden under my arm, so I'm happy.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

No picture today

When I ran out the door this morning, I didn't think to grab the stitch dictionary so I could start the other side of the tea cosy. So I just ripped out the two rows I had done, knit one row plain, and put it on hold.

In other news, my mom started a knitting blog, too! It's Will Knit Mindfully.

Monday, November 7, 2011


My church's fall fundraiser/auction was on Saturday night. I donated two things - a pair of custom hand-knit socks, and a flannel rag quilt baby blanket. I spent a good part of a weekend cutting flannel squares, matching them up, and stitching them together to get this:
Then over the next week I clipped the huge (1 inch) seam allowances into little fringes. Then I washed it. The point of a quilt like this is that the fringes will soften as it is washed and loved into fuzzy ridges. It gives of a LOT of lint and little threads in the process. After I machine dried it, I removed an inch-thick layer of lint from the dryer's lint catcher, and we are still finding little flannel threads around the apartment. I think it turned out well. Here's a picture of the blanket finished, folded, and ready to be dropped off at the church. You can see the back, which is smooth. I think it turned out well, but I didn't do such a good job of matching the corners. My favorite fabric is the little birds.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Alpaca sweater - Mom's project

My mom is visiting us this weekend, so in her honor I am posting one of her projects (that happens to be in my possession). My Mom knitted this sweater for my dad at least 20 years ago. It is a lovely soft and drapey alpaca (if a little itchy), and it is very warm and cosy. It has probably been about ten years since my dad last fitted into the sweater, so I've taken possession of it. When I was in college, my roommate Lisa also had a sweater that her mother had knitted for her father, so we wore our hand-me-down sweaters around the dorm in the cold winter.

My mom says that she was very allergic to the yarn while she was knitting it - she had to take antihistamines whenever she worked on it. It's really not my colors (definitely my dad's colors) but I really like the stripes and cables, and how the cables go over the stripes.

Friday, November 4, 2011

CMS/Colloquium knitting

I finished one side of the outside of the tea cosy in CMS and Colloquium yesterday. It wasn't much fun - both talks went completely over my head (I wasn't even following the first five minutes) and the waffle stitch pattern you see in the picture is pretty fiddly. I guess I've been spoiled by knitting so many socks and things that are nice lace, ribs, and nice knit/purl textures. This involved knitting into the stitch in the previous row, dropping one of the loops, and then picking it up again on the following row. Not so much fun. I chose the pattern because of its name - waffles are my favorite breakfast food, and I want the tea cosy to be breakfast-themed. My stitch dictionary, Super Stitches Knitting, doesn't really have any other breakfast-relevant patterns, so for the other side I picked one that looked pretty nice - clam stitch. I got through about two rows of the pattern by the end of colloquium, but it is even more fiddly than the waffle pattern, so I think I'm going to rip it out and pick a different pattern. Maybe one with leaves, to represent tea leaves.