Tag: wip

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Knitting and Crochet

This week in yarn

The past week was a very expensive one for yarn. You see, on Tuesday one of my dearest friends went into early labor–three months early.  The darlingest little twins ever were born that night, but at only a pound and a half each, they were far too tiny for the crib blankets I was already working on for them, so of course I had to go out and buy new yarn for softer, smaller blankets and hats.

$95 later, I stepped out of Unwind with four balls of RY Classic Yarns Cashsoft DK (10% cashmere!) in pinks and greens; four skeins of Cascade’s Luna in red, yellow, green and purple; three skeins of Tahki’s Cotton Classic in green, blue and aqua; and a new set of size six Clovers.  Damn, but that adds up fast!

So far I’ve made two hats (one came out smaller than the other, despite casting on six extra stitches for it and following the row directions verbatim-wtf?), and half of a 15-in sq. blanket, all from the Cashsoft.  I’d post pictures, but my batteries ran out as I was photographing them, so it’ll have to wait.  I suspect I’ll be needing more Cashsoft to finish the blankets and to make a larger replacement hat.  Figures, it being the most expensive of the three yarns.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Blanket's finished, purse sadly not

Blanket, finishedI finished the blanket yesterday–my first crocheted project!  As you can see, it doesn’t lie quite as flat as it should; I had difficulty figuring out how many stitches to pick up along the edges, so it’s….oddly shaped, I guess.  Hopefully washing it will even it out a little, but if not, I’m not too worried–it’s a baby blanket, and babies are notoriously forgiving about such details.  Which is good, because I’m sure you’ve noticed the white isn’t pure white, it’s a baby blend with pink and blue mixed in.  This is what happens when I try to use stash yarn only.  But at least the Plymouth Encore is machine washable, which I think is key for any baby gift.  Alpaca may be the most wonderful fiber in the whole wide world, and would make marvelous heirloom quality items, but what mother of an infant has time to handwash anything?  It would sit in a box or drawer somewhere, lovely to look at, but never actually used.  Hopefully this blanket will be used and abused until there’s nothing left but string (which hopefully won’t happen until well after the baby has grown out of it).

WIP, purseIn other news, I had a brain fart, and forgot that this purse was supposed to be finished by a deadline–today, to be exact.  Yeah, that didn’t happen.  The knitting part was done long ago, but it needs to be stitched along the bottom and felted.  It’s the felting part that’s been holding things up, since I don’t have my own washing machine, and the water in the machines in my building’s laundry room isn’t hot enough to do the job properly.  I also haven’t tracked down the appropriate accessorizing hardware.  It was supposed to be finished today, because it’s a gift for my friend who took her black belt test yesterday (krav maga).  I suck.  I may show her a picture of the soon-to-be-a-purse, but I doubt it.  I’ll just have to surprise her with it later–hopefully sooner than her next birthday, though.

Also, this picture doesn’t do the colors justice–the red is much deeper and less bright than it appears here. Sadly, I can’t get the colors to be true to life with this camera. Makes me miss my old Powershot A300 sometimes.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Pics

crochet wipAs of today’s lunch hour, this is how far I’ve gotten with the crochet blanket, started Saturday, February 24th.  Sadly, the white isn’t pure white, but a baby yarn that includes blends of pink and blue separated by stretches of white; otherwise it would be a pretty close approximation of the colors of the Irish flag.  I’m thinking of switching to a double-crochet stitch once I finish this last stripe of white–I believe I’ve mastered the single crochet, so it’s time to move on to something new.

I’m enjoying crochet so far, but I don’t like how eyes-on it is–with knitting, I can afford to look up much more frequently than I can with the crocheting.  Makes it much harder to watch tv while crocheting, which was always one of the plusses to knitting.

Purse, waiting to be feltedAnd speaking of knitting, this is a picture of a purse that’s waiting to be felted.  I started out following a pattern I found online, but I quickly realized I wasn’t going to have enough yarn, so I veered away to something slightly different.  No clue how the final product will turn out, but mostly I’m hoping the slightly ruffled edge will look ok.

Categories
Knitting and Crochet

Flickr

I’ve added a link to my set of knitting-related pictures on Flickr, under the new header “Links” over in the sidebar.  The set is missing a few things–the scarf and cigarette cozy I made for Allyson, the felted purse I made for my sister, and probably others I’ve forgotten to photograph before giving them away.  I also have two purses waiting to be felted that haven’t been photographed yet, a hat and scarf that needs the ends woven in, a pair of unfinished baby booties, the incomplete pieces to a teddy bear that I abandoned, a fibonacci scarf that’s still on the needles….  Ok, I need to stop thinking about the projects I never finished or I’ll never get around to cleaning my apartment today!

But, the link is there.  And, for that matter, here. 😀

Crochet–7 days and counting

So last Thursday, I started jury duty.  Knitting needles were not allowed, so I brought a book, a Sudoku book, a computer.  Nothing really satisfying. 

I was put into jury selection for one trial–a murder trial, so selecting the jury took a really long time.  I had to go back on Friday, and they neither excused me, nor finished picking the jury, so I had to go back on Monday.  My diversionary tactics weren’t working–I’d become accustomed to knitting while waiting, and I missed that sense of accomplishment.  So, Saturday, I got out my Plymouth Encore and two “learn to crochet” books that had failed to sink in on previous occasions, and with a project in mind, I set about to learn to crochet.

Crochet wip

I spent about four hours on Saturday and five or six hours on Sunday working on a single crochet log cabin blanket. I’d seen the knitting pattern in Mason-Dixon Knitting and figured it couldn’t be that hard to adapt it to crochet, and I was right. Sadly, it’s slow going, perhaps because of the single crochet stitch (I prefer to learn one stitch at a time, same way I learned how to knit), and most certainly not helped by my naturally tight stitching. My hands keep cramping up from being forced into these new positions. I also think part of it is the crochet hook I’m using. It’s exactly the size that’s recommended for the Encore, but I forgot that when I’m knitting, I prefer to go about two sizes up because I knit so tight, and what do you know, turns out I crochet tight too.

But it’s turning out pretty well–it’s already bigger than this picture I took on Monday. It was the perfect project for waiting in courthouse hallways, so of course I was excused from the jury at 11:30am Monday. That’s quite alright, though, ’cause now I’ve finally made a dent in the “learn to crochet” resolution I made about two New Years ago.