Mary Jane slippers

Yes, yes... I know I didn't need to start ANOTHER knitting project right now, but I had to face facts. My feet are cold and my slippers had huge holes. I guess I got too jealous of my dollies all getting toasty little knit slippers so I broke down and started knitting. I'm making the pattern up as I go, starting with a simple toe-up sock method, cast off about 1/5 of the stitches and continued on. I intend to crochet around the opening in sock monkey brown and add two straps of some kind to the top.

Remember when I said I turned Ginny's first blanket into a bunch of tiny projects? Here's more of that yarn... Caron Wintuk (heavy worsted weight). The sock monkey brown was for that blanket too. Good thing it was a cute combo even if the blanket didn't turn out!

Also, remember when I said I was having trouble with my double-pointed needles? It turns out Caron Spa yarn is extremely slippery and extremely splitty, so it turns out I have having yarn trouble, not needle trouble. DPN's with a normal-textured worsted weight yarn was just as easy as everyone said it would be!

Intarsia knitting

I have successfully completed the top moss-stitch border on Ginny's afghan and have begun intarsia knitting the main blanket. Intarsia knitting is a method for knitting with 2+ colors where you can introduce a large solid block or shape of color in the middle of another color. I am using it to create a simple quilt block look. There isn't much to it... just make sure the color of yarn you are finishing ends up on top so the new color can go around it and lock it in place, then drop the old color and continue with the new one. Simple! All the color changes end up on the backside of your work, so it looks seamless and beautiful on the front. The tricky part is keeping all those different colors separated!

This first row of intarsia knitting on my afghan has a white moss stitch border, a square of white, a square of watermelon (raspberry pink), a square of white, a square of blue mint (turquoise), and another white border. All told, five skeins of yarn going at once! Normally, intarsia knitting is done with smaller patterns where you can trail a couple of yards of yarn behind the work or create small "bobbins" by winding up a section of yarn so it pulls from the center (see photo below). Unfortunately, since each block of my blanket will require nearly a whole skein, there is no way to get around working with so many full skeins at once. The main hang up I am having now is having to untwist all of them from each other at the end of a few rows! But I am enjoying the color changes, the new technique, and seeing the project slowly take shape. Blanket progress: 5 inches down, 55 inches to go! Oy.

Here is an excellent video on intarsia knitting, shown in both Continental and English styles: http://www.knittinghelp.com/videos/advanced-techniques Scroll about 2/3 of the way down to "How to knit with 2 colors at a time" and intarsia knitting is the second technique.

Here is my blanket front where the intarsia looks seamless. (And my yarn is getting tangled!)











And here is the backside with the strands twisted around each other at each color change.

I realize my yarn is in a maternity clothes shopping bag, but I am not making any subtle announcements! It was just left over from a baby shower and a handy size. :)

Adventures in cable knitting

Up until recently I have been a rather timid knitter. I was content to knit and purl on straight needles and stuck to single-color patterns that required as few increases and decreases as possible, and preferably on nothing smaller than US 6 needles. I finally decided last month that, since I have been knitting off and on for the last five years, it is time to move on to some more advanced techniques.

My first major discovery was ravelry.com! Yes, a majority of the patterns they list are not free, but there are so many that it doesn't matter! Excellent, cute, creative, impressive, stunning, and unique free patterns abound even if they are not the majority! One morning I casually browsed through patterns I ended up with ten saved that I "had to make," so it's plenty to keep even the most skilled knitter busy for years! I picked one called "Tillamook Cabled Hat" by Rilana Knits mostly because I loved the look and second, because I love the Pacific Northwest and Tillamook cheese, so the title made me happy!

My first challenge: learning a cable cast-on. This site was extremely useful, with videos for both Continental- and English-style knitting. The cast-on itself wasn't hard at all... so why, you might ask, was I struggling and grumbling and hurling curses for three hours straight trying to cast-on a silly hat??? I'll blame that on my double-pointed needles. I had never previously used DPNs, but friends had assured me that they are harmless good fun and nothing to be scared of. Now surely a somewhat experienced (and timid) knitter like myself would be able to tackle them without a sweat, but apparently DPNs, cable cast-ons and myself do not work well together. Maybe the relationship just needs some work. In any case, at long last, I was fully cast-on and ready to start knitting-in-the-round.

After the cast-on, DPN's became increasingly less aggravating with each row, and by the time my 1 1/2 inches of hat ribbing was complete I started to pick up pace. After conquering those two hurdles, the challenge I had originally been scared to face, cabling, was a piece of cake. It was an "....oh, that's it?" moment in knitting for me. My progress so far is in the picture at the top of this post.

So take it from me, if you can knit and purl, don't be afraid of cabling! But you can go ahead and be afraid of your needles. After all, there's ten pointy ends to watch out for in a pack of DPNs. That's a lot of points.

New Year's resolution

Up until my crafting/DIY days began I never put any stock into New Year's resolutions. I am the sort of person who has the best of intentions but hit-and-miss success at actually changing anything. Not because I lack the willpower.... I just don't remember. I go to bed that night and it all seeps into my pillow and weeks go by before I remember my life-changing resolution. So I try to make the important resolutions more frequently in hopes that something will stick... and it happens occasionally.

Starting two years ago I began to make New Year's resolutions for crafting, because that is something that is in my daily schedule and not likely to be forgotten. Instead, I search for the project that requires the most willpower... that project that has sat unfinished for months, the tedious monotony of making 50 of the same item, the project that never begins because it will be months in the making, or the project that cost more than you'd like to admit but in the long run will be much cheaper than buying the "real thing" but just seems to sit on the shelf. You know the type of project I'm talking about... the one that's lurking in the back of your supplies and the back of your mind... the one that will someday finish itself. Right?

I decided to tackle one of these each January. I get the double satisfaction of completing a major project and successfully accomplishing a New Year's resolution at the same time. In 2008, I sewed five mei tai baby carriers, three of which were to be listed on my friend's cloth diapering website. In 2009, I sewed 35 medium-size pocket-style cloth diapers for my eight-month-old, Ginny, who had outgrown her smaller sizes. I also repaired some of her hand-me-down diapers from her sister and exchanged snaps for old velcro that no longer stuck. For 2010, I resolve to finally knit Ginny an afghan.

Her older sister, Hannah, being the first born in our family, first of her generation in my husband's extended family, and the first girl born for quite some time at our church, received no less than five hand-knit or hand-crocheted blankets. She loves them dearly and one of them has the distinction of being her "special blanket." I had every intention of knitting Ginny a blanket before she was born, but never found the time. When she was an infant I bought yarn to begin one, but I didn't like the design I had chosen and the yarn slowly turned into hats and other smaller projects. Just after New Year's, my friend gave me a box of knitting patterns, and as I flipped through it I saw the sweetest baby blanket pattern by Anny Blatt and immediately sat down to rework the pattern.

It was originally in quite small dimensions with lightweight yarn on US 4 needles, but I rewrote it for Caron Simply Soft worsted weight yarn on US 7 needles and it will measure 60"x60" when it finishes. It is edged in over three inches of moss stitch and the center blocks are done in a "fancy pat" pattern that looks similar to minky dot fabric to me. On the white squares I will be embroidering a very simple flower shape. For the colors I am using all Simply Soft: White, Blue Mint, Limelight, Berry Blue, Watermelon, and Mango. I played with the colors for hours but couldn't come up with a good solution for the green flower above the green square, but I think it still looks fine, especially since the embroidery will be quite thin.

My progress so far is.... well, what you see in the picture at the top of this post. Not tons yet. But moss stitch is a slow stitch for me since it takes me a while to get a good rhythm switching between knit and purl. I have 20 rows done and have seven more to go before the blocking begins and I get to try my hand at intarsia knitting! But more on that later...