Miniature hats take a lot less time

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

Here is the current state of my my "boring tan sock yarn" that matches yours:

I'm thinking about what sort of sock I'm going to make with it -- probably an original pattern. It was soooo great to visit with you, even if only for a couple of hours, while I was in Fort Wayne a couple of weeks ago! Next time we'll have to make sure we have some time to knit...

I've had a whirlwind week at school, and let's just say that I survived, even having to leave early yesterday to care for my sick seven year old. 41% of my ortho grade was determined within a span of 24 hours (and included three different, though all high-stress, assessments). I also had to give a 20 minute presentation for a different class on Tuesday, but now I am virtually done with that class for the rest of the year. Big sigh of relief, so today I'm here to tell you about actual knitting progress.

I finished the pair of Tofutsies socks on our way home from Fort Wayne:

I used the "Diagonal Lace" pattern from the Wendy Knits book "Socks from the Toe Up." It's the first time I've used the "heel flap" style on a toe-up sock:

It will be interesting to wear these socks which contain fiber from shrimp and crab shells...

I also finished a cute little hat ornament, shown here with a can of soda for scale:

I *LOVE* the beads! It is from a Blackberry Ridge kit, "Mini Hat and Mitten Ornaments," and there should be enough materials for me to make all of the ornaments shown on the front of the pattern. I'm not sure if I'll keep them or give them away as gifts... Nice to tackle something which I can finish in a reasonable amount of time given my schedule these days.

I am contemplating making sweatshirt/hoodies for DH and the boys for Christmas. Recall that I did this last year, and though I finished them at the final hour, it was not without a certain amount of stress. I get done with classes/exams on December 22nd, I think, so not sure if such an idea would be wise with the rest of my obligations... Well, actually, I'm quite certain that such an idea is *unwise* and *unrealistic*...but isn't that how we knitters/sewers are? Anyway, stay tuned to see if sanity reigns or not...

I hope this finds you all well! I'm going to go make another knitted ornament :-)

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)

Happy Anniversary!

Greetings and Dear Laura:

Oh, it was so fun to get to see you last weekend! Too short, but that's always the way of it. And how fun to figure out that it was 10 years ago in the fall that we traveled to Duluth together and came back knitters! (And you first started suspecting that you were having a baby!) What a great trip. I look back at that time and marvel that so much of how I thought my life would be 10 years later (if I had indeed thought much about it) is nowhere near how the reality has turned out to be. High on the list of "I wouldn't have believed it if you told me" is the size of my stash - not to mention all of the things that I have knitted!

We took a look back at that trip when we started the blog almost four years ago. I thought I'd post a link to your story, and also to mine. I think that if on that trip we had tried to look forward 10 years to what we might be doing, if we had accurately predicted our knitting obsession in any fashion, we would not have predicted the yarn that we both purchased on our Anniversary Trip to the yarn store! Probably even if we had discussed it before we walked into the store, we wouldn't have thought we'd each buy this:

Tan-colored sock yarn! But we have a long term plan that will be revealed in the fullness of time.

As I mentioned, I posted to the blog 3-4 times while I was at Stitches Midwest, and due to some convergence of the planets in the internet arena, all of those posts disappeared into cyberspace, never to be recovered. I'm (mostly) over my bitterness, and I'll catch up with posting soon! ;)

Keep knitting!


Cynthia (aka Designated Knitter)
-- Post From My iPhone

Done Done

Dale of Norway pattern book:

$12.00 each.

Yarn to make Ibenholt sweater:

$100.00 each.

Being completely done knitting two Ibenholt sweaters for the rest of our lives:

Priceless !!!!

(Sharing a great hobby like knitting with your mom: Also priceless!!!! Hi Mom :-)

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)

Ibenholt Ibenholt

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

Well, school started about three weeks ago, and I am swamped. It's all interesting, though still a lot of work.

Let's talk about Ibenholt. I knit this sweater for myself about a year ago, and it has been sitting waiting for me to sew in the zipper since then. Also, my mom was making the same sweater at the same time, as a sort of "knit along across the miles." You may remember that my mom reached the point of "being done" with her Ibenholt sweater last spring, when my dad told me to finish knitting it for her because my mom wouldn't let him talk to her when she was working on it, and she was working on it every night...so I brought it home with me at the point of dividing for the fronts and back. I managed to finish knitting most of it while we were on vacation at the end of August, so last weekend I finished sewing the sleeves in:

This means that I now have **two** Ibenholt sweaters, both at the point of being done except for sewing the zipper in... I am motivated to have them done within the next week, however, because we are going to a Brewers game with my parents, and so will see my parents, and I can give the sweater to my mom *in person*. I thought about mailing the sweater to my mom, but I am taking no chances of losing it in shipping...

Speaking of the Brewers game -- DH is a Phillies fan. He read a book some time ago called, "The 33 Year Old Rookie," and the author, a guy named Chris Coste, was so inspiring that DH started following the Phillies because they are the team that finally gave Chris Coste a chance in the majors. So, for the past couple of years, DH has been trying to figure out a reasonable way to go see the Phillies play. A few months ago, DH purchased tickets to a Brewers vs Phillies game which will be played in Milwaukee toward the end of this month. YAY -- a dream come true, except that about three days *after* he bought the tickets, Chris Coste was traded to the Astros... Anyway, it's been decades since I've seen the Brewers play, so I know the game will be fun, none-the-less...and my mom will hopefully be wearing her new sweater (I *am* going to get that zipper sewn in...).

In completely unrelated news, I found two little home-made sets of shelves at a rummage sale, in a nice lime green color. Here is one of them sitting in our garage:

I painted them white, and now they hold all of my school books and some sewing stuff. It really cleaned up my work room quite a bit, getting rid of three crates and opening up floor space where my school stuff was housed before. I still have some organizing to do in my work room, but this is a nice start:

Notice my Ibenholt sweater patiently waiting for me to sew in its zipper...

Well, I'll take a photo of my mom and me wearing our twin Ibenholt sweaters and share it with you. I hope you had a great time at the Stitches Midwest Market!! Of course I'm expecting a full report :-)

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)

Sock O Rama

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

Thank you for fixing our blog graphics, and for cleaning it up in general!  Much improved!  Also, nice to have our header back...

Here is some sock yarn I bought back in May, in colors I wouldn't have normally gravitated to without my mom telling me to get out of my comfort zone:

It probably seems tame to you, but the green in particular seems odd to me, though I'm committed to making socks out of it and wearing them proudly.  Also, does anybody have any suggestions for patterns (other than plain stockinette) which would work well with the Kaffe Fasset stripes, shown on the right in the photo above?  I was thinking about Monkey socks, but the pattern might be lost in the colors/stripes?  (Also, Cindy G, that is a "top down" pattern, just sayin'.)

Second, you've seen both sets of these socks in progress, but now they are finished.  This pair is just a standard toe-up short row heel pattern using Trekking yarn, size 1 needles:

They don't match, but that is part of their charm, right?!   It's not clear to me that the yarn had actual pattern repeats in it, so it's not my fault  :-)   so the perfectionist side of myself is being forced to just "let it go." 

This next pair is the "Gusset Heel Basic Socks" from the book "Socks from the Toe Up" by Wendy:

A close-up of the heel:

To orient yourself, you are looking at a lateral view;  the part on the left shows the back of the heel, and the part on the right shows the bottom of the heel.  My 9-year old took these photos, and he told me that I would have to tell you exactly what you are looking at, because it's not otherwise obvious.  It is an interesting heel construction, and quite different from any others I've made, though it's much more straightforward than typical short row heels which involve lots of wraps and turns, so in that respect, this would be a good choice for less experienced knitters, or for knitters who are not overly fond of lots of wraps and turns (ahem).

I'm working on another pair of socks from the same book, called "Diagonal Lace Socks."  This pattern utilizes a more conventional heel style (Sl 1, K1 every other row, etc), though worked from the toe up, and I only had to wrap and turn 8 times during the whole thing (for eight short rows, while turning the heel). 

This yarn is TOFUtSies, made of 50% superwash wool, 25% soysilk, 22.5% cotton, and 2.5% chitin.  I was curious about making socks out of something that came from shrimp and crab shells, and I don't know why that makes it antibacterial, but there you have it!  Nice yarn, to say the least...

I also have three sweaters which I dug out of hibernation, and which *SHALL BE FINISHED* before I even think about casting on for another sweater.  I hope to have at least one of them completed before my next post (which may even happen this week -- just warning you, because I know that it could catch you off guard -- but hey, I have no classes for more than two weeks!!)

More soon!

Have a great week!

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)

Sweater bands, take two.

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

First, I don't know where our blog header is.  I suspect my DH might have done something with our web repository (moved it?....so the blog can no longer access the proper files??) - I'll try to figure out what is going on with that so our graphics return to their rightful places...

Second, you have some of the most unusual projects I've ever read about.  I think you're the only person I've ever known who has assisted in building a windmill.  Also, the only person I've ever known who had to retrieve her sheets out of the treetops.  And, there was that cow sling thing that you knit...  My sweaters/socks pale by comparison.  Maybe I'll try to knit in a tree or something...

I have two very large tests next week, so I thought I'd take a little time right now to procrastinate by posting to our blog.  After Wednesday, I'm *DONE* with school for the summer.  Then I have two weeks off to clean our bathrooms, mop the floors, haul the dust away, and get myself and the boys ready for school...  I've got lists of things to accomplish;  if I get even half of it done, I'll be thrilled.

Remember my Basic Chic Hoodie?  I really love the pattern and the way it's turning out, and as I work on it, I keep thinking about what other colors or stitch patterns I'll use when I make the next one of these.    For now, however, I really should focus on what I'm doing...for example, when picking up needles to knit the front band, I maybe should have checked the actual needle size called for in the pattern *before* I completed the entire front band.  Here it is with size 6 needles:

Difficult to see, but perhaps you noticed, ahem,  some significant puckering, which didn't look nearly as bad when it was on the needles, really....but it was too much to try to block out and live with, so I ripped it all out and re-knit with size 7 needles, as called for.  

I used "one-row buttonholes", which are my favorite ever buttonholes, over three stitches. And, instead of following the directions for number of stitches to pick up, I did my usual "pick up three stitches for every four rows" method, and I came within two stitches of what the directions suggested.  Also, the directions have you make the left front and right front bands separately, and then seam the right band to the left band where the hood seam is.  I decided to pick up all of the stitches at once and make both sides at the same time, so no seam.  Just a few more stitches to bind off of the front band, and some additional finishing, and I'll post a picture of me wearing the completely sweater (which seems to have taken forever -- school has really cramped my knitting productivity).

It's a rainy, rainy Saturday, and I really have to get back to studying.  In my next post, I'll have some sock yarn stash enhancement from a couple of months ago when my mom made me buy bright colors I would not be inclined to purchase on my own (which I know you don't believe actually happened), as well as two pairs of finished socks.  

More soon!

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)

Tulips it is!

Thank you all for helping me decide to make this lovely sweater for Katelynne. I didn't quite get done on time for her party, but they came to visit a few days later, so she is all set for cool weather.



I made the 4T size, which is a bit big but all the better to grow into. I still love this pattern, which is good since I have so much of this yarn!

I was delayed in starting this sweater when I took a few days of knitting time to work with my brothers on some windmill repair for my aunt, and to help haul away the remains of a tree they took down for her. (My brothers are grand men!) My part of the windmill consisted of painting the red on the fins and taking pictures. My parents and two nieces came along for the installation and we had a great day! More pics can be seen here.





Great job on the slippers! I've been trying to decide how to make my moms slippers 'non-slip', so thank you for posting about that.

Keep knitting!

Cynthia

-- Post From My iPhone