Sock It to Me!

I forgot to tell you: I had to get a Kindle because of that continuing education thing I went to in Florida last month.  One of the books was out of print but available as an e-book, so the people running the program offered to reimburse us if we needed to buy a Kindle.

What do you do when you get a Kindle?  Well, you should probably get some kind of case for it, because it's an expensive-but-breakable item that's a pain in the neck to replace.

Or, if you're me, you knit it a sock.



Kindle Sock Pattern:
Yarn -- leftover Fuzzy Bunny worsted weight two-ply (leftover from this gorgeous shawl)
Needles -- size 6, as that's all I had with me at the time.
CO 40 sts -- I did not join in the round, but only because I didn't have the right needle with me.
Row 1: k1fb, k to last st, k1fb
Row 2 and following: knit in stockinette.  It's that simple!
Cast off when you've knit about an inch longer than the Kindle itself.  Fold in half and seam together side and bottom (I did mattress stitch for the side, and just a whip stitch on the bottom).
Put your Kindle in there and don't worry about it getting scratched or smooshed in your purse!  Kindle Sock won't protect your expensive-but-breakable item from getting damaged if you step on it, though, so ... well, just don't do that.  Refrain from putting your Kindle on the floor or whatever.

Hey! It's a Christmas Stocking!

I started this stocking at least one Christmas ago, maybe two? Finished yesterday while waiting for my car to be inspected. The impetus? My sister told me we had to bring our own stockings for Christmas this year. Thankfully, this one's big enough for the two of us to share, 'cause we've only got the one! Santa's far less picky about receptacles when he comes to our house.


Random big-worsted/small-bulky yarns, size 9 DPNs.

CO 56 sts. knit in the round. Let it sit around for a year if you don't make enough progress for it to be done by Christmas.
At some point, throw a short-row heel in there. It doesn't have to be very good.
At some other point, start decreasing for the toe. Close up the hole when it looks small enough.

Merry Christmas!

Mitts for Jamie

I made mittens for my neighbor DSB, and quickly realized I needed to make something for his girlfriend Jamie, as well. They are sweethearts, and it's a little weird to give Ben "thank-you mittens" but not give Jamie something -- as they BOTH care for our cat when we're away. But I did need to come up with something fairly quickly, as I don't want to run into Christmas and have them feel obligated to give us a gift in return.



Fortunately, I found two balls of gorgeous-aubergine Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in the sale bin at a LYS, and although I really like this yarn and wanted to make something for myself with it, I also knew that this was the perfect color and tweedy-delicious texture for fingerless mitts for Jamie. She's a hardcore gardener and actual florist (I would say her nascent floral business is "budding," but that's just too much), and fingerless mitts will be just the thing for keeping her hands and wrists a bit warmer while still being able to dig in the dirt.

Also, she has a pretty rockin' floaty-girly-layers personal style, and some sweet cabled mitts will fit in perfectly. So I found the free pattern Natalya on Ravelry, and cast-on Monday night... and finished on Wednesday. Perfect.

I plan to deliver both pairs of thank-you mittens today. The wind has picked up quite miserably, so I have no desire to leave the house, but fortunately, they just live around the corner. After I deliver them, I'll re-cozy-fy myself with a nice cup of hot chocolate, and figure out what I'm going to knit next.

Mittens for Ben, take two

These are the mittens I made for my neighbor DSB. I used exactly one skein of Cascade 220, with no leftovers!


I improvised the pattern:

CO 60 sts on size 5 dpns, and double-knit in the round (look up double-knitting -- I'm not enough of an expert to explain it here, but it means you have two layers of knitted fabric) for a couple of inches.
Start increasing for thumb gusset -- first on the inside layer, and then on the outside -- and increase every other round (so, once inside, once outside, and then do a plain round once inside and once outside) until you have added 16 stitches to each layer.
Set thumb sts. aside and reconnect hand stitches to continue in the round.
Keep going until the hand is big enough to fit.
Um, decrease a few rows in there somewhere, and on your last round, do a full-on knit-purl-knit-purl to connect the two layers (so the inside layer won't come out when you pull your hand out of the mitten). I think I ended up with about 12 stitches at the end. It makes a pretty star at the top. Then run the end of the yarn through those last 12 stitches and pull tight. Weave in end.
Return thumb stitches to needles, knit the thumb until it's long enough, do a round of p2tog decreases on the inside layer, then a round of k2tog decreases on the outside layer. Do one row of kpkp like for the top of the mitten, then close off the top of the thumb. Weave in ends, and use the beginning-thumb tail to close up the hole between the thumb and the hand.

If desired, use remaining yarn to crochet a chain, and connect the chain to the wrist of each mitten. String through coat sleeves and pretend you are a four-year-old!

Watch out, because these took me a freakin' month to make. Double-knitting is soooooo sloooooowww.

Knitting up a Storm

I'm a bit behind on my picture-taking, and therefore a bit behind on the blogging, too. Then again, when have I ever bothered to worry about that before? There are tons of things I've made and photographed that I haven't gotten around to blogging yet...

The shop was having a closeout sale on some older Tilli Tomas yarn. Now, that's a yarn that is firmly out of my price range, even now that I get an employee discount, but closeout yarn is even deeper discount, and so I figured that this would be my only chance if I ever were to buy any. So I went for it. After a long and tortured decision-making/bullet-biting process, I bought four skeins of navy, and decided to make a hat and mitten set for myself.

The yarn is called Flurries, a worsted-weight singles merino yarn with glass beads spun in about every four inches. Beautiful. The company changed the yardage of a skein (from 130 yards to 70 yards!), which is why we had to close out the older (larger!) skeins. Otherwise, Tilli Tomas does not go on sale. Period.

I had a random ball of a lavender/pink-y Rowan Cashsoft 4-ply laying around (another sale bin purchase), and decided to use that for the inside cuffs of the mittens. I cast on 52 stitches, using size 4 needles, and knit stockinette in the round for 2.5 inches (20 rounds).

(gauge for the Cashsoft: 26 sts. = 4 in.)

Then I switched to size 7 needles, joined on the Tilli Tomas, and decreased down to 46 sts. at the same time: k2tog, *k8, k2tog.* Next round, I purled so the cuff would turn under nicely. I knitted in stockinette for a couple of inches and realized that the mitten was going to be too big around -- but that frogging would be a horrible experience (even more than usual) because of those beads. So at that moment, I decided that these were going to be felted mittens. (GASP! Felting Tilli Tomas! My heart did skip a beat for a moment, it's true.)

(gauge for the Flurries before felting: 18 sts. = 4 in.)

I kept going, knitting the cast-on edge into the Flurries when I got that far, and started increasing for the thumb gusset at 4 inches (28 rounds after the purl round), doing paired M1 increases every other round until I had 13 thumb stitches (yes, I messed up in there somewhere and added an M1 when I shouldn't have -- so I did the same thing on the second mitten). including the two "center" stitches around which I was increasing. Then I put those 13 sts on a holder, rejoined in the round with two added stitches for the hand (to make up for the loss of the two "center" stitches that became part of the thumb). (So, still 46 sts.)

24 rounds after the thumb-hole/rejoin, I began decreasing heavily for the top of the mitten, and after a few rows made it down to 10 stitches, then cut and pulled the yarn-end through those last ten. This is also where I stopped taking pictures, apparently.

I did make a thumb. I did make a second mitten to match the first. I did felt them. At some point, I will post finished-object photos.

Just not today.

Also, I will make a hat to match at some point. But I haven't done it yet. Fodder for future posts!

Baby Strawberry Hands

Several months ago, while Sister was still pregnant (but very close to due), I decided that Baby needed a pair of thrummed mittens that looked like strawberries. Then we could call him Baby Strawberry Hands -- which sounds vaguely like Edward Scissorhands, but much cuter.

I improvised the pattern, using the leftover Cadenza from the Red Bear, but didn't write it down. I made the first Strawberry in one night (maybe two?), and then it took me longer than I'd anticipated to sit down and work on the second one, so I had time to forget what I'd done. And then the first attempt at Strawberry #2 was terrible, so I frogged it and started over... well, my nephew is now three months old, and I just finished the second Strawberry today. And this after making a concerted effort to finish!

But SO CUTE!!!! He may have already outgrown them, I don't know. He is a BIG baby. But I'm popping them in the mail soon, and maybe he'll get a couple of days' use out of them.


I think I cast on two or three stitches and kfb-ed every stitch a few times, working in the round (size 5 DPNs). Then I just kept increasing randomly, adding the occasional thrum, and probably got up to around 100 stitches total. Then I started decreasing, also randomly. I also threw in purl ribs here and there along with the decreasing, so that the surface would have that irregular bumpy shape like a strawberry. (Inasmuch as you can make mittens look like a strawberry, that is! They're not very pointy/triangular.) I decreased down to 20 sts, all purls, and then switched to larger dpns and the green yarn, which is Jill Eaton Minnow Merino, by Classic Elite Yarns. I think I used size 6 for the first mitten, and 7s for the second mitten; it's hard to tell. Anyway, I did 6 rounds of k1p1 rib and then bound off loosely. I did a single-crochet chain to connect the two, so now they look like strawberries on the vine! And the vine can go through his coat sleeves.

Seriously adorable.

HAT!

Husband actually asked me to make him a hat. Husband rarely expresses a great deal of interest in my knitting. He is supportive, yes. He indulges me in my yarn tourism whims. But he is a man more interested in functionality than aesthetics, and when I say things like "would you like me to knit you a hat?" he responds, "I already have a hat."

But when he lost his (store-bought) hat a few weeks ago, he asked me to make him another. I immediately dropped everything and knit him a hat. Ask, and ye shall be rewarded for asking.

When he lost his mittens at the mechanic, I found them a week later. I did not respond nearly so kindly to the lost mittens. And I took this tendency-toward-forgetfulness into account in my yarn choices for a hat, too. He definitely got the light brown wool-acrylic blend that was a "bonus gift" in a box of destashed yarn I got from a college friend this fall. I don't care if he loses a hat made from splitty 80's acrylic-blend cheap-o yarn.

Basic pattern:
Yarn is pretty basic worsted.
CO 120 sts on size 7 needles. PM and join to knit in the round.
k2, p2 rib for 3 inches -- enough for a nice brim to fold up over the ears
switch to St st - k2, k2tog around once. (90 sts.)
knit in St st for about 7 inches.
*k8, k2tog* ten times, keep decreasing at same places every round until you have 5 sts left.
Pull yarn through remaining 5 sts and weave in ends.

Back in Blue

Back from neglecting my knitblogging life.

So the last few months have been a busy and stressful time. Packing up one house, moving from Georgia to Vermont, starting a new job, buying and moving in to a new house, Husband finally able to join me in the frozen north, Christmas and New Year, Ordination, and now, February (which may be the most difficult thing on the whole list).

I finished the Vermont Sweater in November and knew that it would be silly of me to begin a new project while I was still in Georgia, so I waited. One night before Husband moved up here (but after the furniture had arrived), I was sitting alone in our house with a great need to knit, but with no knitting books (packed away) and no internet (not yet hooked up). So I grabbed a random ball of Jaeger (it was all I could find) and started making up something. It felt so good to knit! I whiled away many lonely Husband-less hours that way, and carried the knitting around with me for a month or so (yes, even after he arrived), and now the HolyKnitter household has another scarf! Here's an actual pattern. Enjoy!

Blue Diamond Scarf

Yarn: Jaeger Baby Merino DK, 3 balls
Needles: US 6 circular or straights
Notions: cable needle (cn)(optional - these cables are small enough you can cable by hand pretty easily)

CO 36 stitches (I like the Continental/Long-Tail Cast On the best, but whatever)
rows 1-4: *p1, k1* to end of row
row 5: *(p1, k1) twice, place next 2 sts on cable needle to front, p1, k1, then p1, k1 from cn* repeat to last 4 sts, (p1, k1) twice.
rows 6-9: same as rows 1-4
row 10: *put first two sts on cn to front, p1, k1, then p1, k1 from cn, (p1, k1) twice* to last four sts, put next two sts on cn to front, pl, k1, then p1, k1 from cn.
row 11: begin with row 1 instructions

Repeat pattern until scarf is desired length, and bind off in p1, k1 rib -- I'm stopping when I get to the end of the 3rd ball. I actually didn't bother to count my rows, I just cabled when it looked "right," so fiddle with the cabling until the look is right for you.

There's a funnyish story behind the yarn for this scarf. A year or so ago, a fantastic yarn store in my parents' town went out of business (so, so sad! I really wanted this store to succeed!), and when I found out about the closing, I convinced my parents to go to the sale and to call me from the store on my dad's cell phone so I could tell them what to get for me. I knew what brands I wanted them to pick up for me, but it's hard describing yarn colors over the phone, so we...tried. We really did try. And most of what they got was exactly perfect. And then there was this blue yarn. My mom said "oh! you love this color blue! I don't quite know how to describe it, but I know you wear it all the time! There are five balls left, I'm going to pick them up for you."

Famous last words, right? When they mailed the yarn to me in Georgia, I opened the box excitedly...and this blue yarn leaped out at me, and I was thorougly underwhelmed. Blue is my absolute favorite color. Or, rather, cobalt blue is my absolute favorite color. This turquoise/royal is not a color I would actually buy for myself ever. I wouldn't wish it on anyone I like. I would have dismissed it easily. But now I owned five balls of it, from a store that doesn't exist anymore (can't return!), and it's too much to make something small to give to charity, like a hat, but it's too little to make something worth the time and effort, like a sweater. So I just let it marinate in my stash for a while, well hidden under some yarn that I actually do like.

And then I moved to Vermont. And in the middle of the night, in a lonely house full of boxes I can't identify, and in a city where I know absolutely no one, this yarn was the first yarn I could find, and I figured I'd just let my mind wander and my fingers fly. I absolutely adore the result, and I'm so glad my mom thought I liked this color. Because now I kind of do.