Category Archives: Knit

Stashed Away!

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So my baby afghan spree has revealed a few items that are still floating about in my stash…

Such as this baby sized chunky afghan that finished off a couple skeins of patriotic red, white and blues on some giant needles…

Soft and Thick Patriotic Flavor

And this angelic little preemie/doll size of a hourglass eyelet stitch.  I really like this stitch because even the wrong side looks pretty nice!

Front side, with a simple crochet edging.

Backside. Looks like a fancy basketweave.

And then there is this shawl I am finally going to look at finishing… because I finally found a yarn I think will go well with where I ran out of the last batch…

Fan shawl

So now its off to see if I can finish the fans this month before I have to get started on a September Stocking, finish my snowflakes quilt and various other crafty projects!

Baby Afghans, take 3 for August

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So, a while back, I obtained some yarn from another knitters stash… and I am a fan of trying new stitches and finding ways to use up the yarn stash… so this one, the solid blue and the yellow are yarn that’s probably as old as I am (based on the yellow skein’s wrapper) so its well past time it got a new life.

This pattern makes a nice dimensional stitch.

I knitted it up until I nearly ran out of the dark blue… and I still have some light blue and yellow to play with!  But its at least baby afghan size, so there is that.

After some blocking, laid out on my library/sewing table

 

Perhaps I shall have to make up some hats or booties or something…. As a bonus, this pattern made a fun picture to use as my cell phone wallpaper.

Rows almost look like diamonds

The colors remind me of a dress I used to own, with a denim bodice and a yellow floral long skirt… I loved that dress.

Pattern available on Ravelry. 

Fun with counterpanes!

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So I’ve had this yarn from the yarn shop where I learned to knit for some time.  I believe I originally bought it oh about six years ago or so.  Well I am out of blue thread for my other project so… time for more knitting.. and time to tackle something with counterpanes!

There were many to choose from but finally I settled on a three leaf counterpane pattern, originally seen here: http://www.knittingparadise.com/ (Scroll up for images)  Through some alterations based on my trial square, this is what I ended up with:

Mint Leaves!

Now as you can see from these two closer in views of the leaf section and the diamond section, I am not the greatest of fancy joiners, but I do think they look alright… just not very lacy.

At this point its more flowerlike

Diamond Point join

So I think it turned out ok, and here’s what I did differently for anyone curious or wanting to replicate.

  • I did a knit increase in my first knit stitch instead of a yarn over increase.  I tried the yarn overs, but it just looked to loose and sloppy to me, so I went with the knit increase instead.
  • My Row 15:  Row 15 YO, (k1, yo) twice, k1, p4, SKP, k9, k2tog, p4, (k1, yo) twice, k2  — I felt that swapping two stitches to purl instead of knit made for a better transition.
  • When you swap to the Diamond Point (included in the follow up post from the three leaf section)  you need to add a simple knit across row so that your diamond point turns out purl side up as the right side.  do not increase that row, as you should go into the Diamond Point section with an uneven set of stitches
  • For Row Two in the second post its just: k2tog, knit to last 2 sts, k2tog — She corrects this in a later post on the thread, its just a duplicate in there in the original.

I finished it off with a simple double crochet row and then a scalloped crochet row (2 single crochet stitches, then 3 double crochet in the next stitch and repeat) because three skeins meant I was pretty much done with just a 9 pane blanket.  Seriously…. this is all the yarn left:

Dr.Pepper can for scale

So if I had my life to knit over so to speak… here’s what I would do differently:

  • Buy about 4 more skeins of yarn so that I could knit up 12 counterpanes, which would leave me with all diamond edges instead of some leafy edges, and an all around better size.  (Nothing wrong with a 9 pane size, but 12 would be even better for the repeats imo)
  • I’d finish it off with a border of leaves, which I figured I could snag from another counterpane pattern such as the one here: http://www.knitting-and.com/knitting/patterns/counterpanes/rosedale-counterpane.htm

I greatly enjoyed how it turned out… so much that I’m actually contemplating making something more full size at some point, perhaps as a gift.

I could totally see this as a much larger piece.

August: Traditional Style!

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Well I tossed about several ideas… went looking for patterns and finally just decided to have a more traditional looking stocking.

Green and White is always right.

The cuff is a pattern you can pick up for free from ravelry  I spent quite a bit of time the other day going through patterns looking for a cable from a Duncan McLeod sweater… and that was one of the extras I stumbled on.

The tree however…. is a true original.  No pattern… just winged it!  There was a bit of cabling, a bit of increases and decreases… and I’ve been assured by the ever critical Ben that it does indeed look like a tree!  Felt like a real accomplishment!

So now I’m at 11 stockings for the big sale of 2012.

One for the family tree

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So I finally finished my baby afghan I started ages ago as just “trying out the branching out pattern” on an airplane trip… and several trips and pulling out several rows because I forgot a yarn over later…. its finally done:

As experiments go, I think it turned out ok.

It does have its issues.. I found my green and blue together yarn was rather limited, so there are a couple spots where its a bit more blue… and there is one wheatear cable that is one row too long…

Said long cable included in this image in all its glory. -_-

On the other hand, I really lucked out with where my final leaf border seam fell in the colorway:

A leaf on the wind…border…. thing.

But overall I think its an alright thing, and someday I’m sure someone will love it.

Various patterns in this afghan include:

July: Knitting and Binary!

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Knitting and Binary are actually quite similar, in knitting there are two basic stitches… knit and perl.

So this stocking celebrates the pure geekery of binary!

Side 01

Side 10

For those of you that I know would spend hours attempting to decipher what it is on this wrap around design I’ll give you the code and the means to translate.

Here’s the binary on the stocking:

01001000 01100001
01110000 01110000
01111001

00100000 01000011
01101000 01110010
01101001 01110011
01110100 01101101
01100001 01110011

00100000 01001000
01100001 01101110
01110101 01101011
01101011 01100001
01101000

00100000 01000110
01100101 01110011
01110100 01101001
01110110 01110101
01110011

In addition to using that in a binary translator online, here’s the code you can run in a terminal window to translate (courtesy of Ben):

#!/usr/bin/perl -n

while (/([01]+)/g) {
$str = $1;
if ($str =~ /^0/) {
substr($str, 0, 1, ”);
}
print chr(oct(“0b$str”));
}

END {
print $/;

WoW! A June Double Feature

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So technically its the 1st of July, but since one of these was completed completely in June and the other just needed a hanging loop, I am still counting them both as June. During June I was out of town for two weeks… and so had to rely on what yarn I could fit in my carry on and loaner scissors for part of these projects.. so I figure a few hours into July isn’t technically cheating.

Choose your faction!

These both feature one sided designs, with crochet cuffs. The Alliance Lion has a scalloped edge cuff, and the “after thought” heel.

By the Might of the Lion!

The horde stocking has a traditional turned heel and a straight cuff. I contemplated going white instead of black, but Ben gave me a bit of the side-eye so stuck with traditional black.

For the Horde!

I hate it when a plan doesn’t come together….

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So sometimes the concept of what you want to do makes you excited and you look forward to it with anticipation…. for me it was this plan:

This is a flat view of a round stocking… with a line down the middle, splitting mario and 2 blocks from the last block and the piranha plant.

However… as it came together there was some puckering. And then the scale was off. Like so far off I was debating about salvaging it into a stocking hat. But I think I’ll pull it out and go back to the drawing board:

Disappointing…. 😦

May: Pacman Stocking

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I have had this stocking idea rattling around in my brain for a bit, and was surprised at how quick it actually ended up coming together. I used the after-thought heel method, and while it is certainly quite a bit easier when you are laying out the design phase, I’m not 100% sold on the final product look.

I am however… somewhat happy with how the stocking design came out. Its an all over design, which I think is extra nice.

Front Side!

Back Side!

I was actually thinking I would work on my May stocking this upcoming Wednesday… but got a bit carried away… maybe I’ll be able to tackle a second one this month! (But don’t hold your breath… you probably won’t look so good as a Smurf!)