Warm Feet

And a little stashbusting project. I needed new slippers, so I dug out the Paton's Classic leftovers, this time in black,brown and blue and knit up slippers.
I present, the B3 Slippers.

Pre-felting:




Post felting:




Pattern: Fibre Trends Clogs

Ciao!

Skinny Scarf 2

The first skinny scarf turned out so well, I wanted one for myself. Thus:








350 stitches cast on longways, knit 2 rows each colour ending with the same colour you started with. This turned out to be almost double my height. And I am 5'3".  I lurves it.

It is knit out of Steve sport yarn. From Rain's Obsessive Stitchery
I cannot emphasize enough how soft this yarn is.

Ciao!

Gfitmas Knitting

It was decided that the Secret Santa at one of my job sites was going to have a theme of DIY gifts. This was decided on my day off. I'm sure the idea was well meant, but damn. They all know I knit, so I am sure that is exactly what they are expecting. As tempting as it was to go to Etsy and buy a handmade gift, I had a skein of bulky chenille that some well-meaning non-knitter had given me, so I  figured this was as a good a time as any to use it.

First, the Quick and Easy Ribbed Hat

And matching scarf, although that was knit as garter stitch on bamboo needles:



None of it was fancy, but given the time constraints, I am rather pleased with the result. Although I will  never be knitting with chenille again. Wow that was frustrating.

Fingernail Friday

Christmas!

Fingernail Friday!

I have been lax in posting pictures of pretty fingernails. So here is the current set!

Skinny Scarf

I mentioned to an indie dyer that I wanted to make a skinny scarf in these colours. And she oh so kindly dyed the yarn for me! This yarn is so very very soft. It's Steve sportweight.  It's from Rain's Obsessive Stichery. The yarn is  60% Cotton, 40% Plant fiber and oh so lovely. This is the Bohol (brown) colourway and  Waterloo(the green) colourway. The pattern is Reversible Stripes Scarf but I cast on longways, 351 stitches! 




I have more of this lovely stuff, I am sure  there will be more knitting done with it!

Stop the Presses!

I have an FO!




Pattern: Age of Brass and Steam
Yarn: Cantata (Diamond yarns cotton DK)
Quantity: Around 200 yards

I wasn't sure about the colour while I was knitting it, but it kinda grew on me. Still, I may give it away as a Christmas gift if the right person comes along.....It was definitely a fun fast knit. Very good purse knitting.

Hippy-Trippy

I am still working on my crochet project. At first I was afraid it would look too hippy-dippy.  However the stores are full of badly made similar cardigans, so I now figure I'm good. Not sure how long to make it. The pattern is knee length. I don't want to go that long. Nor do I think I have the yardage for that. I think just below my fat butt may be a good length.  Please excuse the odd angle for the progress picture, but here is how far I have gotten:




I am hoping to get this done so I can wear it to the Knitter's Fair in Waterloo this September....

ciao!

Must Learn

Lately I keep seeing crochet projects that are lovely. My crochet skills are rudimentary. My crochet pattern reading skills are practically nonexistent. So in typical fashion I decided I wanted to make a little cardigan type thing to wear. In crochet. The first pattern I perused had a lot of comments on Ravelry that were along the lines of "pattern badly written, I had to wing it with what I thought should happen". NOT a good idea for a neophyte hooker.

The second pattern I attempted was a little too advanced, it had stitches I had never heard of and that weren't in my Happy Hooker book.

The third one appears to be working. I am learning crochet-speak. AND the pattern is turning out the way I think it is supposed to. WIN. One of the main stumbling blocks was realizing that in crochet, you often do more than one stitch into a space or chain. In knitting it is 1 stitch per space, more often than not. (excepting lace, of course).So when the crochet pattern tells you 'slip stitch double crochet into next chain' it does not mean into 2 different chains. It means into the SAME chain. Which I figured out when I ran out of chain.  Fortunately, frogging crochet is not nearly as heart-stopping as frogging knitting since there is only 1 live stitch to keep track of.

It is the Lacy Duster. Although I probably won't make it quite as long as the picture.

It is worked from the neck down. As you can see, my piece so far actually looks like a neck and yoke to a cardigan! HOORAY!

Shellspawn Blanket

A friend is having a baby (spawning) and I made a play on the parents' name for the title of this post/project name.

The pattern is Opart and the yarn is various acrylics I had in my stash. Canadiana was one. This is a garter stitch blanket knit in the round. I started it on dpn's after the first attempt at using 2 circs created giant holes in the fabric at the changeovers. Once it was bigger I switched to one circ. Given that the yarn I was using was worsted weight, I also went up a needle size, so I used an US8. Even with the change, there were rather substantial holes at the colour changeovers.

After weaving in the ends, the holes all went away, though. But I was a bit concerned, I can tell you!
The final blankie:



I am quite pleased with it. The only thing I didn't take into consideration is that the pattern calls for blocking into a square shape. Obviously, with acrylic, the blocking does not 'take' really well. But hey, the blankie is square-ish, and the visual swirly effect should make up for that, right? (and I REALLY did not want to saddle a new mom, who doesn't knit and thus is not familiar with the arcana of knitted projects and blocking with a blanket with a lot of special care instructions)

Overall I am quite pleased with the effect.

Yarn Barf

I cannot be the only person who has this problem. I get a supposedly center pull ball, done commercially. I follow the instructions to 'pull the loose end out of center, insert fingers into either side and then pull beginning out of center'. Every time I try to find the beginning of a center pull ball, I get this:



It doesn't seem to matter what method I try, I still get the same awful mess. Half the skein/ball barfs out and I wind up wrapping the whole thing up by hand to find the beginning. Phooey.

Hairstick

With the advent of warmer weather, I have been wearing my hair up quite a bit. I find that ponytails tend to pull and buns do as well. However, hairsticks keep my hair up and don't pull or hurt. I have no idea why the difference, but hey, if it works...

So I went to the dollar store and bought 10 chopsticks for $1. Then , of course, I thought, hey, why not decorate em?  This is my first attempt.

Step one, find nail polish that you already own:




Step 2, paint on a couple of coats  of one: (after wrapping masking tape on the chopstick to make a nice neat line)




Let it dry and then paint a couple of coats of the second polish. Let dry, peel tape and you  have:



A hairstick that your 5 year old might have painted!  Tada!

Seriously, not bad, but not great. Some of the polish managed to leak under the masking tape and the polish started to dry before I was done painting, so the result is NOT a nice smooth finish as I had envisioned.  Might try wrapping the next one with sock yarn.....

As for how to put my hair up, this was the clearest video.

snicker


ETA: if clicking on it doesn't make it bigger, you can go here

Bad Hair Hat

We all have days when our hair misbehaves. I like to stuff it in a hat for those days. And summer requires an airy kind of hat. Tada!



This hat took me a grand total of 2 days to knit. Easy peasy.
Pattern: Persikkavaahto
Yarn: Worsted cotton

Ciao

Another Dishcloth, With a Slight Modification

I am on a bit of a dishcloth kick. I figure to knit as many as I feel like and then give them out as little Christmas gifties.  The round dishcloth pattern I have been using has a seam. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but I wanted the seam to be pretty. Yes, I know I could graft the garter stitch, but I didn't feel like it. So, instead of knitting an extra row before bindoff, I cut the yarn when I was at the centre of the knit (right before bindoff) threaded it though the centre stitches and pulled em tight. THEN I used a spare dpn I had handy, picked up 18 stitches on the cast on row and simply did a 3 needle bindoff to the outside edge.

tada! A pretty seam.

Ciao

Figures

I just finished a knit for myself. A pair of slipper socks. Just in time for summer. Sigh.





Pattern: Spiral Knit Tube Socks
Yarn: Patons Canadiana

A quick easy knit that I shall wear the heck out of once the weather gets cold again in the fall.

Ciao

Fingernail Friday!

Palate Cleansing

So, in an effort to change things up a bit, I decided to knit a cat toy. Also, the cats seem to have 'lost' all their knit toys. Elvis in particular likes knit toys, so I thought I would whip a new one up.

Pattern: Vicki's Whale Cat Toy

Yarn: Paton's Classic Wool

Needles: size 7 US

Elvis approved!

Ciao

Cleaning Up

Yup, another one!

This time in Bernat's Handicrafter cotton stripes. I rather like the way the stripes worked out.

Ciao

More Cleaning Stuff

Another dishcloth for your pleasure, this one knit up VERY fast, 1 day it took me.

It's the Knitted Lacy Round Cloth, this one took pretty much an entire skein of Bernat multicolour. I have approx 2 yards left. I like this pattern and think I will be making more of these. They will make cute little presents for my giftmas box.

Ciao

Cleaning Up

I have to reblock the hat, I got the edge wrong when I blocked it the first time. D'oh! So, here is my next little project, already done!

It's the Double Bump Dishcloth in Bernat Stripes. Quick easy knit.

ciao

Organizing

I finally finished the husband's hat (just in time for spring) and it taking forever to dry. So no pictures yet. In the meantime, I decided to do some organizing.

In my cutlery drawer, I have a plastic separator with spots for spoons, knives etc. But there is always some random stuff like can-openers, scissors, etc that don't fit in the tiny miscellaneous slot left. So they get put in the drawer, but not in the organizer tray and occasionally get in the way while trying to open or close the drawer. I went to the dollar store and bought some hooks. (I should have bought more!) and did this:

That's the inside of the cabinets in my kitchen. I just had to make sure that the item didn't get in the way of anything in the cupboard so the door would still close. I am planning on betting more hooks and hanging up the rest of my random stuff. I also might do this in the bathroom with my hairbrushes etc.....

Not Dead Yet

I have been desultorily working on hubs stockinette hat. A nasty cold derailed me for a while and stuff just got in the way of knitting. So, instead, an 'around the house' post. My stove is 17 or so years old. It has buttons instead of dials for oven and timer controls. The buttons are covered with little rubber mushroom. Which break semi regularly. Like so:

Fortunately, you can order new rubber button thingies. In order to put the new one in, you have to pull the stem from the broken one. Tweezers and needlenose pliers are handy for this job. Here is a crappy pic of a new button and the broken pieces of the old one:

Then all you have to do is push the new one in the hole and you have nice new rubber button thingies.

Tada!

Ciao

Fingernail Friday!

We Have To Call Them On It!

Today I read an article in the Globe and Mail about women and politics. "Re-Paving the Way for Women on the Hill....Again". The article opens with a comment from a rookie MP who said that at her first political panel, the moderator made a comment that the whole panel was 'hot'. The rookie MP said that she suddenly realized that that is how it is on the Hill.

Well, it might be the way it is on the hill NOW, however, if she wants to change that, she should be calling them on it. The host may not have realized how offensive that comment was. He probably thought he was giving them a compliment.

It is akin to a male saying "I'd hit that". I once pointed out to a male who had said that that it was violent and offensive and smacked of rape. He was flabbergasted and said he'd never thought of it that way, thought it was complimentary?!

I understand that if the female MPs spend their time calling out the men on the Hill their stay may be less pleasant. However, they are currently the the ones in the public eye and there are a larger number of them than there has been for quite a while. Therefore they should be making as much noise as possible about simple language that can easily be changed. Language can change behaviour.

The men on the HIll need to learn that the female MPs are not 'hot', they are colleagues. They are not 'girls' they are women. Their appearance is not up for discussion.

It is up to the women to point out the ingrained habits of thought.

Mittens!

After the ice storm we had, I decided I really needed to finish my mittens. My gloves got soaked and I wanted a warm dry pair to change into and I didn't have them. The horror. Therefore:

Pattern: Brier Twist

Yarn: Paton's Classic

Mods: Made cuff longer

I've been wearing them for a couple of days now. I think I would cast on a few fewer stitches across the palm of the flip top part if I made it again. They are a little big on me. I would also make the ribbing on the bottom part of the flip top (ie the part that is stationary) a bit longer.

Overall, the pattern is good, very easy to follow. I would suggest that you put a lifeline in on the last row of pattern before you do the ribbing so that it is easier to pick up the 20 stitches for the flip top part.

Ciao!

Fingernail Friday!

Chug Chug Chug.....

Not much exciting happened on the knitting front over the last little while Chez Knot. Still working on the hub's stockinette hat. I picked up the provisional cast on and am knitting the second hat. In stockinette. So it is a lot of knitting in grey fingering weight yarn. Did I mention it is stockinette? Round and round and round and round.

If you are interested, a couple of progress pics:

See? Boring. You can kind of see where the provisional cast on was if you look closely. Not that that is a problem as that is the edge of where the inside hat meets the outside hat...

Who knows, that may even disappear after blocking. At any rate, it is good tv knitting. Sadly in December I had very little time to sit in front of the tv. Hence how loooooong this project is taking. Did I say that it was stockinette? In fingering weight grey yarn?

All right, I guess I should go knit on it some more.....

Ciao

Fingernail Friday!