Legwarmers, Gaptastic & Starving Artist

I have some recent finished projects to share with you today!

 

First I have some cute little legwarmers I made for my new next door neighbor’s 12 month old daughter. For these simple legwarmers I cast on 48 stitches, and I did 2x2 ribbing for 6.75 inches (as per the girl’s leg measurements). I wanted a ribbed legwarmer so they hug her leg and don’t slouch or slide down like stockinette legwamers might. I used a total of 42g of yarn for them – a nice quick knit!

Next, I have the Gaptastic Cowl. I made this for a store sample as we just changed our window display this morning. So you can see this in the shop’s window for the next 6 weeks or so.  I loved knitting this. I used an entire skein of James C. Brett Marble Chunky in MC12 on a US 13 – 9.0 mm knitting needle. I want to make myself one next, in some stash yarn or something.

Lastly, which I just finished last night, I have a Starving Artist hat to show you. This was also knit up as a store sample, for our window display. I knit this hat up also using James C. Brett Marble Chunky (our window is all items knit up with this yarn) on US 10½ - 6.5 mm needles. The hat took 65g of yarn and was a quick knit as well.

 

I liked working with the Marble Chunky yarn. If you’ve made something with it or plan to make something with the yarn – do let me know!

Waiting for the School Bus

Sean discovered a new fun activity this morning and Mackenzie had to join in. This is how we waited for the school bus this morning…

I am glad neither of them were injured!

New Website!

I am very excited to announce my new work website! After a lot of work, it launched yesterday. Let me know what you think!

Craigslist Funnies

I saw this on Craigslist. I hope it’s still listed when you get to read it, if not, I have it saved, so just ask & I’ll share.

A Handy Chart

I just typed this up to keep at work, and in my knitting bag, and I wanted to share it with you guys, my readers. I am not sure where I got this chart from, as I had taken a screen shot of it with my iPad somewhere. So unfortunately I cannot credit the source, but I am not taking any credit for the information above. The chart gives you a list of the minimum amount of stitches you can put on a circular needle (circular needles in the lengths of 16”, 24”, 29” & 36”). At work we sell 16”, 24”, 32”, 40” (and some 47”) needles, which are almost the same as these above. I think 29 & 36” are more popular in the USA, than in Canada, but I am not 100% certain. So you figure out how many stitches per inch your yarn is, and here you have a guide to see what length circular needle you would need to use for your project.

Happy Knitting!

An Overdue IOU

I finally finished my husband’s socks which were an IOU from Christmas 2009. Back then, I wrote an IOU with a picture of a pair of socks and put them under the tree. I finally started them in April 2010, but I think I got “socked-out” for a while, because I didn’t touch them, nor any other pair of socks until I picked these back up recently to finish them. I finished them on December 15th, 2013. Just shy of 4 years after promising them. Oops! They are my own design, a pattern I call “Man Socks”. They are available on Ravelry for 2.99$. He loves them, and I am glad that I finally finished them!

Mom’s Lumio Hats

These Lumio hats are a ridiculously quick knit. After seeing my store sample hat, my mom wanted two for dog walking. One in black, and one in blue. I’ve previously made her a black and a blue cowl, so she wanted one to match each of her cowls. My parents have a Great Dane named Bosco and she wanted these hats for when she dog walks. This yarn has reflective bits in it, so people can see her at night (not that they would miss the dog…)

 

She also requested no pom pom on the hat (it still looks cute without the pom pom) since she sometimes puts her hood on when it’s extremely cold (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a reflective hat, if she’ll put on a hood… but anyhow)!

 

I knit up one on the evening of January 1st, and the other during the evening of January 2nd. I used my 10mm addis (16”) – which I love, and they were way too fast to knit. The blue hat is 81g and the black hat is 87g. I knit them both to the exact same length, so I am not sure why one hat weighs 6g more than the other. That kind of baffles me. Maybe one I weaved in more in length on the ends, or something.

I hope she likes them!

Color Affection

I started my Color Affection Shawl back on July 17th, 2013 with my knitting group. We started this shawl as a knit-a-long. More than half of our group worked on this shawl, and we’re about 13/14 maybe even 15 of us in our group. I got side tracked from it, working on smaller projects between starting it and finishing it, and then buying the wool shop back in September, kind of made my life a tad busier. My goal was to finish this in 2013. I came close to finishing it in 2013. I worked on it like mad for the last few days of the year (after finishing all my teachers gifts, and a few store samples that I had to do). However, I ran out of yarn on New Years Eve with 60 stitches left to cast off (At the end, there was over 425+ stitches in the edging).

I was in luck… I had in my stash, a 10g skein of an orange hand-dyed sock yarn that matched part of the Colinette Jitterbug Ginger Cinnabar that was in my shawl. However, I only found the skein on New Years Day, so I was able to finish casting off, and block my shawl. I thought I had enough to finish the edging. I needed in reality enough to make a 2” edge, as the pattern calls for, but I managed to get in 1 3/4” but… while I was doing my last few rows, I weighed the yarn after each row to see how much I used per row, to make sure I had enough to finish. I guess somehow I miscalculated by 60 stitches. But that’s ok… I managed to save my project with some miscellaneous matching almost to a tea, yarn.

At first, as soon as I cast-off, I hated this shawl. Not because of the color, because the color is stunning. I hated it, because, even though I did the yarn-overs at the beginning of each row as a lot of Ravelers have done, the shawl curled along the edge as it was extremely tight. It wouldn’t lay flat and I wanted to chuck it across the room in frustration. I did not notice this when I was knitting it. I can’t even describe what I mean. I probably should have taken pictures before blocking it.

My only hope was to block it. After blocking it, the shawl has redeemed itself a bit, luckily. It seems to be okay now.It still seems tight along the top edge, but blocking seems to help it lay flat. I wet blocked it on foam mats (first picture in this post) over night. Once it was dry in the morning, I un-pinned it.

Using 4.0mm (US6) needles, and Colinette Jitterbug yarn that I had in my stash since I owned Robyn’s Nest (my online yarn shop from 2007-2010), I used one full skein of the Ginger Cinnabar (orange) colorway, I used 0.85 of a skein of Elephant’s Dream and I used 1.13 skeins of Lobster Pinch (red). I still have 3.87 skeins of the Lobster Pinch and another full skein of Elephant’s Dream (blue) but the only one I had 1 skein of was the Ginger Cinnabar. If I would have realized that I needed more of the 2nd contrasting color, I would have used the Elephant’s Dream as the 2nd contrasting color instead of the Ginger Cinnabar and put the Ginger Cinnabar as the 1st contrasting color.

I don’t think I’ll knit this one again, once was enough.

Top Width: 75”
Bottom Width: 86”
Height: 16”