Bucket hats!

When I started making the Paddington Bear shirt for my nephew, I very quickly decided that he needed a red bucket hat to go with it - just like Paddington wears.  I had already downloaded the free Oliver + S bucket hat pattern, and it was perfect!

Of course I had to make one for my niece, too.  Hers is a yellow floral with brown floral lining.

Both hats are size Medium (3-5 years), even though my niece is almost 3 and my nephew is 15 months - the internet says the hats run small.  From pictures, it looks like the hats fit well and are adorable.

They are fully reversible, and I used this tutorial to finish them without any hand sewing. I hear that the kids like the hats.  Which is good, because the dog didn't like it at all.

CMS/Colloquium knitting: Stripey Socks!

I don't have any CMS knitting to report on from this week, since I finished my self-striping socks in Colloquium the week before.  I'm thrilled with how they look and how they fit!

I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of heel I wanted to knit - I didn't want to interrupt the striping pattern, so a traditional heel flap and gusset was out.  I tried a fleegle heel on the first sock, and that made the stripes very narrow in a way I didn't like, so that was out, too.  I thought I didn't want an afterthought/forethought heel because those tend to be way too tight around the arch of my foot.  I ended up doing a lot of internet research on sock patterns for self-striping yarns and ways to make short-row heels fit better.  I settled on a mini-gusset for a forethought heel, from a fantastic sock article by Kate Atherley in Knitty (link below).  Then I knitted a round heel.  I was a bit amused to see that the round heel put a green dot on the underside of my heel - it's visible in the picture above.

The round heels pucker when the socks are flat, but they fit really well on my feet.

Here's how much yarn I have left over.  I used almost all of it!

Pattern: My own toe-up, forethought heel sock pattern, using the toe from Fleegle's basic recipe, the section of Knitty's Socks 102 article on "Adding Gussets to a Short Row Heel for Better Fit," and for the heel, the round toe/heel instructions from More Sensational Knitted Socks
Size: 64 sts for foot and leg
Yarn: KnitPicks Felici self-striping sock yarn in "Wizard"
Needles: 2.5mm sock DPNs
Started/Completed: July 2015/January 2016
Modifications: I added an additional 6 stitches on each side of the top of the foot for the gusset.  Then I started the ribbing on the "back" half of the leg (the half without the extra gusset stitches) immediately after knitting in the waste yarn for the heel, while keeping the front half stockinette until I had decreased away all of the gusset stitches, then switched to 1x1 ribbing for the front as well.  This helped eliminate a bit of bagging at the back ankle, without drawing attention to the fact that gusset decreases were happening.

Dog bandannas

Huck has been wearing his last bandanna almost all the time since the 4th of July.  It's been such a success that I decided to make a few more.  The middle one here is for Huck, and the other two are for Huck to bring as a thank-you gift for the dogs he stayed with when Robert and I went on our backpacking trip.  All three are made with the same fabrics: super hero sound effects on one side and manly purple mustaches on the other.

The three dogs were very cute all wearing their bandannas.  Next time I'll have to remember to make the channel in the littlest one wider - Rusty's collar wouldn't fit through his, so it was safety pinned to his collar.

Friday night sewing

I sat down to sew last Friday with two projects in mind. The first was a fourth of July bandanna for Huck, inspired by the one my cousin gave him for Christmas. I used scraps from other projects, and one side of the bandanna is red, white, and blue and the other is a single lime green print. Huck was very cute and patriotic wearing it for the fourth!

The other project was another pair of cloth napkins. I really love this constellations fabric, and I'm excited to get to use it every day! This fabric turned out to be narrow, so I ended up having to hide a bit of the selvedge in the hem of one of the napkins. Luckily it's not visible now that the hem is finished.

Swift!

Last week l used my swift for the first time.

 It was a Christmas gift, but all of the knitting I've done so far this year has been yarn that came pre-wound. The swift is wonderful! It was quick and easy! There were no tangles, and no-one had tired arms from holding up the skein!

Handmade Christmas

My dad and his wife collect paintings of the mountains that are the view from their kitchen window by local artists they've met.  The walls of their house are overflowing with gorgeous landscapes.  They are also really difficult to shop for.  If there's something one of them wants, they buy it, and they don't like to have too much stuff lying around.  So for my dad's Christmas gift this year, Robert made a maple candleholder with the mountains carved into the front.  My dad has always really liked light natural wood, and this past summer he had the kitchen re-done with maple cabinets.  Robert and I think it turned out beautifully, and we hope my dad enjoys it!  We gave my dad's wife this shawl, and it seemed like she likes it a lot.

My mom made these hot beverage cozies for Robert and me.  The coffee press cozy is made from her handspun yarn that she and I dyed with coffee last August.  The bottle cozy matches one of my favorite pair of socks (which my mom knitted for me when I was in college).

Last but not least, Huck got this awesome bandanna from my cousin, who has recently started a business making these and doggie bow ties.  He looks so dapper in it!  He also seems to like (or at least not notice) wearing it.  It's cleverly constructed to fit on the collar, so he doesn't have something else tied around his neck.  I've tried to make him wear stuff before, and he's never been willing to put up with it, so I'm impressed that he is so happy to wear this!

30 hour baby quilt ... and a knitted dog

Two weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon, I checked the mail and found a birth announcement.  This baby's parents are college friends of Robert's, and on Saturday morning at breakfast I decided to make a quilt for him.  He is already 6 weeks old or so, and I really didn't want to add another long- or even medium-term project to my list, so I decided to make a strip quilt using fabric from the Hawthorne Threads scrap packs I got several months ago.  I started at about 11am, and in a few hours I had the fabrics and layout chosen and the strips cut.

I didn't have much of a plan on the strip widths.  I decided to make the quilt 45" long, so I figured out that with 15 fabrics, I needed their unfinished width to average 3.5".  I knew I wanted the fish and penguin fabrics to be pretty wide so the animals would feature prominently, so I made those quite a bit wider and the others narrower in varying widths, and kept track of the total length as I went along to make sure I was on track to hit the target.  I think it worked wonderfully!

I pieced together two pieces of Warm and Natural batting leftover from other projects, trimmed the top so it was about 32" wide, and quilted a line on each side of each seam.  It was super easy and fast!  I had all the quilting done and the quilt trimmed on Saturday evening.  Sunday morning I cut and pressed the binding before church, and when I got home I machine stitched it to the front and back.  I had one very ugly corner on the back, but I covered it up with the label.  Then it got a trip through the washer and dryer, and Huck helped me photograph it!  It was finished before dinner on Sunday afternoon.

This baby has a big sister, who is about a year and a half old.  When we moved in March, we sent our friends and family a postcard with our new address and a picture of Huck.  This little girl's dad told us that she really liked the picture of the dog an got excited about seeing it hanging on their fridge, so I decided to knit her a dog of her own as a big sister gift.  This is the labrador pattern from the book Knit Your Own Dog.  I knit it in a heavy worsted superwash merino that I've had in my stash for at least 5 years.  The yarn was a lot heavier than the recommended yarn, and I used up pretty much exactly the whole skein for the body, head, legs, ears, and tail.  Luckily I had a skein of grey, too, so I could give the doggie a belly that still pretty much matched.  I sewed up the seams (and there were many, for some reason I don't understand the legs and head are knit flat and then seamed) with black sewing thread.

I think the dog and the quilt turned out well, and I hope their recipients will enjoy them!

Adventures with Rudy - and a recipe!

Robert and I spent last weekend taking care of this wonderful, sweet, and energetic dog. Rudy's owner, Taylor (who is one of my office mates) was at a conference, so we stayed at her apartment and walked and fed and played with Rudy.

We almost always have a "special" breakfast on Saturday mornings - usually it's pancakes from Robert's mom's recipe (which I veganized with a flax egg and soy "buttermilk") or vegan french toast with our own home-made breadmaker bread (Robert puts pecan bits in the bread to make it extra delicious). So I brought the more unusual pancake ingredients with to Taylor's place, but to my great surprise, the only flours she had were whole wheat flour and vital wheat gluten! So here is Robert's mom Lynn's oatmeal-buttermilk pancake recipe, adapted to be vegan and whole wheat, and scaled for two people:
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups "soy buttermilk" - a splash of white vinegar to cover the bottom of the measuring cup, and then the rest filled up with soymilk
1/2 cup oats - not the quick-cooking kind
1 flax egg - 1 Tbs flax seeds ground up and mixed with some warm water
2 Tbs canola oil
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 Tbs vital wheat gluten (this keeps the pancakes from being too whole-wheat heavy and dense. Don't leave it out)
2 1/2 Tbs brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
a few dashes of cinnamon

Method:

1. Mix the soy buttermilk and oats and let them sit for 10 minutes or so. Then add the flax egg and oil.
2. Combine the dry ingredients in a medium-small mixing bowl, and whisk them together to mix.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry. I always have to add a few extra splashes of soymilk to the batter at this point to make it the right consistency. Even so, the batter should be pretty thick.
4. Fry up the pancakes. I usually scoop the batter using a 1/4 cup measure. (Lynn's recipe recommends using a 1/3 cup measure for this, but I like to have more pancakes, even if they're smaller.)
5. Serve with margarine and real maple syrup!
   

The whole wheat version was a success! They were fluffy, not heavy, and they had a nice nutty kind of whole wheat flavor.

Welcome to Will Knit for Math!

Welcome to my new blog! I'm a first year math graduate student, and when I'm not studying, I love to knit, sew, spin, embroider, and make tatted lace. The name of the blog comes from my Thursday afternoons - every week, the grad students in my department gather for a talk by one of our own, followed by departmental colloquium, when all of the grad students and professors get together for a talk by a guest speaker. I almost always bring my knitting. It helps keep my hands busy and my brain awake to focus on the talk. My intention is to take a photo at the end of each colloquium so I can see my projects grow. I'm sure my other crafty projects will get posted, too, as well as some vegan food.

I don't have a knitting picture yet, but here are Huck and Molly.