Knitting for a Nerdy Baby

I've known this for a while, but my friend from college is pregnant! With a little girl! Their nursery is "nerd themed" so I've been really inspired to make lots of cute things for them.  I figured I would post my list of ideas so that I would be able to come back to it.

1. A knit Dalek.  I'm actually working on this one, and it's going really well!
2. A star trek inspired baby cardi.  I have red yarn, and can embroider a little symbol on the front... so it will be a baby red shirt!! (As cool as this is, I mentioned ST to her and they're not really trekkies, so I'll save it for another time.)
3. A baby jayne hat - though I know if Dan sees me knitting this he'll want one :P
4. A little princess leia hat.
5. Actually, a little leia outfit would be cute! And it would be easy.
6. A knit Bantha - OMG SO CUTE!!!!1ONE  I would pay for this pattern.
7. She mentioned a knit tardis.  But that's too easy! Maybe a Tardis diaper genie cover? Hmmm.
8. A baby-sized little jedi costume.
9. I want to do a blanket out of all these - but in yellow and green, because she told me ages ago that she liked those two colors.   That just screams "Waaaayyyy too ambitious" though... right? No... yes.  No... yes... stop!
10. A wookie doll.  Here's a crochet one, but I would make a knit one.  Too bad, I just gave away a bunch of hideous fun fur that would have looked good like this!
11. A stuffed ewok! I couldn't find a pattern for one, but they would be easy to do.
12. A little ewok cowl/hat - here's a crochet version, it would be easy to make a knit one.

Anyway, those were just rattling in my head, I had to get them out! Have a good Sunday!

Busybody

I've had a good Sunday.  I woke up, painted, mended a blanket that mysteriously got a hole in it:

(I was going to patch it but I don't think you can tell where the stitch was, so I'm just going to leave it there.)

And... I dealt with this:

I wanted to clean stuff out of my Dad's house, since I don't live there anymore and it's not doing any good way up there.  I got a BIG laundry basket of old clothes and miscellany; an under-the-bed tupperware of fabric; and these three containers of yarn. The entire trunk of my car was full!

So I spent the day sorting yarn into "Future Projects," "Misc. Arylic Yarn," "Misc. Wool-Slash-Animal Fiber Yarn," and "Misc. Sock yarn."

So... know anyone that wants some acrylic yarn?  I'm not going to use it... pretty much ever.  I just don't like the way that Red Heart looks when knit up, and I don't like the way it feels.  Some other Acrylic, like Caron Simply Soft or Vanna's Choice, are ok... but Red Heart is just not soft enough for my picky hands.

I think I'm going to take the Misc. Yarn to my knitting group and give it away there, then maybe post some of the stuff here and see if anyone wants it!

Want mail?

My Christmas cards are all sent out this year, I designed them myself and had them printed up at Staples.  But I have extra! And extra stamps! So, the logical thing to do is ask the internet - do any of you want a holiday card? I haven't gotten many, so it would be nice to swap.  Leave a comment and I'll e-mail you and we can exchange addresses!

Darn?

I'm not sure if this is darning, but I'll share this with you anyway.  Ever since I finished my colorful Kaffe Fasset socks, I've been wearing them a lot.  Sadly, though, I took them out of the sock bath a few weeks ago to find a tiny hole in one of them!

I didn't know what to do, and was in the course of packing, so I put scotch tape over the hole and threw the socks in with my projects.  Thankfully, the hole didn't get any bigger because when I checked it out today, it was only two stitches.

Somehow, the yarn had split and thankfully I caught the hole before it was gigantic.

So, I used my shiny new needles to catch the stitches and keep them from dropping further.

Then, I went into my old sock yarn stash and found the remnant of this project.  I picked off a section that matched the section that broke, and worked my way across the row a bit to anchor the yarn. After that, I kitchnered the loose stitches together and did some more duplicate stitch to anchor the yarn on the other side.

I think that I saved my socks! I've never darned before, but the pictures that I've seen, the socks look kind of gross looking.  Soon, I won't even be able to tell that I mended them!

Another WIP Update

Here's some more catching up to date with the projects that I have lying around. 

First off, there's this little monster.  I want to finish him fast, because he looks so lifeless and dead without stuffing or an armature. 

He's a gift for my best friend back home, Steph, who likes chameleons.  The pattern is Chameleon by Hansi Singh.  I really love it, but there are some errata which really frustrates me - I don't like finding errata in patterns, especially when I paid for them.  But thankfully all the fixes were on ravelry, so after I ran into my first snag I looked up any other errata and wrote it down in my moleskin. 

 

Anyway, it's coming along well but I want to finish it before I move home and see her again - so, by the middle of next week.  (My conscience is saying "good luck" here, but I believe in myself!)

There's also this kind of crazy thing:

I haven't been able to give it a good name yet, since most of the things I think of when I look at it could be mistaken for euphamisms.

The nickname "The Red Terror" was met with snickers and/or disgusted looks

It started out earlier this quarter when I saw that a sweater kit on knitpicks was on sale for $20.  The pattern was called Cozy Cocoon - which is about $5 in itself, so... I got a sweater's worth of yarn for $15.  This alone was incentive enough for me to buy it, since I've been telling myself I'm going to knit a sweater for years, and buying yarn for sweaters for years, now I finally get a pattern, with yarn, delivered to my door for about $25 when you factor in shipping?  That's too good!

It probably didn't help that everyone in Hooks and Needles has knit or is working on a sweater - Kay, Ash, Rebecca, Alysia... I just wanted to belong! So, I happily cast on, and kept knitting... and knitting... and knitting...

I'm not even halfway done. I just hope I don't get bored, or don't like it in the end.  I guess if I don't like it, I'll just give it to my mom.

So, that makes 3 out of 4 projects that I have to show for myself! The 4th one deserves a post all in itself, so I'll save that for another time I think.  I don't like having so many WIPs at once - I feel like nothing is getting done!

Imagine RIT!

I'm so pumped to finally be able to share this project! Last Saturday, Hooks and Needles exhibited at Imagine RIT, a yearly festival hosted on campus.  Over 32,000 people showed up, and tons of them passed by us.

Our exhibit was three parts.  The first was Samson, who hung out all day and got to represent angora rabbits everywhere.

There was also spinning with drop spindles and Ash's wheel (which she isn't an expert at yet, so we made Nathaniel do it.)

The second was finger knitting lessons, which we gave to people of all ages.  I taught kids as young as two or three (who loved it but didn't quite get what was going on) and a couple of ladies that were in their seventies.  The whole club pitched in!

And the third and most impressive portion was this:

A wall of knit bricks. 

We knit and crocheted over 1,000 bricks to put up as part of the exhibit, which was the vision of the club's secretary and president-elect, Alysia.  This has been a process that started in September and has taken us through months and months.  There were several cases of carpal tunnel and tendonitis, and a few tears.

The day of the exhibit, we were there at 6AM setting up.  We were working almost to the finish line - that's four hours of cutting duct tape, folding it, and pressing bricks against the wall

The end result was nothing short of awesome.  I think people were totally impressed, and we did a ton of good work spreading awareness for the club and teaching people about fiber arts.  

Retrospective

Happy New Year everyone! 

2011 was incredibly crazy for me.  I published six designs, made four pairs of socks, knit a sweater for a cat, sold toys at a craft sale... and that's just the knitting!

I made a little collage of all the things I've finished:

The project from 2011 that I'm most proud of is (of course) my Blackbird Shawlette.
The project from 2011 that I use the most are my Pomatomus Socks - I love having socks of my own!
The strangest project from 2011... well, that's hard to decide.

Of course, I didn't include photos of the 12 hedgehogs that I made for the craft sale, or the pile of bricks that I'm knitting for a project I haven't blogged about, or the latest design that I'm slow cooking.  I DO have a camera, though, I got one for Christmas, so... expect more blogging!

December has been incredibly busy, but, I know that I'm going to be able to use these next few days before school starts up again to hit the ground running.

What's in store for 2012? Not even I know!

How about everyone else? Best project? Biggest mistake? What are you happy to be finished with?

Hoof Mittens!

A while ago I got an e-mail from Lesley at Lyonesque about this awesome mod to my Kitten Mittens!

She changed the colors to make hoof mittens :)

I love seeing people change my pattern, strange as that may seem.  It makes me feel like people appreciate my work, more than wanting to make something from it.  That the pattern inspires them to make something original, something new! So I was super psyched, and I kept telling myself "I have to blog about this!"

So, here it is! You should definitely check out her blog, too, because she has a matching hat that goes with them!

It's OVER! Oh, and I got to meet Anne Hanson!

First thing's first... my academic quarter is officially over as of today! I am so, so, so relieved, and so exhausted.  I can't wait for a good week and a half of vacation, then moving into my new apartment.  It's going to be nice to have a room to myself with a desk instead of, say, this:



Oh, see that bright thing on the table?  Monday, my friend Rebecca called me and said "The Rochester Knitting Guild is meeting tonight and I want to check it out... want to come with?"  Another knitting club to go to? Hot swift!

Anyway, I went on their website and saw that Anne Hanson, from Knitspot, was going to be there! I've been following her blog for a while, and I though - huh, funny, I never really looked at her patterns.  So I spent a few hours doing that on Ravelry - yes, maybe a good hour and a half.  There are a LOT of patterns!  I finally decided on making some Longjohn Socks.  It just seemed like a great mindless sock project for me to work on... and I'm loving it so far. 



It's been hard for me to knit with all the stress I've been under.  I enjoyed listening to Anne speak, but I liked being able to sit and knit just as much! It was also really cool to hear about her inspiration and see photos of her finished works juxtaposed against the photos that inspired them.  At the end, she even signed a paper copy of a fingerless gloves pattern that I bought!



It was also really exciting to see her trunk so - and to see all the versions of projects that people had brought with them. I wish I had brought W's DSLR so I could have shot photos of the night!

And, at the end of it all, I went home and made a creamsicle float.

My Random Monday - Halloween Edition!

1. I'm not that big on Halloween.  Candy? It's a nice indulgence but why eat a bunch of it in one go? You just make yourself sick.  Costumes? You go out and buy it, then wear it once and never again.  It's weird, because Halloween used to be my favorite holiday.  Now, not so much.

2. Maybe I'm just being a wet blanket because this week is the busiest ever for me.  I'm travelling for work, then I have a 3-day summit for school.  It should give me some good knitting time, at least.

3. Oh.... this:

I joined a crafty directory! I had a lot of fun looking at all the different blogs in it... so, you should check it out and join, too!

4. Here's something spooky... GMOs.  I'm a big non-GMO proponent, and I guess I'm not in the majority.  This poll asked people "Would you eat genetically modified salmon?" and when I took it, the majority said "NO WAY!"  Sadly, most of us ARE eating GMOs every day.  It's not enough to just buy the stuff that says GMO-free on the label - if you're in the U.S. you should go to the Center for Food Safety.  They have a form that you can fill out in thirty seconds to write to the FDA.  Even if you don't think it'll work, at least give it a try if you feel strongly about the issue!

Busy As A Bee

I've been busy, mostly because I don't have any assignments for work, so I've been doing homework - and the best pair to reading is knitting! I managed to finish my baby cardi last night at Hooks and Needles!

I'm so proud! The pattern is Cascade, from Petite Purls, and the buttons are from Jo Ann's...  I'm really happy with the pairing.  The yarn is Cascade Pacifica, in colorway 507.  I made the 6 month old size and used pretty much exactly one skein.  I'm going to make an elephant to go with it (her theme is "jungle") and hopefully I'll get to send it off!

I also sat down with some Sculpey yesterday and made a ton of little stitch markers.  I just wanted to Do something and have it pay off instantaneously.  Well, faster than knitting does. It still took time to sculpt the tiny figurines, bake them, then add the fixtures, but compared to a sweater... not long at all!

I made three hedgehogs,

An owl whose eye fell off

Two markers whose jump rings were too small - I'm going to dub these the sock yarn markers.

And a sort of set.  The flowers are supposed to be hydrangea's... but they're still pretty.

I also wound yarn for a super secret Hooks and Needles project... hee hee.

You know I would divulge it, but we need approval from the school to do it, and once that happens we'll be knitting our butts off...

I'm really bummed out about things, like this horrible cold I have, but I'm trying to keep busy and do everything I'm supposed to because tonight is the season start of Glee, and this weekend is OTTOWA with W and his friends! Something big is happening every day this week, really, so I don't have time to slow down.

Taking on the Heritage Festival!

For some reason we keep forgetting things, and keep coming home every weekend.  I'm not mad, because it gives me peace and quiet to do my homework and once in a while cool stuff like this happens - the Heritage Festival!  It was way better than it looked from outside of the park - we almost didn't go in because you had to pay $4 and we "just wanted food."  Well, definitely well worth $4! I met a ton of really cool people from around W's hometown that do all sort of crafts.   Here's a snippet:

This guy used to sell lanterns, then decided to collect them.  He had the same lantern that my brother got me as a birthday present when we were small. 

One woman quilted Civil-War Era replica quilts, and had an amazing tent full of those. Another did bobbin lace - completely fascinating, but even more of a time suck than knitting.

Walking through the festival, I seriously had to tell myself. "You don't want to be a serial crafter.  You don't want to get a serial crafter. RESIST!"  No stall tested my moxy more than this one:

Dyeing! The yarn in the stall were all naturally dyed, hand-spun wool.  The woman even led me over to the garden of the replica house and showed me the plants she used! "This is indigo," etc!  She had a whole range of materials, and suggested if I wanted to try to check out the books she had on display.

I also got my shopping on (well, I made W buy things) and bought these bone earrings for $4! The guys collects bones from a local butcher that dresses meats for hunters and farms in the area.  Kind of gruesome, but if you think about it, he's basically taking trash (the butcher gives him the bones) and making something cool out of it. 

There was also a knitting lady that I chatted with, who was happy to find someone who appreciated her work! Her stitches were so neat, perfectly done on every sweater.  She told me "If you like something, just steal it with your eyes.  You seem smart enough to figure it out!" As we walked away, W and I fantasized about selling things at craft sales.  Of course, what would I sell!?

Also, do you see that yellow sweater on the bottom right?  I have some yarn in that same color - and I figured out what to do with it! A sweater for W's mom! :)

Anyway, I also bought a Christmas ornament made with a craft called quilling! It seems too delicate to put on a tree, so I think I'm going to have it framed.  Maybe one day I'll make some snowflakes to match it and have a set for Christmas time!

All in all, I'm happy I took two hours from my homework to go!

Swatching!

I don't usually swatch, but I'm starting a baby project and wanted to perfect this pattern that I'm un-venting.  So, I took out my trusty winder (really, winding yarn into center-pull skeins needs to be less fun - NOT.) and found this!



I don't know a lot about spinning, but my hypothesis is this is the leader.  How often does this happen? Maybe we could calculate odds, and find out how lucky I am! I'm assuming that this doesn't happen very often.



Oh, the yarn I'm using is this new stuff from Cascade, "Pacific."  It is very soft, but sort of has an un-plying problem (anyone that's every used Caron Simply Soft probably knows what I'm describing.)  For a merino-acrylic mix, it has the feel of soft acrylic, but blocks out well.  Just from one swatch, I like it!



I like to keep my labels with my skeins, so here's a pick of my trick - a label extender - in case you were wondering how I did that.  As you work from the middle and the skein gets smaller, just move the tape.

Hark! A Giveaway!

To celebrate the opening of her new etsy shop, Angela from Revelations of a Delusional Knitter is hosting a really cool giveaway on her blog!  Just make a blog post about the giveaway and you're entered, so why not check it out?

I was so busy oogling at the beautiful photos of yarn...  I love the stormy sky fingering weight:

(Click on the photo to go to the listing - I borrowed it!)

But there's also a place in my heart for the revelations fingering weight...  I don't have a lot of varigated yarn in le stash... but, there is a special place in my heart for it!

(Click on the photo to go to the listing - I borrowed it!)

Which one will I inevitably choose?  How about you - which one would you choose out of all the yarns? I would love to discuss this :B

Click here for more details about the giveaway, and Click here to go to Angela's shop on Etsy!