Knitting, Lot's of FO's

I have been finishing a lot of projects lately. Feeling the need to find all my needles missing in action or held captive on different projects. Finishing projects and gaining back needles is much more fulfuilling then buying more needles because I can not find the size I need.

Botanical Hat by Stephen West

I made this for Wesley. It was sort of an add on christmas present I made when he came down mid January for a visit. I used Casacade for the black and Noro silk garden for the color. This is a really fun hat to make. I think there are at least 3 of them in the knitting group now. The guys seem to really like it too. It is reversible and designed from a really cool architectural design. Very guy like.

Barb's Koigu Ruffle by Kit Huchin

I was looking for something fast and with a lot of color. This has been in my queue for a while. I went stash diving into the Koigue corner and come up with this. The pattern is a really easy knit as long as you can get past the idea that you cast on and cast off a crazy number of stitches (648!!) But you are knitting two together right away for the ruffle...... It was a great addition to my wardrobe.

Hemlock Ring by BooklynTweed:

This has been in my queue even longer then the ruffle scarf. I used the Knitpicks City Tweed in Brocade. I love this yarn. It is really soft and the tweed is wonderful. I made mine bigger then the pattern so I could use it as a lap blanket. I had a hard time getting the blanket to block perfectly flat. I would go up at least 3 sizes needles sizes bigger to cast off and use Jenny's Surprisingly Stretchy bind off for the k2tog sections and a regular bind of during the yarn over sections. I really enjoy using this as a lap blanket in the evenings while I knit.

Byzantine by Susan Pandorf

This was one of the most fun projects I have done in a long time. Mosaic knitting is really easy and fast and watching the colors change made me happy!

Clapotis by Kate Gilbert

 This is one of the most knit projects on Ravelry (14,735 as of this post). The pattern came out in Knitty the Fall of 2004. I resisted knitting this one for years and then within a few of months I have now finished my second one. Why did I finally fall you ask?

Because of Noro sock yarn and Noro Scarf Stripping. I love love the way this turned out and the silk garden sock yarn is pretty soft.

Whirligig Shrug by Stefanie Japel

 I knit this up really fast for a class. It is another great instant gratification knit. The pattern is from Interweave Knits Weekends 2009. I used Soft Wave Cotton from Queensland. I think it was a closeout yarn from Webs at some point. It was in my stash. Of course Miss Claire will end up with this at some point. It sure is fun having a little princess to knit for after having boys of my own.

Last, but the most fun of all, is Mr. Bender, a character from Futurama. This is a B-day gift for Wesley. We used to enjoy watching this show together when he still lived at home. As an art student he has great appreciation for such creations.

I have most of my needles back and the knitting is a bit quiet right now. The only thing really on my needles is Baudelaire by Cookie A , my second pair of Toe-up socks. I am already on the second sock in less then a week. The pattern is easy to memorize, learned a new heel and I just love knitting these. Socks may be back in my life just in time for summer!

How many needles are missing in action at your house?

Dream Knitting

My taste in knitting changes a lot once the days get longer and warmer. I think many of us feel that change especially here in So Cal where the weather can be warm for half of the year.

Since I have just spent the last couple of weeks getting things off my needles I feel I can indulge myself in some "Dream Knitting".

Dream knitting : The gigantic queue of ideas that one creates with a real since that one could actually complete all the projects in such a queue within a proportionately small amount of time.

Shhh...... I am dreaming........

Yarn Dreaming:

It starts with a list of wonderful new summer yarns that I need to get my hands on and then find something wonderful to knit with them. Some of my favorite summer yarns right now are linked below. But there are soooooo many to chose from you could knit all summer and not have time to knit with all that is available.

Tahki Yarns Replay 100% recycled cotton

Tahki Yarns Good Earth Cotton 100% organic cotton in natural cotton colors

Rowan Purelife Revive 36% Recylced Silk/ 36% Recycled Cotton/ 28% Recycled Viscose in a tweed!

Misti Alpaca Tonos Pima Silk 83% Peruvian Pima Cotton and 17% silk. Hhand dyed in tonal colors. Love this!

Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy 40% Hemp/40% Cotton/20% Modal

Rowan Lenpur linen 75% Vi Lenpur/25% Linen What is Lenpur?????

Kolláge Yarns Milky Whey 50% Milk/50% Soy Great Colors

The Dream Continues: Summer Tops

Berroco's Peltigera, I saw someone wearing this at Stitches and man was it cute!

Inamorata Little lace top from Knitty.com

ButterCup (rav) This is done with the Hempathy listed above. There is also one done with the Rowen Lenpur linen

Petrie I love the shape of this shell

The Lace Dream:
Anything Lace is another great choice for the summer. The best thing about lace is you can use just about any yarn you want and come up with something wonderful.

There are so many choices out there it is really hard to choose just one.

Art Lace Bag scroll down. This uses bulky yarn!

Vogue Knitting Cover Lace Wrap.
There are several people wanting to make this one. You could join us!! Actually there are a lot of really nice projects in the current issue of Vogue Knitting.

Summit from the new Knitty.

Citron Not really lace but such a nice useful project for the summer. Out of bamboo??

Emily Dickinson with beads. Beads added to any lace is a beautiful thing!!

Crochet Dreaming:

My fancy often turns to crochet this time of year. Small projects for the home. They are fast and portable. The beach is always calling and crocheting with cotton is the perfect beach project. Here are a few fun projects that might be seen on my hooks soon.

Wavelength (rav)

Trinity Lace Shrug (rav)

Disc-Disc (rav) hotpads

Tiny Pin Cushion

I might start a motif blanket. I have wanted to do that for a couple of years.

Garnet Hill Inspried (rav)

Sock Dreams:

They are the perfect summer knit and your toes will thank you come next winter.

Nebula

Toe-Up Bayerische

Drops 100-20 socks

Get Rid of Terrible Sock Yarn. How cool are these!

Skew

Shhhhhhh......

I hear you mumbling about how I will never get this all done.

Shhhhhh.......

I am still enjoying all the possibilities and the options. This might be one of my favorite parts of knitting.
Dreaming it all up and changing my mind constantly about what yarns I want to use for which pattern.

Shhhh..... I won't tell anyone.....

What are your Knitting Dreams???

New Classes are Up!!

The new classes have been up for a week now and the sign-ups have been going really well. Putting up the classes always increase the number of people checking out my site.

While looking at stats to see what was going on, I realized that I actually have people reading my blog.

Yup, not only are people coming during the week I have put up new classes, they come back on a regular basis.

Yup, there are people reading this blog. And the numbers are actually higher then the number of my friends and students.

I find this amazing. I am not a writer by any stretch of the imagination. I am so greatful that someone, or as it turns out several someones, are actually taking the time to read my pages and then come back and do it again.

Thank You Thank You Thank You.

On with the knitting!
Since putting classes up, I have been busy knitting the samples for the classes. I selected the classes a little differently this time around. Instead of thinking about what I thought you, the student, might want to knit I decided to pick things I really wanted to knit.

What a difference that made. I have found that because I am excited about what we are going to be knitting so are you. I am also having a blast knitting everything up.

First up is the Mosaic Stole. This is a slip stitch pattern and it has been really fun knit. I have had to do some color managment with the noro silk garden lite I am using. There are 4 shades that are in the same family (pinks and corals). I don't want them coming up at the same time because, well, that would be too much pink and coral going on.

Solution? I rewound the balls so I could see what was happening with the colors and then figured out where I should start the two strands so that, in theory, those color families will not show up at the same time. I have a feeling I will have some more management to do before I get to the end of this project.

In hindsight, (don't you just love hindsight? I only wish we could have it more often as foresight), I would use noro colors that had more, distinctly different colors in one skein. The whole project would probably flow better.

Next up is the Hemlock Ring Blanket. It is finally on my needles. I have wanted to knit this for a very long time. I have had the yarn in my stash for maybe a year now. Any time it came to the top of my list I would place it back down to the bottom in favor of projects that were more pressing at the time. Now it is on the "I need to knit list" and guess what??

I am loving this pattern. It took me a couple of times out of the gate to get it going but it is moving right along now.

I started with an alpaca yarn I bought for this project a long time ago. It was a light worsted weight yarn and this pattern really needs the heavy worsted. I could have gone down needle sizes and it would have worked just fine but I really wanted to use heavier yarn so it would be a thicker blanket and it would work up faster.

So into the stash I went and came up with 7 skeins of City Tweed from Knitpicks that I had originally bought for a cardigan. Now it will keep me warm as a blanket. I am about done with my 3rd skein as I write this and it really is coming out lovely.

Next on my needles will be the rainbow scarf (rav link) and the Nona's Garden Pillow. I know, it is a shawl, but I just have this feeling that I will end up with a pillow. Which suites me just fine.

My Knitting Weekend

I am in full swing of holiday knitting. My little knitting fingers are tired indeed. But I have to be honest and say that the project I have worked on most this weekend is an UFO.

This is the blanket I started for Josh last christmas. I worked on it a lot last winter. But it is a big blanket, he is a big guy and I just couldn't get it done before the weather turned too warm to have a giant blanket on my lap. The hardest part of pulling out a hibernating project is trying to figure out where you are and what still needs to be done. I was so happy to find that I have only the borders left to do.

But oh those borders are longggggggg.
If the stars work in my favor this week I should have it done by Thanksgiving. As long as I get it to him before this christmas I have been successful. Right??

Added Dec. 28, 2009
I finally got some pictures of the finished Bronco Blanket with Josh. He uses it all the time!!