Summer vegetable knitting

I'm still at it with the vegetables:

These were all completed this week.  I am totally going for the easy start-to-finish projects right now, because that winter sweater that I can't wait to wear is taking forever.  Also, we do a ton of vegetable gardening in the summer, so it's fitting.  My husband has suggested that I should knit one of everything that we grow.  I might tackle tomatoes or pumpkins next.  I got most of the yarn on sale, which is good, but there's quite a bit of it in the bin.

I keep looking at these pieces thinking what a great gift they would make for toddlers.  It might be the only time it's acceptable to tell a small child to play with their food.

On a roll

I have been on quite a knitting kick the last two weeks.  I finished the Midsummer Night shawl I mentioned in the last post on Sunday morning, but it was too cold to to wear it out to dinner for our anniversary that evening.  No matter, warmer days are coming and I'm sure I'll be able to use it soon.  As soon as I took that off the needles, I cast on my first glove:

The pattern is called Socrates and it comes from One Skein Sock Yarn Wonders.  The yarn is called Bonsai, by Berrocco - I bought 8 skeins of it, unsure how much of it I would need for a scarf and gloves.  Because it's a different weight that the sock yarn recommended by the pattern (it's thicker - a nylon/bamboo blend) I am using much less that I would have imagined and one skein does one glove.  I have started to think about a hat to go with the scarf and gloves.  As soon as I finish the other glove.  I had to modify the fingers from the pattern as well - I knit them originally following the pattern and they made me look like I had Muppet hands, so I ripped them back and decreased the stitches so they fit my hands better.

Yesterday I was back to focusing on knitted vegetables, so I made myself and eggplant (or aubergine, as the Brittish pattern writer calls them):

I was pleased with how it came out.  I decided I was going to work on something else after I finished that, so I whipped up another pea in a pod:

We will have to make do with knitted vegetables until the real ones are ready. 

In the didn't-really-make-it-myself category, I've been working on painting some unfinished bird houses we picked up at Michael's on sale for the yard:

We have a bunch of hanging plant stands scattered through the back gardens, so every couple of years we paint new ones, spray them with a sealant, and hang them outside.  Much easier than running out to water hanging plants.  We have enough trouble watering the flowers out front.

What else I'm working on

For my birthday, my favorite local yarn shop sent me an email coupon for 15% of my total project - yarn and needles.  In my mind, that's practically free.  I had been intrigued by a pattern I saw in the winter 2012 edition of Love of Knitting called Opening Night.  Instead of the recommended yarn, I splurged and bought 14 skeins of Manos del Urugay Wool Classica in this lovely purple colorway:

You knit the sweater in pieces, then stitch together.  I have successfully finished the back and two front pieces; now I am working on the upper trim.  Sadly, both the upper and the lower trim are 12" wide and about 65" long, so that part is not going so fast.  Also, it's a winter sweater and we're headed into summer, so while I am still excited about how it's coming out, I've lost focus.

Fortunately, the summer issue arrived on Wednesday, and in it was an article about a Summer Night Shawl calling for Metallic Rayon yarn from Blue Heron yarns.  I was delighted to see this, because I remembered that I had seen 3 skeins of it (and they are large skeins - 550 yards) in a slightly different colorway at Windsor Button in downtown Boston.  It is an expensive yarn - it retails for $46 a skein - but the pattern calls for only one skein.  Plus, Windsor Button was going out of business (sadly, they've lost their lease) so all the yarns were discounted.  I went online.....and discovered I had missed their final day by about five days.  I looked online but couldn't really justify spending the money plus the shipping to order it online since my local yarn shops don't carry it.

I decided to see if I had a substitution in my stash on Friday morning.  And discovered that I had splurged on all three of the skeins from Windsor Button at some point before they closed.  I clearly need more sleep if I can't remember a purchase like that.  I determined that I could use the other two skeins to make a summer sweater pattern I had recently downloaded, and that the shawl was a go.  I'm about 90 rows in of 145:

It is an incredibly easy pattern:  cast on three stitches, turn.  Next row, knit one, yarn over, knit to the end.  Repeat 143 more times, adding the yarn over as the second stitch on each row.

I am hoping to finish it by our anniversary this weekend so I can wear it out to dinner.  I am thinking that's a bit of a stretch, but it will be finished in time for me to enjoy this summer.  It might be a little fancy to wear to the movies, but I'll get over it.

A Little Something Different

For more than a year, I have been completely enamoured with this pattern designer named Susie Johns who has a series of books on knitting fruit and vegetables.

I am not making this up.  Either the books, or my long-standing infatuation with the idea of knitting food.  A few weeks ago, extremely tired of socks, I decided to order both books for myself.  The vegetable book arrived first, and I immediately bought the yarn to knit some peas:

Cute, right?  I made three peas/pea pods in just a couple of hours (the peas are stuffed with beads purchased at a local craft store) and can tell you I don't have any left.  Everyone I have showed them to has been completely dazzled by them and did not refuse the gift.  The first one went to my goddaughter E, the two in the photo above went to my good friend Stella Caroline yesterday.  She has small children, though, so I'm thinking about making another set and stuffing them with fiberfill, rather than beads, just in case.  I am also looking forward to making her some other vegetables - perhaps a leek or an eggplant or my personal favorite, corn.

There is also has a knitted alien book by a different designer, Fiona Macdonald.  That is less symbiotic than my knitting/gardening connection, but I do adore Halloween......

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.

Unexpected outcomes

So, I started weaving a blanket for my living room.  For several years now I have been saying that I was going to knit a blanket for the couch - because my couch is so long, (120"), I had extended the pattern I found to be the same length as the couch.  So far I've gotten one segment (out of three) of the basketweave pattern done, and none of the two cable pattern segments, never mind stitching all five panels together.  So I decided to use the yarn to weave a throw for the couch:

I was using the same color for the warp and the weft, but I really should have used a bigger dpi for this project, because the yarn is sticky & tends to attach back upon itself, making the weaving complicated and separating out the two levels of warps difficult.  It started out going slower than previous weaving projects, but far faster than the planned knit version of the blanket. 

And then......disaster struck.  Somehow when I was warping the loom some of the skeins slid down to the sides, reducing the tension.  By the time I got about 20" woven - which took forever - the warp was all off, tensions were different and the blanket was looking like a big mess.  Sometimes when a project is not fun I have to keep going, but since this was for me, well, I cut my losses.  Literally.  I cut it off the loom, saved the warp threads for another project, and tossed the piece I had been working on, which resembled a very small area rug. 

Last Wednesday I warped a modified version of the throw I had planned to make for my mother, similar to the "neck warmer" (her words) I gave her for Christmas:

Windsor Button in Boston is going out of business, so I had done some hunting in the store to find compatable colors of yarn to make the throw.  Because these are not a large-volume discounted Pound of Yarn, I knew this sucker was going to be expensive so any opportunity to purchase the supplies for less was welcomed.  So I asked mom if she still wanted the throw, and she said.......no.  And promptly went off on a two-week vacation, out of cell phone range.  Ok then, looks like I'm making myself a shawl!  Or a table runner.  Or maybe I'll use it as both - if I get cold I'll just yank it off the table in the middle of dinner, like a chilly, demented magician.  That might give my husband pause.  I should have it finished by this weekend, which will be a good morale booster after the last weaving failure.

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.