Catching Up

So it's been forever and a day since I have done any actual knitting blogging, so since there is nearly no time left in 2007 I will catch up so as to not enter 2008 behind in my blogging! (If there is such a thing, really.)

Anyways, a while back I made a comment about knitting time/space continuum issues that I had. See, I was knitting an Elizabeth Zimmerman February baby sweater and I somehow thought that I could bang it out in no time at all. Yeah right. I shouldn't have picked such thin yarn or I would have made it in time but I didn't so I was slightly late in delivering my gift, but that was ok because I got to rest before my mom arrived. Anyways, this is my EZ February baby sweater that I knit for my friends baby out of Spritely Goods Sylph in the Winter Lotus colorway:
I put in button holes at the recommended intervals, but since the yarn was so fine... I ended up with 9 freaking button holes. There were actually 10 but the first one I did wasn't in the right place so I just sewed it up.


But it worked out I think, I'm happy with how this looks. I even got a PM on Ravelry from the Spritely Goods dyer asking me if she could put one of my photos in her gallery!

For the same baby, I knit a pair of Saarjte's booties out of the same yarn.

I got the idea from Freecia who knit the same combination for one of her friends. I mean, it really is the perfect match for this sweater with the garter stitch top.


Love these! So cute. The buttons are white because, duh, 9 buttons for sweater and I had to go get more. Which of course at the different store I went to they didn't have the buttons in blue, they had them in white.

I tried getting Schweetheart to model the sweater and booties but, well, it didn't work as well as the last time:


Ah well, it worked out perfectly in the end. And I finished the project before the baby was born (all 10 lbs 2 oz of her!). Here is momma with my gift a few days before baby was born:

I nearly forgot to mention, the project details are on Ravelry, here and here.

So I also knit a baby genius burp cloth for the same baby, but I managed to forget this when we took over the sweater and booties. Whoops. I did remember it when hubby and I went to our Secret Santa gift exchange party (more about this later!). This is out of Bernat Handicrafter Cotton in the Lavender Ice colorway:


Ravelry notes here.

Momma requested no pink for the baby, so that's why there's a whole mix of colors in the stuff I gave to her.

Oh, I finally managed to to take a picture of my "Scarf of Lies" as the OCK calls it. (Though mine isn't a scarf of lies like hers is, I managed to get a skein of the ribbon yarn that wasn't prepackaged so it wasn't shorted like hers appears to have been. Mine is a scarf of lies in how "easy" it is to do. Ok, the knitting is simple, but I have had major tangling issues. Everything tangled for me, the yarn AND the strings of beads. Yes, the beads too. Yippee.) Anyways, the damnable scarf is halfway done and waiting to be knit again. Had to stop for holiday knitting. Probably should have stopped sooner but everyone has to learn the hard way, right?


So pretty. I really do love how it looks. The colors are remarkably similar to the ones in the Spritely Goods yarn, which amuses me. I could possibly knit a pair of socks with my leftover yarn from the baby sweater. The skein of yarn was ginormous. I'd have to measure it, and I'm likely deluding myself but I could maybe crank out some ankle socks.

But here it is in its halfway-doneness glory:


I will get back to it... sometime.

I didn't queue too much up for Christmas knitting, though none of what I did queue up has been completed. I wanted to knit my mother-in-law some mittens. She was down here in September for hubby's birthday and she mentioned something about how she couldn't seem to find any mittens, all she could find in the shops were gloves. I think possibly she was doing it to see if she could get a pair of hand knit mittens out of me, but I'm not entirely positive she's that crafty. At any rate, I had been loving how Eunny Jang's Anemoi mitten pattern looked so instead of doing something basic out of The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns I already own, I decided to buy Eunny's pattern. Why knit worsted weight yarn mittens that I could crank out in a few hours like Emy did when I can spend an extended amount of time knitting fair isle (not intarsia, shit I knew that. Thanks Emy. >.<) for the first time! Ah well. It's been great. And I did stash busting for this! (Mwahaha no $5 owed for me yet thankyouverymuch!)


So this is the first finished mitten. Only took me three attempts to get to this point... Le sigh.

I started out using my Collinette Jitterbug in the Jay colorway and my second colorway of Koigu (KPM not KPPM this time, a bright pink #2120). I went with the Jay as the CC but I really should have made it the MC. I got to the row where you put the thumb gore stitches on waste yarn and decided I wasn't happy with how the pattern was coming out.



So I went back into my stash and I found two colorways of KnitPicks Essential Solid yarn, one in black (purchased to make the BMP socks) and one in burgundy (bought this before the BMP yarn, pretty sure I bought it to fill out my order for free shipping and to give the yarn a try). I figured these were good combinations because my hubby was buying my mil two jackets (one for Christmas and one for her Jan 5th birthday), both of which were black. So I started over again. So I did the cuff in size 0 needles as written in the pattern (first mitten I only used the 0's for the cast on row, went up to size 1's after that. I clearly did the cuff wrong too. The first attempt was nothing but special.) and went up to size 1's when I was starting the mitten. Holy frijole. That cuff was WAY too tight. Everyone I got to try on the mitten to see if they could get their hand in strugged with the mitten. No way was I going to go through all the work of making a pair of mittens only to have my mil not be able to get them on her hands! So, again, I was about to the point where you put the thumb gore stitches on waste yarn... and I frogged. Again.


So thankfully, the third time was the charm and I am finally on the second mitten. I did take a minor break while knitting the second mitten. I knew I wasn't going to make it for Christmas so I thought I would try to make a pair of Dashing fingerless gloves for hubby. That went as well as these mittens did. Well, almost. It only took me one frogging to get it right.

Anyways, no photos yet of the Dashing yet. One is done and the second is in the home stretch. But I put that down so that I can focus on the mitten again. Which is also nearing the home stretch. The thumb gore stitches are on waste yarn and I am about halfway with the mitten body. Hopefully I can finish it so that we can get it in the mail by Wednesday. They'll be late if I don't get them in the mail by then.

I'll blog about my Christmas yarn later. I'm fighting a cold so I'm going to go rest a bit. I have to take pictures of my goodies, so hopefully I will get to that later today!