Free Pattern: Slouchy Ridges Hat

It is finished! It, being me. I'm finished compiling data from my awesome testers, sifting through photos of my sorry mug, tweaking pixels on the PDF... and now, I present my first pattern of 2011.

Pattern Name: Slouchy Ridges Hat

Difficulty: Easy

Yardage: 200 yards

Techniques: Knitting in the round, Working stripes (if you want a multicolored hat), and another technique explained in the pattern.

My goal this year is to publish 11 patterns. The ones I self-publish will be free all year long, and on January first of 2012 they'll go up for sale, so download this one while you can!

What I like about this hat is that it's stockinette stitch in the round, making it a good zone-out project, but every so often there's the pick-up round, where you have to pay attention.  It's hard to find knitting projects that have that duality.

Anyway, I hope you like it, too! You can download your own free copy here: download now

Strides in Quilting

I worked for six hours today, then spent two hours sewing.  While it doesn't feel like I've accomplished much, I have hit two milestones today.

First, I finished cutting the 40 edge pieces! I realize that I will probably need to go and find more fabric (Maybe twice as much, since I want to use this color for the back.)

Then, I finished cutting the pieces for my first flower! Yup, this is flower one of 25.

This quilt is going to be HUGE. Really, really big - but that's good, right?

I started cutting the pieces for the second flower, but my hands started to to hurt.  The rotary cutter is not so good for your wrists, I guess.

Now I'm off to eat veggie lasagna and perhaps some bananas foster afterwards :)  I've done so much today, it feel great!

New Year, New Design

All crafters get requests from friends and families, but knitters more so. Whether it's a hat for a sibling, mittens for a guy on a bus, or dolls for who knows who, I've done a ton of knitting for others (all of my knitting). Last year, I even got a request to make someone a mer-horse.

Usually, when someone asks me to make them something, I assume they're serious. I ask for measurements, yarn support, what color they want, and if they want to pay me (usually all I ask is that the person buy yarn before the project, and after the project they can "tip" however much they want.) I admit, not a sensible business model but I'm not in the knitting business.

I've had requests for gloves, hats, and even a Barbie sweater "of the finest silk." Often, after the serious talk starts, the person blinks, suprised, asks "You'll seriously do it?" and then needs some "time to think."  Usually I don't hear back from them, the subject is dropped, and they never mention it.  But this time that didn't happen.

My friend asked me to knit her cat a sweater.  Now, my cat experience has told me that cats might not like sweaters, but this cat does.  Zucchi loves wearing her sweater, and by golly, if she wants to wear sweaters I should provide a variety for her.  What are friends for?

So tonight at club I'm going to cast on for my second WIP of the year.  The first sweater will be red, with embroidered white flowers on the back, and the second sweater will be faux argyle on the back and plain in the front.  I'm going to improvise the second sweater based on the measurements I took from Zucchi's current sweater, and the first sweater is going to be the Kitty Cat Argyle Sweater from Eat Sleep Knit.

You may say that all the stress from my vacation has warped my mind.  I will neither confirm nor deny that statement.

The Best of 2010's Photos

I had a REALLY hard time making this post, and that's why it's coming up now instead of yesterday :)  I took over 5,500 pictures last year, and got that number down to 100 of my favorites.  Then I got that number down to 40.  So, here they are!

Let me know which one you think should be the best photo of 2010 :) Oh, and more knitting tomorrow. (P.S. - there are a lot of pictures, so I decided to put them all after the jump!)

My Year in Knitting

It was a truly prolific year for me this year! Wow! I finished 36 projects, some that I blogged and some that I didn't. 

3 Pairs of Slippers

4 Pairs of Socks

9 Hats

12 Stuffies

26 Hearts for Charity

6 Hats for Charity

Wow... I'm amazed at all the work I did. Can you pick out the projects that were a secret up until now? (Hint:  There's 5.)

And Thus Another Christmas is Conquered!

The presents are delivered.  Everyone loved them! I'm pretty excited that this Christmas went so well, especially since I made more hand-knit items then ever before this year - five!

Even the slippers, which I was really nervous about, were well received.

As for me, I made out like a bandit.  I got a new sewing machine, some rocking boots, and books, to name a few of my favorite gifts.  I'm already planning to quilt a bit, having little experience in quilting but a lot of experience reading about quiliting... so here's hoping.

Also in the realm of my life... my Dad's  computer got hit by a pretty nasty virus, and I'm having some very bad family problems.  I don't like keeping secrets, but the women of my family gathered around a table today and made the decision not to tell certain people in the family things "so that they can enjoy the holidays."  I'm happy I got to sit with my family and give my input, but I don't believe in keeping secrets.  I'm pretty bummed out about it - can't post here, of course, it wouldn't be a secret - but if  you could spare a prayer or a kind thought, I would appreciate it :)

I Don't Know If I Should be Proud of Myself or Ashamed!

Yes, it's almost ten days until Christmas.

No, I still haven't started the last pair of slippers!

Instead, I've started this pair of socks.  Why? Well, because I just couldn't take it.  I see W in his socks almost every day, and now my mother has socks, and my brother... why shouldn't I have a pair? So, I'm making some toe up Jaywalker socks, and gosh darnit, I'm going to enjoy them!

The yarn? Opal Prisma which I bought at Rhinebeck.  I wish I had bought more, because it's such an amazing yarn and it's been discontinued! I guess I'll have to spend my Christmas money on some on ebay.

Tonight, though, I get my needles back from Ash and start on those slippers! Viva la Christmas!

Christmas is Almost Here - and the Knitting is Almost Done!

Yes, that's right - I finished my brother's slipper socks. 

I cast off for the second sock, wove in all the ends, and knitted up the heels while at Ash's house for an awesome slumber party :)  We ate delicious beef stew, hot cocoa, and raspberry peppermint jello with whipped cream! Oh, and of course, did girly stuff like read magazines, laugh at reality TV, and hang out with the best bunny on the planet:

(Okay, I didn't have my camera with me last night, so this is a picture of Sammy from last week, when I picked him up from the vet.)

I also got some work done on the sample for my January pattern - and cast on for a new knit toy! It's about time I started working again to bring my designs to life.

I've also started saving loose ends for the Totally Useless Stitch Along from It's Daffycat! I thought about waiting until the new year, but while digging through my bag today I found these yarn bits, and I figured that I might as well - I have a bit of a disadvantage to cross-stitchers, since I don't have as many ends (but, they are bigger... hmm.)

Anyway, if you're interested in joining, you should check it out here! It'll be a lot of fun, and there will be PRIZES! There are already 75 bloggers participating, which is exciting.

Pre-Quarter Crafting

I returned to school on Friday, partly to prepare for the upcoming quarter and partly to just sit and relax somewhere without feeling guilty for not visiting family.

I also spent some time cleaning up the apartment for the quarter, and organizing things! One thing I did was do this spiffy wall art above my bed, using contact paper.

I plan to spend a day making some paper snowflakes to further spruce up my room.  I'm not a big Christmas decorator, but I do love decorating for the winter season with snowflakes and of course, warm throws.

Also on the list of things accomplished were these: Oreo truffles, which I am quasi-famous for :) 

My Christmas knitting is reaching a bit of a paniced state.  I know I can finish everything, I just have to TRY HARDER, darn it, and not get so distracted by shiny things.  For one, I underestimated the size of my brother's feet, his socks look like Christmas stockings!

I'm knitting them in Plymouth Yarns (a worsted weight) on size 5 needles, that I bought at the Yarn Crawl. He told me he wanted "slipper socks."  What are slipper socks?  Slippers? Socks? These are more sock-slippers, I guess, because they're just thick socks. But he tried them on before I left (to make sure the heels are in the right place) and he liked them! So good!

Oh, did you notice the cool stitch marker? It was an odd earring, then I was inspired by Jordan at In It To Knit It! You should check out her tutorial here.

There's another project I'm working on, but it's still in the planning-esqu stages. I'm sorry to say that I'm hoping once again to get into Knitty - and I'm close to actually submitting this time :) So, if I get rejected, it will just be a for-sale pattern, like Borneo.  

Also, W is working on a stop motion puppet for his two quarter, who need clothes! So, I taught him how to use the sewing machine! I'm also knitting him a scarf and a pair of miniature mittens, but I figured I could do another post on that later :)

But, as part of W's sewing machine training, I made him he made this pencil case.  At least... part of it.  The seams were a little uneven, and I tried to fix things but just ended up screwing things up even more when I added the zipper.  So the result was this.

Hey, it still holds my pens and pencils... so so what if it's a little different? It's my pencil case, made with love from W :) 

Burning Low

The Hooks and Needles Felting Party was Friday! I made roast chicken, corn, and roasted carrots and onions (assisted by Ash, of course.) Gillian brought brownies, and Rebecca, who's moved to town, came!

I would show you pictures of our felted slippers, but I'm the only person who's finished them, so you'll just have to see pics of mine.  Other people's projects were just these :P

And, our special guest was Samson, fresh from the vet.

He's coming home with me for Thanksgiving break, so there will be plenty more gorgeous angora photos then!

Right now, I feel burnt out... like, I'm a candle that's about to die. I can't wait for break! It'll be nice to relax, visit family, and sleep without an alarm.  Then, next quarter, I'm cutting back on credit hours a bit, so that will be nice too.

Time to get back to studying and paper-writing.  I wrote this post while the rice for my soup was cooking :)

Knitted Totoro Cat Bus

This is the amigurumi mystery project that I've been holding back on for almost a month! I wanted to make sure my swap partner got the package, so I wouldn't be ruining some great surprise for her.

I may eventually release a felted pattern, which would probably look better and have more stability than this one. Plus, my mom REALLY wants one, so eventually it'll happen...

Anyway, I made it really quickly and the pattern notes are ALL OVER, so it will take some time to type of the notes, let alone edit it to be a full pattern... so I don't think I'll be releasing this any time soon :P

A Knitting Miracle

Well, last night at club I merrily finished the last two pieces of my first pair of French Press Slippers! I wanted to start sewing them together, when I realized that I had made three of the same piece instead of two each for the top pieces.

My jaw was slack.  I held up the pieces, compared them.  Tried to stretch one so that maybe it would fit into shape.  Three other knitters were there, and they confirmed the diagnosis: I had made three of the right top piece, and one of the left.  I felt defeated.  This was the second mistake on these slippers this week!

Ash suggested that I just sew it together anyway and felt it up, since it probably wouldn't matter.  I just didn't like this idea - maybe it wouldn't matter, but I would know.  I would see W's mom in the slippers, and wonder if they're not the best they could be because I messed up.  I wouldn't give her the slippers saying "Yeah, hey, I messed these up, but you know, you won't notice," but I'll be thinking that.  I guess you could say I'm a perfectionist...

This morning, I went to throw in the towel and give up, ready to move onto my next set of slippers, when I discovered something amazing.

The two halves match.  They are mirror images.  They line up evenly.  They were made correctly.

How do I explain this? I choose not to.  I'm going to accept this as a crafty miracle and not draw too much attention to it.  Whoa, you might be thinking. This just means that you weren't paying attention last night when you went to put it together. But it wasn't just me.  Three other people looked at those pieces and shook their heads and said "Jeez, if this is your knitting your homework must look really bad." Maybe the four of us were off our rockers from end-of-the-quarter papers, but I doubt no one noticed.

But maybe it's not a miracle.  Maybe there's a troupe of elves hiding under my bed, who have decided to help me by fixing my stupid knitting mistakes at night. I'm not going to test this theory, though!

Finished: Little String Bean

This is project 1 of ??? for W's big sister, who's child is due in May!

W's sis is going to know the sex of the baby, but she isn't telling anyone, mostly from a fear of primary colors.  I feel for her.  I wouldn't want a bunch of all-pink or all-blue stuff for my kid, either.

A note on the buttons: I picked them out at JoAnn's, having forgotten to actually bring the sweater with me! So I didn't want to go green for fear of not matching, and I saw these orange buttons and thought that they were perfect, just not-matching enough to seem chic.

Project notes:

Pattern: Little Coffee Bean from The Brown Stitch

Yarn: Cascade 220 in Green and White

Needles: Size 6 and size 5

Well, there we go! A FO to make up for the lack of knitting I've been doing this week (due to Week 9)

One of Those Days

Have you ever had one of those self-esteem-destroying days where you just can't do anything right?  Yeah, welcome to today. 

It took me two hours to do a lab that should've taken me less than one because I kept messing up simple math.  2+5=8? Sorry, that doesn't fly in college.

Then, when I was in class, I was still messing up basic addition! Maybe it's the lack of food (and lack of time to eat food) or the lack of sleep or the lack of free time.  Anyway, I went to eat with Ash and we went to club, where I thought I could chat and work on my slippers.  Knitting.  What could be more easy?

Yeah, when you're having one of those days where your brain is in backwards, you probably shouldn't knit something that requires PAYING ATTENTION to each row, because there be increasing and decreasing going on in here.

Want to defy me? Learn from my example.

Maybe you're wondering what this picture is.  I can clarify.  Above please note the two pieces around a central, larger piece.  This would be the two halves of my French Press Slipper.  See how one piece is smaller than the other? That's where I decreased, forgot to knit the bit of stockinette in the middle that makes the piece long, then increased again for the top of the foot. 

If words are hard for you, this is how it SHOULD look.

... One of the girls at club said "I feel sorry for you." as I laid out the pieces to memorialize my idiocy.  Ash suggested maybe it will felt out... but I can't do that, I have to frog it back and rework it.  It'll be fine. I can fix this.

In other news, I've written 5,000 word for NaNoWriMo and finished my baby sweater! I plan on making a FO post tomorrow for it.

National (BLANK) (BLANK) Month

This year, I'm participating in my very first NaNoWriMo!  So if you're doing it to, you should add me as a writing buddy.  

My novel is a chick lit novel about knitting, death, and friendship... I think it's going to be pretty good.  I've got a tart and an end, and some things in between, but I don't really have it all in place.

Also, I heard about this awesome thing called NaKniSweMo ... and I cursed myself. I would totally rather knit a sweater than write a novel!

Although when I was growing up, I really wanted to be a writer... knitting is more my thing now.  If you don't want to think for yourself, you can knit a really gorgeous sweater.  Writing on the other hand...

Table for 6?

The quarter is almost over, and with that comes the joyous thing called free time. Until then, I have a ton of paperwork to do and not enough time to knit.  This Monday marks the beginning of two-three weeks of stress, squabbles (from the stress) and indigestion (also from stress, but possibly from eating out every night.)

But, a few good things have happened this week that deserve to be memorialized in blog form.

I started working on Christmas gifts! For W's mother and sisters, I'm making French Press Slippers.  They work up really fast! It's really gratifying to make these.

Yesterday, I saw a rainbow outside of my building! That was pretty sweet.

Lotus and Rocky have been very active lately.  They're much less skittish much more adventurous.  If I let one out of their cage, the other wakes up and wants to sit on my lap (they aren't allowed to be out together, for obvious reasons!)

The number one good thing of the week, though, is this.

I bought a 35-piece set of China.  Yeah, I know, what will I do with that? The future is ripe with dinner parties followed by dessert and tea.

I just need a table for us all to sit at.

Knitting (And Other) Updates

Whew! It seems like since I came back from my trip I've been working double time to make up for all the stuff I missed! But while I was gone, I managed to finish a lot of stuff, and start a few new things, so here we go!

My first FO to share... I finally finished my mom's socks! I managed to mess up the bind off twice, and ended up using a really nice sewn bind off that Joansie from Knitting By the Ocean told me about! And it worked awesomely! I've been plagued by too-tight bind offs, and she really saved my butt :) Never more will I be fearing the end of toe-up socks.

My second FO is this hat, which I am test knitting through the Free Pattern Testers group on Ravelry.  I still have to finish filling out my comments, but I'm super happy with how the hat turned out! I'm so lucky that I got the chance to test it, and I'll post up when the pattern is for sale to the rest of the world. 

This is meant to be FOR ME. Let's see if we can keep it that way! If I had to knit it over again, I would add an extra repeat to make it a little more floppy. 

And now, a picture of a current WIP.  

It's a baby sweater! The pattern I used was Little Coffee Bean, and I love the way this is going.  I used Cascade 220 Superwash and size 5 and 6 needles for a denser fabric.  I made the size for a 6 month old, but I really think that it lies somewhere between 3 and 6 months because of my needle change.  W's sister is due in May... so I hope her baby gets a chance to wear it!!

 Off the subject of knitting: Samson is adjusting well to his new surroundings.  Ash brought him to club and he sat with us on the couch, and we plucked him a bit.  We're thinking of shearing him, since he doesn't like to be plucked very much... :(

 Also, I'm making these! Clothes for stop motion puppets! I have to admit, I don't like sewing as much as I like knitting.  It doesn't help that I thought I would be a kind of advisor to this: showing them how to cut out the patterns, lending them my machine, sewing the stitches - but it turns out that they want me to do the whole thing, which wouldn't be a problem if I didn't have 12,000 other things to do.  I don't really know anything about their film, but I'll show you guys when it's done (I hope!)

Other than that, things have been gearing up at school.  It's week 8 and I spent two hours today calibrating equipment for my sampling project tomorrow - I'm nervous! If a single thing goes wrong, I could fail the class... and so many things have gone wrong!

Phew.  Anyway, there's where life is (right now at least).

Rhinebeck Recap

I have to say, Rhinebeck was pretty awesome! I had a great time with Ash and we will definitely be doing this again, with some more planning. So before I disappear for a while to go to a conference, I can grace you guys with this nice long post about it!

Ash and I had been talking with Rebecca about going to NYS&W this year, but we hadn't made any concrete plans.  Then, at the Yarn Crawl, we met a really nice lady that suggested that we go... and that was the sunny day that made the seed of the idea sprout up.  We reserved a hotel room.  I saved two paychecks.

We made the trip down in the dead of night on Friday, checked into the hotel at around midnight, and couldn't sleep.  Regardless, we were bright eyed and ready to go both mornings!

Our spoils:

1. Yarn. A lot of yarn. I actually don't have a picture of all the yarn together (that will have to wait until Friday!) but it wasn't a lot of yarn... but it was nice, fancy, expensive yarn.
2. A commemorative re-useable tote bag (Ash knows me waaaay too well.)
3. A ravelry button (pictured above. We went to the Ravelry meet up but got there too late - some guy gave us horrible directions and we wandered lost for almost an hour - to get any gift bags!)
4. A yarn swift (This was much-needed, and will be shared among the club.)
5. Sustainably harvested birch size five dpns.
6. Samson:

Sleepy rabbit.

Ash and I have decided to share joint custody of this angora rabbit.  He is totally cute!

Note the absolute look of terror on his face.

Being plucked on the ride home.

On top of that, I got a lot of inspiration.  I saw a few familiar faces, and took a ton of pictures!

Apple cider donuts - YUM.

This stall was my favorite - it was like a forest of Christmas trees made of yarn.

All in all, a great trip.

My favorite photo of the weekend