Too late for WIP-it Wednesdays.. must be FO Friday..
Or.. something. I’m sleepy and have been fighting a cold for the better part of what should have been a week of vacation, so this might be short and photo-laden..
(As usual, all pictures are clickable thumbnails.)
I have been thinking about making myself a new pair of fingerless gloves to replace the half-finger gloves I gave a friend last year for awhile. My sweetie gave me a swift for the holidays which prompted me to wind the two skeins of Chameleon Colorworks Evolution I had into center-pull balls and I decided it was soft and pretty enough (this is the Figgy Pudding colorway) to become fingerless gloves. I tried to do the Dashing pattern first, but the cable crosses made them *way* too tight, so I opted for a made up pattern for the cuff and tops and a basic glove pattern from a Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns for the hand. I like them. And they only took a day or so to knit up (yes, they’re both finished, even though only the first one is pictured).
Hrm.. this one’s a WIP..
An update on the DNA scarf. While it’s small enough in diameter to use a 16 inch circular, the tiny, tiny needles on the 16 inch Knitpicks Harmony needle made my hands hurt, so I’m doing what I think is pr’bly a bastardization of the two-circular method. It doesn’t make my hands hurt and I’m making better progress, so all is well. Hope to have this one finished and on it’s way to the recipient sooner rather than later.
A WIP that is now a FO..
These are another pair of Fiber Trends Felt Clogs, again just the uppers, made for my aunt Kathy, mom’s sister. This picture is while they’re drying, and, as with mom’s, they’ve got a bit of excess lint from the washer.
And two finished shots, but neither of them are terribly clear. The color is closest in the first one.
And finally, a finished picture of the Garter Rib Sweater, which was a holiday gift for my dad:
For all it’s plainness, it is pr’bly the first man’s sweater I’ve made that I really like. It fits well and looks very good on dad.
I’ve also made some progress on Catalina, but don’t have an updated picture because the battery in my camera is dying. I’m just about through with the first repeat, though.. well, maybe only 2/3rds of the way through.. I’ll take another picture once I change to the next color most likely.
One down, one to go!
Mom – if you didn’t follow the first warning, follow this one – GO AWAY! Come back next week. Love you!
Okay, so I’m back to just two knitted holiday gifts. I got a cold this week that helped tip the balance and I’m pretty sure I’m not up to anything more pressing than finishing the two that were really originally planned.
So here’s the first – Fiber Trends felt clogs with fleece lined suede slipper bottoms.
This is just out of the washer, still a little lint covered from the sheets they got fulled with. As usual, all pictures are clickable thumbnails.
And two finished shots.
I knit just the uppers, not the soles, from the Fiber Trends pattern, which worked pretty well. They’re a little unshapen, but they should work themselves out as they’re worn the first few times. I fulled them until they were about the right length, but still ended up having to do some forced shaping around the toes to make them fit the slipper bottoms. I think I like them that way, though, because there’s a little more room around the toes than there might have been if they’d been fulled to fit exactly.
And just to make sure anyone who stumbles across this doesn’t have to go digging, these were knit with just over a skein of Paton’s Classic Merino that I dyed with Tropical Punch Kool Aid using the Fiber Trends Felt Clogs pattern. I only knit the uppers – cast on the number of stitches you’re s’posed to have once you finish the sole and worked from there – and fulled them to the right size (I think it was four 15 minute hot wash cycles on our washing machine). I used more of the dyed yarn to sew them to the fleece-lined soles (purchased from Patternworks) and overlapped the stitches a few times at the toes to help reinforce them.
Must resist.. ooh, shiny! (Updated with pictures)
(Okay, so now that I’ve put in the pictures, MOM: GO AWAY. You can come back in a week. Love you!)
Gah. I am not doing many knitted holiday gifts this year (really just one, maybe two.. or.. well, three if I .. make that *four*.. uh, hrm.. yeah, five.. if I can make it all work), but I’ve managed to totally lose my knitting mojo anyway. I have about 6 inches of sleeves left on one project and I just can’t seem to focus on it. I’ll sit down, knit a few rows.. and get distracted by.. anything.. everything. *sigh*
Updated to add pictures – here are the sleeves as of.. sometime this weekend, I think. They’re not much farther now. One of them is lying on top of the other in this picture as I’m knitting them both at the same time on a singular circular.
This weekend I thought I’d find my mojo again if I just kicked out one of the smaller projects, and that worked until I ran out of the yarn I was using for the project. The yarn which had been hand-dyed. *sigh*
(As usual, all the pictures are clickable thumbnails..)
The little white specs are from where the skein was tied, but I kind of like how they make the yarn look a little heathered. These are the Fiber Trends Felt Clogs, but without the bottoms as I have some fleece-lined slipper soles for the bottoms. The pattern is written to make this possible, but I’ve never seen a pair actually done this way, so here’s hoping they turn out! I’m knitting with two strands of Paton’s Classic Merino held together. As you can see, I just have the cuff on the second one to finish.
It’s *possible* that I can recreate it well enough (it was some Paton’s Classic Merino that I dyed with Tropical Punch Kool-Aid*, so it’s not like I can’t reproduce the conditions nearly exactly or anything), but at the same time, the idea of *fulling* something that was dyed like this made me a little nervous from the start (but then, I told myself that if the dye all went down the drain, I could just overdye the finished product in more Kool-Aid.. right?), so that ended up in a paroxysm of “was this really a good idea after all?”
All the same.. I think I’ll stop out at Michael’s on the way home tonight and grab another skein of the Paton’s and then stop at the grocery store and grab some more Tropical Punch.** I have a back up plan for this one if the Kool-Aid dyed stuff doesn’t work, so I’m not that concerned, but .. yeah.. that whole mojo thing, combined with the realization that there are just a mere *7* days until Christmas.. yeah.
* Yeah.. on that.. did that .. last week sometime, I think. It was very nifty and SO very easy. I mean.. really. Bring pot of water to boil, stir in Kool-Aid, drop in skein of yarn, wait until water goes clear. Yeah. Dead. Simple. And yes, I did take a picture of the finished skein, but the camera is at home, so I’ll post it later.
And I have a whole slew of yarn I got from KnitPicks in their “bare” states, so I’m sure there will be more Kool-Aid dyed goodness.. I just have to find that colorwheel that I know I saw somewhere that showed what colors you get from which flavors…
** Yeah.. on that.. did that.. last night. *smile* I love that this so both so easy and so predictable! I think the color matches *very* well.. (and yes, I was careful to tie the skein a little tight so that I’d still get the white speckles.. *grin*)
Project pondering..
Not that I need more projects right now, especially with the addition of a Dr. Who Scarf to my queue for my boy, but I was pondering what to do with the cashgora that I’ve been spinning
First skein, about half the total; all pictures are clickable thumbnails
A shot showing more of the color variations, especially the pinkish-purply bit
…and also pondering what to do with the cochineal-dyed handspun and roving we did a week and a half ago:
Clun Forest handspun is farthest left; SWS is middle and Paton’s Classic Merino is right
Front hangar
…and thinking that all my gloves and mittens have disappeared and I think I’m going to try to figure out a way to make something like Fetching out of the cashgora and handspun. I think the colors will blend well enough for it to work out, but I’m a little concerned that the cashgora will be thicker, especially since I might end up trying to learn to Navajo-ply it to maintain the color runs.. But then.. if that’s the case, I could also use the skein of Soy Wool Silk (center in the cochineal picture above), which might flow better for color, too. I think I’m thinking that the cashgora will be cuff-bits and the rest hand-bits, but we’ll have to see how much of the cashgora I end up with… I could also start with the darkest purple (Clun Forest handspun dyed in blue vitriol mordanted cochineal) and work through the cashgora and use the SWS or the rest of the Clun Forest roving (dyed in cream of tartar mordanted cochineal if memory serves) for the fingers.
*ponder*
(And while I’m pondering.. does anyone know an easy way to take all the Categories assigned to a WordPress post and make them Tags, either in addition or instead of Categories? Or should I just continue to use Categories and ignore the new Tags options?)
Brief eye candy
Just a quick post to show you some of the spinning I’ve been doing between holiday gift knitting and the like..
I’m not sure if it’s because of the fiber I’m spinning (Cashgora), or because I got used to the speed of the spin on the bottom whorl I’m using to spin the silk/camel hair, but my spindle felt like it was really slowing down. Or not really slowing down, but it didn’t spin as long as I wanted it to. So I wound off the first bit, which is likely just slightly more than half of the total amount, of the Cashgora this weekend. I started spinning the rest, and the spindle is still a bit slow or whatever, but it’s going well all the same.
