FO:Cupcake hat

Here is the yarn I spun from some BFL locks I purchased at Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival a couple of weeks ago. I opened them up a bit with a hair pick and tried to leave some curls sticking out a bit. There was quite a lot of dirt in them which got all over me whenever I was working on it. I also washed it in 3 sinks of water after that, and there were still some small bits of stuff in it, but it was so pretty I wanted to knit something with it.I spent the better part of this week trying to figure out what I could make with it, and after a bit of trial and error I decided to make the top of a hat with it.

I wrote all the details on the Ravelry page, and don't feel like rewriting them here, so I'll just show you the result. A hat which to me resembles a cupcake. Unfortunately I am a bit too old to look cute in a cupcake hat, but I still like it because I love the yarn.

I knit the bottom in Ultra Alpaca that I had leftover, and finished it off with an I-cord bind-off.

FO's: One Day Beret and Bunny Ears Hat

I have been slow on the knitting of my sweaters lately because I was distracted by a couple of side projects. I found this funny yarn at my LYS in the free bin, Esslinger Wolle Geisha, and fell in love with it despite its rather low natural fiber content (85% acrylic, 15% mohair.) For some reason I love this color too. The photos aren't showing it very accurately I am afraid. I decided to knit Kirsten Kapur's One Day Beret. Even with my enlargments, it still isn't quite as floppy as I thought it would be, and the edge isn't as defined. Part of the problem is the yarn, I think you need to be knitting a pretty tight gauge so the fabric is more stiff, and I wasn't. I also didn't block this because I thought it pointless to block a mostly acrylic yarn, but if that isn't true, please let me know!

I knit a bunny ears hat for my friend Dana who wants to photograph newborns in it. I made this one out of Peter Pan Double Knit yarn (by Wendy.) Again a nylon/acrylic blend so as to be sure it won't itch the baby. Since it is to be used first with a boy I used i-cord ties instead of ribbon. They do need the ties for the ears to look right.

Next on the schedule is a bear ears hat.

FO: Tuxedo Tank

I wanted to make at least one truly summery project this summer, so I chose this one, the Sleeveless Tuxedo Shirt, by Theresa Schabes, Interweave Knits, Summer 2008. I decided to make it with Elizabeth Lavold Hempathy, which is a lovely yarn, and this is a beautiful green color, but difficult to photograph accurately. Even with a bit of color adjustment it isn't quite as irresistible a color as it is in person. Having run into trouble knitting with plant fiber yarn before (see Molly Ringwald vest for some of the gory details if you wish,) I was very careful to knit and wash a gauge swatch for this, and then to account for the way the yarn changes. As expected the swatch expanded horizontally, and shrunk vertically, and this yarn was just not going to give me the gauge the pattern demanded, so I ended up knitting the smallest size with regard to stitch counts, and my size (39) with regard to vertical directions, plus an adjustment for the way it was going to change when I washed it.

And in the end, it was worth it, the shirt is exactly the right size, the only problems remaining are the tendency of the buttons to come undone with hardly any provocation, a problem I intend to remedy by sewing them closed, and the way the beautiful drapey linen-like fabric hugs my extra um, well, curves...I am undecided about whether to give it to someone whose figure can stand up to the fabric, or to keep it and hope that faithful daily swimming changes my figure enough to wear it well.

It is really bloody cute, I love the crochet ruffles and the lace panels in front. I learned a lot of cool tricks with this sweater too. For example, to weave ends in on a reverse stockinette stitch garment, the trick is to go horizontally, so that if they peek through, they just look like another of the little horizontal edges of the stitches. I learned how to p2tog tbl..not something to do for fun, but fascinating the way it looks like a k2tog on the other side of the fabric. If you don't like seaming and finishing, this is not the project for you. I imagine you could knit in the round for the body, but there are two rows of sc around the bottom, and rows around the armholes and neck. It took several hours of finishing to actually finish.

All in all I call it a success, a Ravelry happy face. The project bears no responsibility for my figure flaws after all.

Save the Knittn' Kitten

Just to let you know, there is a cool craft thrift shop in Portland called Knittn' Kitten that Leethal is on a campaign to save..read all about it on her blog. I haven't even been there, but it sounds pretty awesome.

FO: Just Enough Ruffles

I have finished another wintry project in August, and I still can't explain exactly why, except that it was more fun than the miles of stockinette the tank top requires. I bought this lovely LSS (Luscious Single Silk) yarn by Blue Moon Fiber Arts at the booth at Black Sheep Gathering. It cost about 30$, but there is 500 yards in the skein, and it was so soft, I finally went for it.It is a 50:50 Merino Silk single ply yarn, and I picked the colorway Beached.
I had a hard time deciding what to make with it, since I wanted to use it all, and 500 yards of a worsted weight yarn is somehow an awkward amount. While browsing through Ravelry's pattern suggestion list, I saw this scarf, and since it was already in my queue, I decided upon Laura Chau's Just Enough Ruffles scarf pattern.

Having just finished the Milkweed Shawl, I am presently quite enamored of Laura Chau, so I decided I would make something else with the rest of the yarn and cast on for this. I cast on 240 stitches to make up for the gauge difference, and after a few weeks I had this lovely scarf.

The yarn feels so lovely against my neck that I am tempted to wear it even now in the summer.

I unfortunately was wearing a badly clashing shirt when I seized the opportunity of getting photos taken this morning. I thought it wouldn't matter much, but the eyes really cannot focus well on the variegated scarf against the red checked shirt. It is really unfortunate, since for once we managed to get some photos with a fairly normal expression on my face. And only once did David say "Your face looks funny." To which I replied, "It would be more polite and accurate to say, "You have a funny expression on your face" I swear he sometimes takes the stereotype of the socially inept physicist to new heights!

Pattern: Just Enough Ruffles by Laura Chau

Modifications: Cast on 240 stitches rather than 200

Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Luscious Single Silk in Beached

FO: Shetland Triangle

I finally made the ever popular Shetland Triangle Shawl by Evelyn Clark from the Wrap Style book. I used the laceweight alpaca that I mentioned in the previous post. This will be a Christmas present for my MIL, Penny, who was with me when I bought the fiber, and who hurt her elbow trying to use the hand carders to process it. We managed about half of what we bought with the hand carders, and that is the slightly lumpy green stuff that I also showed you previously.

The rest of it I sent off to Fantasy Fibers to be carded into a thin roving, which spun up into this fuzzy 2-ply yarn. I used a size four needle instead of the 8's called for in the pattern because I used laceweight instead of fingering weight, and I managed an extra five repeats of the body pattern before beginning the edging. I did have to omit two rows of the edging because I ran low on yarn, so possibly should have only done 4 extra repeats, but I wanted to use up as much of the yarn as I could and I wanted the shawl to be as large as possible.

I had some trouble getting good photographs, for some reason the color is difficult and my camera is over exposing things, so they all have to be edited to increase the contrast. I am not sure if there is something on my camera I could change to alleviate this or not.

I had fun with Alexa, she looks adorable in it. Of course I think she is adorable anyway, so it doesn't have a lot to do with the shawl!

Sock Summit: The people

If you were there, you know how amazing, huge, and overwhelming it was. I know everyone will blog their experiences there, so if you couldn't go, you can at least see what it was like a little bit. I have so much I wanted to say, and I know I will forget most of it, but I thought I would start with a post about the people. Here I am with Beth (littledog on Ravelry) at the Ravelry party. The party was fantastic, if you got there early you got a cool goody bag, and I was there right at 7:00. (I was just a little bit excited to meet Jess and Casey and Mary Heather. And now there is a fourth Ravelry employee, whose name I have unforgivably forgotten.) Anyway, Beth was kind enough to put me up for the night in her guest room..which is awesome because it is also her yarn and fiber storage area, so I got to sleep next to the wool all night. Mmmm.. We only took one small detour trying to get to the convention center the next morning! This is a person whose name I again forgot, but who had the coolest knitted hood, in one of my current favorite colors no less. She lives in Portland I think, so if you know her name, please tell me!

And I got to meet Christi! Christi was one of my first Ravelry "friends." I found her through that friend finder thing that recommends friends for you based on how many patterns you have in common. I have been reading her blog ever since, and she made me a cool pattern row counter, which some of you may have seen, and which got me though the ginormous aran sweater project safely. I was so thrilled to finally meet her, since she came all the way from Charlotte NC for Sock Summit!

And of course I was thrilled to see Stephenie Pearl-McPhee in person for the first time. Who doesn't read her blog! Unfortunately I was exhausted, and celebrity sticken, and all I said was, "I'm Brandy" and "do you mind a photo?" and she didn't hear my shy little voice, and inscribed my book "To Randy", but hey, maybe I'll have another chance sometime, and can get up the guts to say something like "Thanks for your blog, which I read every entry of, and for your books, which I love, and which make me feel understood and normal, despite being a person obsessed with yarn and fiber." But probably I will just say "Hi, my name is Brandy, but you can call me Randy if you want."

And these are the folks I sat with during the World Record attempt! The lady right next to me came all the way from St. Paul Minnesota, and was very kind and friendly, so we had a good time knitting together. BTW, I knit a swatch with the handspun that April gave me, so her yarn participated in the big event!

Here is a picture of the room full of people knitting on straight needles. The lady who is walking, and therefore blurry, was wearing a beautiful shawl, which I am pretty sure is knit from Kauni. Gorgeous.

I also got to meet Carrie, just briefly in the hallway. I love to read her blog, and knew she would be there, and she was wearing her beautiful February Lady Sweater. Seeing some of the knits that I have seen in photographs was almost as fun as meeting the people!