How many days until Christmas?

My fall has been crazy between work & volunteer obligations, and I've been very lax about documenting what I am working on, besides Halloween decorations.  But no more!  Here's what I've been up to lately:

My fall edition of Love of Knitting magazine had this beautiful Falling leaves hat pattern, made out of Berocco Boboli, which I just happened to have four skeins of sitting in my stash.  Fate! I used one for the hat, which knit up in about 4 days, and then decided to modify the pattern to make a matching scarf, which I haven't photographed yet.  It needs to be blocked, and probably never will be.  Just after finishing the scarf, I wandered into my favorite local yarn shop and discovered they were carrying Boboli Lace in virtually the same colorway, so of course I needed to make matching gloves......  This ate up about a month of prime holiday knitting time.  Which I feel a little bad about, but then I note that it will be a wonderful set to keep someone warm, and this is New England so this project was necessary.  Totally.

Way back in June we were in NY for my cousin's youngest son's christening, and my other cousin's husband asked if I would knit him a hat.  He has always wanted a hand-knit hat, you see.  He rides the Long Island Railroad every day to work in the city, and apparently there are several women on the train who knit (hello sisters!) and he asked one of them who was working on a hat if he could buy it from her.  She kindly explained to him that most knitters are working on something for a particular someone and suggested he find someone he knew who was a knitter and ask for a hat.  My mistake was working on a pair of socks in front of him, although I don't think it's much of a secret in the family that I knit, as I have knit his sister-in-law three baby blankets in recent years.  Anyway, he wanted a black hat.  Snore.  So I found this cute pattern by Jennifer Burt called Changing Seasons Men's Hat, and knit it with that.  It only took a couple of days.  The photo makes it look grey, but it is most definitely black.

In addition to the knitting, I have just finished an 8-week class for 4-harness weaving.  I liked the weaving, and my classmates and teacher, but oh boy, do I hate warping that type of loom.  Our first project was a sampler, using scrap yarn for the weft, to try out different patters:

I am not crazy about some of those colors, but it was a practice piece, so you don't want to spend a lot of money on yarn when you're just starting out.  I didn't have too much of a problem following all of the different treadlings to make the patterns, so I probably could have used more of a coordinated color scheme, except that it would have been against our teacher's directions.

Our next project was called a Rose Path Sampler.  For this I chose a rayon-cotton blend warp, in three separate colors, and a contrasting weft to make the patterns stand out:

I love the colors, and a lot of the patterns, but the blocks of pattern are not all the same size and the asymmetry of it bothers me a bit.  I had thought about turning it into a gift scarf, or maybe two, but the end piece, which is all one pattern, is not long enough and I can't do much fringe for either end of the scarf.  I guess that means I'm a pretty efficient weaver with not a lot of waste, which is the silver lining here.

  There are about 40 days until Christmas, and the project list for gifts isn't getting any smaller.  I think I will get over my dismay about the asymmetry on that woven scarf rather quickly as the calendar counts down.....

It's Still Wool Weather

So this is the view out my back deck today:



 .....which may or may not be clear enough for you to see that it is snowing.  HARD.  Sigh.  First day of spring is tomorrow.  Most of us in New England think that's a joke.  On the upside, it is cold enough that I have an excuse to wear my fingerless gloves in the house (because it's far cheaper than turning up the heat) and I am still enthusiastic about any project involving wool. 

Currently I am working on a couple of pairs of socks.  Shocking, I know - you had no idea I knit socks.  (More likely, you had no idea I knit anything but socks.)  Currently on the needles, a pair of socks for my friend Holly's birthday, coming up April 1st:

I am using my classic sock pattern, because time is of the essence (these socks are a suprise) and I'm using Regia Design Line "Random Stripe" yarn.  It tangles.  A lot.  Still, the socks are turning out nicely, but I'm under the gun at this point since there are only 13 days until her birthday, and because we ride the train together, I am losing some of my most valuable knitting time because I can't do it in front of her.  I am a little nervous about this one.  I have just finished the cuff on the second sock.  It will be close.

Also on the needles, those long-delayed socks for Himself:

It is an olive green/gray blend, also Regia but Jet Set Color this time, and it ALSO tangles.  A lot.  I'm thinking maybe it's the yarn.  (Fool me once......)  I am using a new pattern called Macho Socks, which does something of an architectural design in the sock.  Mine is coming out differently from what is photographed on that blog, mostly because I am doing top-down socks and decided not to reverse the pattern from the bottom up.  I knit these on the train, so they will be a surprise for Himself, and while they are not quite as snooze-inducing as the last pair I made him, they are up there.  Hence the thinking to go with a new pattern - it might be just interesting enough to keep me awake.

Finally, I managed to get a good daylight shot of the shawl that's being woven:

I am still struggling with warping as it looks crooked in this photo.  When I unwind the tension at the end, it straightens out. I will have to ask my friend L, who got me into weaving, what I am doing wrong.  Still, it should look fine when finished.  It will likely be something I only wear in the house anyway - in New England, you are pretty much either in a parka or short sleeves when you leave the house.  And it would be a little fancy to wear while out gardening.

Knitting for new arrivals

I don't knit as many baby blankets as I used to, as many of my friends and family have completed their families and now need hats and sweaters rather than blankets for newborns.  But I am always in search of an interesting knitting pattern for babies, particularly ones that look much harder than they are.

My cousin J had a baby on February 11.  L is her third son (she has 5-year-old fraternal twins) and bless his little heart, he stayed put until almost his due date, giving his cousin the knitter enough time to get his new blanket done just after he arrived.  Those were some dark days, though, right around his birth, where I was committed to knitting 10 rows a night in order to be able to meet my own self-imposed deadline to send out his blanket via post to Chicago.  I pondered calling in sick, but then we had a huge blizzard (Feb 8-9) so I had plenty of time to work on it while I watched meteorologists and television news reporters scurry about, looking for yard sticks long enough to measure the snow that arrived.  (It was about 27" where I live.)

The pattern is Knit Teddy Bear by Barbara Breiter, which I found for free on the web and really liked.  The pattern comes with a teddy bear chart, but I have found it easier to write out the pattern by row rather than count, lose my place, recount the chart, recount my stitches, lose my place, count again, lose my place again, give up and pour myself a glass of wine and watch Mad Men instead.  A good friend of mine, a much more expert knitter, double-checked my counts and I was good to go:

Now, the yarn for this is Merino 5 by Crystal Palace Yarns and calls for 5 skeins of 2 colors held together, for a total of 10 skeins.  The best price I found on it was $7.90 a skein, so the blanket was looking to run me about.....$79.  Before tax & shipping on the yarn, and shipping to send the blanket to the baby.  I would be better off writing him a check for $100 for college at that point and making myself something nice.  Still, third baby and I didn't want him to be treated any differently than his older brothers, and I did love the pattern, so I went to my favorite local yarn shop with the pattern & asked for some advice. I was steered towards some Plymouth Encore DK yarn, which retails for $5.99.  Already I was liking this better.  Based on the weight, they were recommending a single strand for knitting, rather than doubling up. Things were looking up even more.  And when they said I would need 4 skeins as opposed to 10 because of the yardage difference, I had my credit card out so fast it would have made your head spin.  I am really pleased with the way it came out, and would make it again.  It's nice to have a blanket over my knees while knitting in January & February.  I am less inclined to knit baby blankets in the summer; it is just too hot.

The other thing that I love is that I'm getting much faster at knitting patterned baby blankets.  It used to be that as soon as I found out someone was having a baby I had to start the blanket, in a gender-neutral color, if I had any hope of being done when the baby was born.  Whipped this one off the needles in about 6 weeks, a new record.  It is just knit and purl, though, which helps.  A lot.