Christmas Knitting wrapup

The holidays are almost over (we're just waiting 'til midnight so we can go to bed :). And I finished the major knitting projects of my first Christmas as a knitter! So without further ado...

Carl's hat - has already been posted a couple of times, but here's one more action shot, at the Oregon coast on Christmas eve:

Dad's scarf - I haven't blogged this one before - but I got the yarn in Japan, not knowing what I'd do with it. I never did manage to post part II of my Japan trip travelogue (and wow, that was > 5 months ago now!), but I visited a wonderful "natural dying" yarn store called Mother Earth, which was actually rather near the vendor's factory in Yamanashi. It was pretty funny, having my rather proper male sales engineer (who knew nothing about knitting) translate yarn labels - I really do need to finish blogging it. Anyway, eventually (actually, in Arizona in October)the yarn decided to be a scarf, in a simple lace rib stitch. I held two strands together throughout - always a medium brown, alternating a light tan and dark brown held with it. Hopefully the ribby-ness makes it warmish, although even doubled the yarn was rather thin.
Oh, by the way, if anyone reading this can send me a pic of the scarf stitching closeup, I'd appreciate it - forgot to take one...

Mom's bag - (Ravelry project link) - this is the big, modular project that I couldn't post about since she reads my blog. Many many shells! Pretty easy knit (especially since you don't need to weave in the gazillion ends that well, since it is felted), though a tad tedious. It was odd to be knitting a felted item on only size 8 needles (to keep the stitch pattern visible, I presume), but it worked out fine. Note the blue and gray color scheme, of course (Mom is a huge Civil War buff).

final pose:

Closer up views of it post felting (including one with it next to a felted bowl she made me for Christmas!). I love the bottom of the bag, where the shells come together - so symmetrical!









(did I mention I was running around the house, back and forth to the laundry room, felting it on 12/23 while everyone watched football? And that it blocked (on a bucket balanced on a table lamp on a garbage can!) and mostly dried through Christmas eve night? And it was still a wee bit damp when opened Christmas morning. Talk about last minute finishing!)

Here it is after finishing, but before felting.





Finally, a couple of pics of it under construction. It took basically a little over a month all told, though I wasn't working as hard on it as I could have. I might be tempted to make one for myself after I've had time to knock out a few smaller things :). I like the one one the right, since Mom made me those mitts almost exactly a year ago, right before I started knitting.









and finally, a picture from our impromptu day trip to the coast on Christmas eve. May you have a peaceful and/or exciting New Year!

Odds and ends and holidays!

Well, I'm briefly back from extended blogging hiatus. Referencing the previous post, I finished all the modular pieces (reduced the number of repeats, so it was actually 76 not 84) and most of the finishing on the big modular work. It's actually blocking upstairs, hopefully will dry before Christmas day :).

I got 4 of the minor gift "A" done and shipped off 3 of them (the others will become a New Year's gift instead of Christmas), plus the dragon scarf and gorilla vest. Phew!

Plus, a couple weeks back we went to a geocaching holiday party with a "white elephant" secret santa exchange. We were supposed to bring something <$10 and possibly funny. So I busted into my stash, whipped out the extra-bulky yarn I used for my first scarf, and (using guideline from the book "Knitting Rules" by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (aka the Yarn Harlot)), managed to create a hat that actually was fought over at the gift exchange.

So, FO: White eleph-hat
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-ease thick 'n'quick, ~0.55 skeins oatmeal-ish color, and small amounts of blue and green.
Needles: US 10.5 circular (a longish one to magic loop)
General scheme: CO 48 stitches with MC. Work in 1x1 rib for a couple of inches (I wish I'd done it longer to make it easier to turn up at the brim). Then I did purl rounds in the main color with 8 2-stitch knit vertical stripes alternating green and blue. I did some twists in these, but the yarn is so bulky, they didn't really show. I made bobbins for the vertical stripes, and twisted them with the main color as it went across - sort of a hybrid intarsia / fair isle thing. Knit til it was as tall as Andy's hand, then decreased (K2tog before the stripes) so that the stripes came together at the top of the hat.

Oh, and what did we get in the white elephant gift exchange? Why, a beer mug night light, of course!

Here's the dragon scarf; and I can't show the gorilla vest yet, because there's kind of a cute surprise on it :)

In non-knitting news, my parents and brother are spending the holidays here. We've had a nice dinner downtown, hit Powells books twice now, did a hike, and went to a u-cut tree farm hunting the perfect Christmas Tree. We found it! I don't have a good picture of it all decorated - here is the before shot, though (with Carl cleaning up the result of a small overwatering issue)

And here are a few pics from our hike to Wahclella Falls in the Columbia River Gorge the other day.

<- Mom and Dad in front of waterfall...

Carl contemplating waterfall (note the hat!) ->


Full view of the waterfall:


And finally, a zoomed shot of Table Mountain, which we had a great view of on the way back down the trail. It's across the gorge on the Washington side, and I'm very pleased with how our new camera's 10x zoom performed.


Happy Holidays!

Knitting by Numbers

Number of major Christmas gifts still not finished knitting: 1
Number of individual (modular) units making up this project: 84 (!)
Number modular pieces knitted so far: 26
Number of additional minor gifts I'd like to do, ideally: 10
Number done: 0
Number of "gift A": 8
Number of "gift B" (which is a sweater for a gorilla :): 1
Number of "gift C" (which is a scarf for a dragon:): 1

Number of all of these that are for readers of my lil blog: 10

Number of posts actually containing current knitting pictures said readers of blog can expect before Christmas: very very few.

In other news, I wore my hat on the long walk from the parking lot to work this morning, and at 34 degrees out it kept me nice 'n toasty. And not itchy! Yay, baby alpaca!

To tide the blog over, here's a picture from June of my first magic loop sock. I finished it a few days later. There is not yet a second sock, which is why I haven't really posted about the project. But eventually there will be! Hey readers, what's the longest you've taken between 2 socks of a pair?

FO: Peekaboo Cloche from Lace Style

Here she is... finished on Sunday, blocked on Monday (isn't that part of a children's rhyme?). The washing/blocking really made it super-soft and drapey, which is good and bad; I love the softness, but kind of wish it had a little more structure. It's definitely a bit too big; I'm considering folding it in on itself a bit, but will probably test wear it a few times. Should have gone down a needle size! Ah well, I have a small head :)

The only good pictures I could get were in the bathroom (best light) with no flash. So excuse the inanity of this one:

And here is the lovely pentagon decrease at the top:

I've come to the conclusion that I really like lacework - the way the pattern develops, the interesting stitching - but I don't think I'd have the time for anything bigger than this hat. I was coming home from work in the evening and getting 1, maybe 2, lace rows done, which is not conducive to quick finishing by any means. And the rows were only 90 stitches long! (er, wide?). But I look forward to doing more patterns with lace edgings, sleeves, etc. And part of me really wants to try a shawl, and see the transformation from unblocked clump of super-fine yarn to blocked majesty of intricate patterns. But it would take abso-freakin forever. So, probably I'll just live vacariously through lace knitters like Titianknitter, who is also a French Horn teacher!

So here are the stats on this hat:

"Peekaboo Cloche" from Lace Style.
Yarn: Misti International's Misti Alpaca Suri Silk (80% baby alpaca, 20% silk - decadent!). Peridot (green) for the inside, Amethyst (purple) for the outside lace, and Sapphire (blue) for the bottom 1.5" of the inside and top 3" of the outside. It's colorful :)
Needles: For the inside green stockinette: 3mm, which is either US size 2.5 or 3 depending on who you ask. For the outside, purple and then blue lace: US 4 / 3.5 mm.
Gauge: Only the stockinette inner layer gauge was specified, and a I hit stitch gauge at 13 st/2", but was woefully off at 17 rows/2 inches when it should have been 22 rows/2 inches. This was partly why it ended up big (also, as noted above, I have a small head!)

Lace Hat continued...

I'm almost almost done with the Peek-a-boo Cloche from Lace Style. I've now officially run out of purple for the top outer layer (just before the decreasing starts, dang, that would have been a better breaking point). But the blue will do, and it's so nice and squishy and soft, and almost done... Of course the nice thing about working magic loop on a long circular is that you can pull the needle ends out, leave the cable in, and try it on!

See the green poking through the lace? It's actually a bit brighter - like new spring leaves - in person. Yum.

Oh, and I ordered a ball winder (snicker) from Joann.com using a 50% off coupon. Yay! I am not particularly fond of winding the skeins by hand, so this should be useful, considering some of the stash acquisition that has occured recently.. And we may try to make a homemade swift as well... we (mostly Andy) built a workbench in the garage last spring, but it hasn't gotten much use yet. This might be a nice first major project for it. Check it out in Andy's much-neglected blog (scroll down 3 posts to the one labeled "Workbench!" - it's homemade blogging software and doesn't let you link to just one post)

Can you believe Thanksgiving is next week? What the heck?!?

Frust-lace-ion

Taking a break from my hat to do a little blogging. I got comfortably into the lace outer shell pattern (well, 7 rows in, enough to start to get a sense of the thing), dropped a couple of stitches, must have left my guard down and didn't pick them up correctly, and ended up with a huge hole and several lonely horizontal strand waving at me. Gah! So I just ripped it back and am in the process of trying to get the stitches up on the needle again. Lesson: Lace in front of football = not a good idea, even if you're not paying particular attention (Dallas / Philly; we're just recovering from hosting a Pats/Colts game party).

But, in related news, the twins for whom I knit the booties of a few posts ago were here for the party, and their parents told me the booties are not too small! Yay! I had dropped them off with their dad at work on Friday. I am promised pics in action, but in the meantime, do admire the cuteness of Zach and Izzy - I especially like the halloween costume pics!

Anyway... as a diversion from the lace-tastrophe (OK, I'm being dramatic, but it's fun...), I wanted to point the small but wonderful readership of this blog over to my college roomie KT's blogiversary contest! Give her an idea or two for Christmas knitting (she's looking for fave patterns for fingerless gloves, bulky hats, bags, felted bowls, and other things) and you might win! And of course, if you have a blog, you can get another entry for posting about the contest there. She's also got mad free patterns if you're looking for some inspiration of your own.

OK. Break accomplished. I think I'll head to the living room and knit to music instead of football. Speaking of music, I'm bummed - the Decemberists just cancelled their tour. We were looking forward to seeing them again in December, though at least we just saw them in July at a rocking outdoor show in Portland. They say that an unspecified bandmember is ill, which in any other band would be code for "in rehab", but since they play the music they do ("hyperliterate Prog Rock" according to Stephen Colbert) I tend to believer them at face value. Feel better, unspecified Decemberist!

Halloweeknits and Ravelry

First off, Happy Halloween! I'm feeling chatty tonight, so a reasonably long post is forthcoming...

This is how halloween went at the Parallel house:
Knit 4, Purl 4, Knit 4, Purl 2... ding-dong! Trick'or'treat! "You can take 3 candies"... "How many have you got there? You can take three" (to small boy, old enough to count I'm pretty sure, clutching big handful. Response: "tree!"). "Really, how many do you have?" ("tree!"). "Can you show your dad (standing at the end of the walk) how many three is?" (boy turns around displays handful of 6 or 7 candies to waiting father, who grins and shakes his head)... "OK, happy halloween, give some of those to your dad :D".

So. Cute.! (and yeah, maybe he was old enough to count but not to interpret). We had relatively few surly teenagers, though we did have one group of ~16 year olds dressed in far less clothing than I would have ever considered wearing at that age, including some kind of "sexy gypsy" type thing with massive cleavage and even a couple of beads shoved in there for decoration. But at least they were polite!

Anyway, in between answering the door (Andy and I alternate the primary candy-wrangling duties, but usually both open it to see the costumes), I would knit some. The previous example would probably end up: "sit down... Purl 4, Knit 4, Purl 4, wait, this doesn't look right, dangit!". I'm working a diagonal rib in the round which is all K4P4, but each round is staggered. Takes a little more concentration than "K the Ks and P the Ps".

And what am I knitting? My latest WIP, the Peekaboo Cloche from Lace Style (pic is a FO by someone else; book is linked on the sidebar since the blog is a KAL (got that acronym, mom?)). It's a stockinette inner layer with a lace outer layer in contrasting color. I picked up some gorgeous Misti Alpaca Suri Silk in Phoenix: Peridot (bright green) for the inner layer, Amethyst (bright purple) for the lace top. And since the pattern calls for yarn that has more yards/skein, 1 skein for each inner and outer, I grabbed a 3rd, sapphire (medium blue) for extras just in case.

I've now exhausted the green and had to use a bit of blue for the last inch of the inner layer. I'm halfway through the brim (aforementioned K4P4 diagonal rib) and should get to start the lace tomorrow! My row gauge is off, so the hat is a bit longer than the pattern - but that's OK, I prefer a hat to pull down over my ears rather than the really tight cloche style anyway.

Here's the inner lining in progress a few days ago:


and the current status, in the spirit of the evening. I've just joined the purple for the outside of the brim. I can't wait to get the lace started.
And oh, the yarn is so very soft! Just like baby alpacas! Andy and I petted a couple of those last weekend (real live baby alpacas) and they are so so so soft - softer than their mommies. We visited Cascade Alpacas in Hood River, and they have a little vending machine with alpaca food and the 'pacas come running. They're awfully skittish though...

Anyway, I have pictures of the yarn and other bits up at Ravelry now, too. Don't know Ravelry? If you're a knitter (or crocheter), add yourself to the invite list yesterday! Even if you're not into cataloging your stash, tracking your projects and posting them to the searchable database, or chatting in forums, you'll find the searchable pattern and yarn database, with tons of user-uploaded pictures, irresistable (if a teeny bit clunky sometimes - but it's still in Beta). My handle over there is Parallel :)