no pictures :(

no pictures because i haven't been knitting anything this week. how sad. i have been studying instead, which is not all that bad. after all, i'm in college to learn stuff. now all i have left is to finish my english paper...
and no pictures because what i have been knitting is white and boring. it's a ribbed silk scarf for my dad which will eventually be dyed blue. i'm probably at about 2 feet out of 5 at this point. i'll work on it on the plane with my lovely wooden needles.
the exciting news is that i received my knitpicks order today: 2 skeins of undyed sockwool, 2 balls of white andean silk (also for dyeing) and several balls of palette for colorwork socks. and of course i have to overdye the palette yarns because the blue is too crayola. so...that means possibly a lot of dyeing when i go home this weekend. i'm hoping to make the undyed sock yarn self-striping. perhaps i'll have some pretty colored pictures in a few days...

getting ready for spring...

last night i decided to stay in and be a knitting dork. here's the front of the tank top i made last year while i was at pinewoods. its my first and only tank top, and i didn't follow a pattern (probably not a wise choice, but its been a good learning experience).

several problems...since its a cotton/rayon blend (knitpicks shine) i've washed it in the machine a few times and it's shrunk so that the lacy part comes up to high and exposes my bra (which is bad). to prevent this i tended to pull it down every 5 mins, which was so annoying that i did not look forward to wearing it.
this is the back. although it fits, the double decreases in the center are too lumpy and the seed stitch competes with the lace pattern. so, i decided to rip it out to below the seed st and re-knit it 2" longer and with better edging. this is what i've done so far:
you can see a line (near the bottom of the chest) where i ripped to, but i think this will disappear after a washing. i tried a simple yarnover edge instead of seed stitch. so far, much better.

a few days ago i made another swatch for the socks, this time with corrugated ribbing. not stretchy, but very pretty. i've decided on blue and light yellow but i haven't ordered it yet.

this isn't a very good picture, but i started a garter st scarf knit lengthwise with the mohair left over from the shawl. it's actually knit straight, not in the round as it appears. the ends on the right side of the photo will be fringes on either end of the scarf.









i really want to make a knit bunny.

new stuff!

so i decided that it's time i do some teeny fair isle. this swatch is 8.9 sts/in on size 1 needles. i got the idea from Eunny's blog. these were just the colors i happened to have around. i 'll probably make the socks blue and light yellow.
i tried to do two-handed fair isle, where you hold one color in the left hand and knit continental while knitting english with the other color in the right hand. i couldn't do this very well because i have trouble knitting english and keeping the tension the same without dropping everything. oh well, maybe another time i'll figure it out. so for now i'm holding both strands with my left hand, which seems to work fine.
about two weeks ago at 2 am i decided i just had to start a lace scarf. hopefully it will be better after blocking...

are you tired of purple lace yet?

yeah, i thought so. i'm a bit tired of it too, so i decided to photoshop the first two of these photos so you can see the sock in different colors.

blue looks pretty good, doesn't it?

it's a short-row heel with a slip-stitch pattern and a gusset. it's a tight fitting sock (51 sts on sz 1 needles) so i increased to 59 sts since that area is usually the tightest for me. also, gussets are pretty.

this is the first one. i'm almost finished, i just need to do the ribbing and on the second one i'm almost at the heel. i really like this pattern.

3 purple FO's this week!

this is a fan and feather scarf made from knitpick's suri dream. its soft and fluffy and about 5 ft long. it's for either my mother or grandmother, not sure yet.i finished my second purple sock! they fit great, even though the heels are different (the one on top is a peasant heel, which is almost identical to the toe). i promise a better photo after they're washed and i feel like doing acrobatics to take pictures of them on my feet :)

this made me giggle

go HERE

i was tempted to chop the head off this one...

i finished my shawl. see the cute little knot and yo edge?

pretty...closeups. on the right: the yo/sewn bind off edge (on the two short sides) compared to the slip-stitch/yo edge (long side). on the left: yo v's in the center
this is an entrelace bag i started a few days ago. it's made from various green and blue leftovers and i plan to felt it when it's done. i'm also working on those purple socks but the progress photo was too boring to post.

purple sock update

sock #1 is finished!
feel free to skip all my rambling - i'm discussing how i would change my methods next time...

i am mostly happy with it - it fits quite well and the worsted/fingering weight combo haven't spontaneously combusted (yet!). one weird issue is that the lace pattern takes up more space lengthwise than plain stockinette stitch, so the top part of the foot is longer than the bottom. this isn't a huge problem, but i could probably fix it with some occasional short rows on the bottom. i'm not sure if it's worth it.
also, the cast-on is messy and on the heel the transition from thinner to thicker is smoother than going from thicker to thinner (you can't see it very much in the picture but i'll take another one when i finish the second sock). i'm thinking that on the second sock i'll use an "afterthought" type heel, which is worked from pulling out scrap yarn and making a heel-shaped thing. if i do that then i'll only have to transition from thinner to thicker and i won't have holes and chunky spots from my shorts rows (which i need to learn how to do better at some point).

here's a closeup of the toe:

i'm also making process on the mohair shawl, but it's difficult to see anything until it's finished...

its been awhile...

ok, i just gave on on putting the pictures in the order that i want. how am i supposed to move stuff around when the pictures are as big as the window???

here is a WIP made from pink yarn i found at a thrift shop and dyed and some leftover lambs pride. the heel and toe will be worsted weight while the rest is sock weight - the idea is the my toes will stay warm and the heel will wear well - its an experiment. i'm not crazy about this short-row heel in worsted weight. i might try a different kind in the other sock.

my finished embossed leaves socks. the yarn is knitpicks which i dyed. i like them a lot, but next time i would make the cuff much shorter and perhaps a bit tighter.






this is a shawl i'm making from the mohair chloe gave me from paris. i dyed it in the ball because i thought skeining and dying might make it stick together too much and/or be really really annoying to ball afterwards. the third ball is somewhere at the bottom of my sack of yarn.ps: that's the view from my dorm window. the snow is gross and wet and melty

first, chloe and karen modeling the scarves i gave them:
right now i'm in florida, but before i left i dyed the lovely mohair yarn chloe gave me. its purple and blue and the three skeins don't match exactly because i dyed it by putting a skein halfway in a cup of dye and putting it in the microwave. i started to make a lace shawl out of it but i was only increasing 2 sts every other row so it was making a weird diamond shape and the pattern was too complicated for the colors. so i ripped it out and i'm going to make one like chloe's blue and white alpaca cloud shawl.
i also finished one embossed leaves sock but i left my camera cord at school so i have to wait until i get back to bklyn to upload using more clever/annoying methods. chloe i promise i'm not trying to copy all your projects, you just have such great knitting.

gifts (mostly)

1. mittens for a friend who likes silly purple things:

2. headband for me:

3. hat for mom (same braided cable as my headband):

the theme is green and stripey

Surprisingly, the fish isn't one of the green and stripey things.

A sock and a fishtale:I learned how to do a jogless join between stripes!

mitten!

gosh its been awhile...here's what i was doing while laughing at the silly old men in my family on thanksgiving. a mitten i made from knitpicks yarn (dark green) and some kool-aid dyed wool in pretty kool-aid colors. check out the self-diagonal-striping effect on the cuff :)i promise after this i'll stop showing pictures of this spinning uptil i finish whatever i'm making with it, but...

purple spinning

So, I'm sitting in the library not working on my lab report and I thought it would be a good time for a post. I finished my red sweater, but I don't have a picture yet. It fits really well and turned out pretty much how I wanted. The sleeves are longer than they need to be, but they keep my hands warm.
I've also been spinning this gorgeous merino/silk blend. There's 8 oz of fiber total, and so far I've spun about 80 yds laceweight and 117 yds heavy worsted. I couldn't decide how heavy I wanted to spin it, and I might want to ply the two together for an interesting texture. Here are some closeups of the heavier one:

blue, red, green and purple

ok, i've got a bunch of stuff (and pictures!) since i haven't posted in awhile...i guess i'll go in chronological order.
1. i made these gloves last may because a woman at the brooklyn children's museum development office (where i was interning) doesn't like alpaca and doesn't like bubblegum pink. so, she gave me her two skeins of knitpicks baby alpaca which i dyed cobolt blue with bits of pale purple peeking out (the yarn was heathered to start with, which helped, but i also let the dye absorb quickly, so that's why it's uneven). i was actually intending to dye it purple (since i have too many blue clothes already), but i like the effect i ended up with. anyway, i'm happy it's cold enough for me to wear them now! the pattern is based on http://www.wiseneedle.com/patternpage.asp?pattern=knitpatlily
2. i'm almost done with my red sweater! it my first sweater (though i made a tank top over the summer). i just have to finish the second sleeve and make the yoke.


3. if you hadn't noticed from my first posts, i love entrelac. i'm going to made some green entrelac socks. the little skein is some yarn that i wanted to use, but is way too thick to use with sz 0 needles. i dyed it to be brighter and it's sitting on a sock which is it's original color.


4. here is some merino/silk fiber i ordered on ebay. its soo soft and shiny and easy to spin (and less white than the picture shows).



ps: click on the pictures to see a bigger version

friday dyeing

I think dyeing has become my regular friday afternoon activity. its really perfect...at 4 on a friday i really don't want to do any work, or go to the gym, or clean my room, or do anything that involves thinking...but i don't want to just go to sleep, so it's really just what i need. this is some bulky knitpicks wool ("sierra") that was light blue and now is variegated blue and green. it's a little more green than i expected, but that's ok.

done!

yay! i'm done and i'm quite happy with it! it's about 5 1/2 ft long

scarf progress

my entrelac scarf is almost done! right now it's about 4 1/4 ft and should stretch a bit with blocking. i only have four more rows of squares left!

more pretty colors...

i started my entrelac scarf! i also got my knitpicks order today so i can make a dark red sweater, some blue and purple mittens and a hat (http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall04/
PATThallowig.html) in brown for jane in australia (jungledread.com). in exchange she's making me a felted ipod cover.