Choose your own adventure

The Great get-rid-of-your-stash-with-any-possible-pattern Project continues! Here's the latest addition to the stash bust.

This yarn? It's from Ireland.

If you remember I went there on a trip with my bestest friend back in the day. Great trip! Ireland, as we learned, is the land of the sheep. They are everywhere! And I thought it would be super cool if I made said bestest friend a pair of mitts from Irish yarn! But there was one problem. How to get some without her knowing? I made up some lie about going to cash a traveler's cheque or something, but instead I bought yarn! Two balls for two pairs of mitts. This is the yarn that is left over from that project. Yeah. From 2002. That gives you some idea just how big my stash must be.

Unfortunately, since it was the scraps of one ball, it meant there wasn't much to work with on this one. I really thought there would be enough to get me a scarf (I really want a new one for work cause work is so cold!), even if just a short scarf, but no. It barely fits around my head!

But that's okay. Cause now it's sort of like a choose your own adventure piece. Headband? Cowl? Wristband? Up to you!

This pattern is fun. (Dream Swatch Head Wrap) In fact, it looked so fun that I had to try it. I've never switched stitches as they had described and so I just had to try it! (cables are different). It's a fun pattern. Easy to understand and easy to do with reading, if you don't mind taking a break from the book every sixth row.

I think that it does look better with a variegated yarn. That way you can see the yarn swaps. And for a headband I would have preferred it to be narrower. Then again, I didn't do a gauge swatch, so the pattern might be narrower than what I ended up with.

All in all, a fun one day project.

One more ball down? Too many to count to go!

Earth Day

Happy Earth day!
In honour of the day, I thought I'd post a pic of one of the side projects I've been working on since the weekend. (My main project still being a pair of Thuja socks for a friend.) This is going to be a bag once it's done based off of the Elisa's Nest Tote pattern.
I love reusable bags. I try to take them with me most of the time when I go grocery shopping. I take them to the library too. I almost feel like you can never have too many reusable bags. They have SOOO many uses. And they are good for the environment too.

This pattern seemed like a perfect project for me to do. 1) because as I stated, I love reusable bags. 2) I had this horrible cotton yarn that I bought at one point for who knows what reason and I had no idea what to do with it. It's ugly yarn in ugly colours. Purple and Green variated? What was I thinking?!? Thus, I'm soooo happy to be getting this out of my stash!! 3) It's a simple repeatable pattern. So simple I can knit it while reading. Yay!

I'm still working on it whenever I'm reading. Hopefully it will be carrying Trader Joe cereal before you know it.

Hot, hot, hot

Today feels like the silliest day to be writing about a tea cozy. Or anything knitted for that matter. It was 31C outside today! That's about 90F to all you non-metric people. Either way you look at it, it's HOT! Warm, cozy tea is definitely not needed. 

But this cozy still is pretty cute!

It's cute even if it doesn't match the army themed mug. 

I roughly used the same pattern as my last cozy. Very roughly.

I increased/decreased faster actually than on the last one. I didn't want the handle to be as long on this one. & Instead of using their detailing portion, I found a pattern for a braid and used that. I've been thinking about using a braid on a project I'm going to make up, and I wanted to try it out on something different first. It was a perfect fit for this project! 13 stitches wide, and the repeat portion wasn't overly long. Great! 

I'm still planning my temperature experiment... I just have to find two matching mugs.

Going Green

Everything seems to be 'going green' these days, and just to keep up, this post is too. 

First with my green Kirigamis from the month of March. (I guess in honour of St. Patrick's day... not that any of them had shamrocks...) 

And then with my next sock project. I'm going to make a friend some green socks. She doesn't love socks, and didn't want anything fancy (thank goodness!) so I'm going to make her a pair of Thuja's. That's the pattern she wanted. 

I sent her some sock pictures and she chose that one out. Unfortunately... I didn't notice it was a man's pattern until she'd chosen it. Now I'm trying to figure out if going down one needle size from the pattern description will be enough. I saw on ravelry that some people knit starting with 60 stitches, but on smaller needles. I don't know if I can wing a sock pattern just yet... 

So, there may be some frogging involved with these socks... We'll see. 

Socks!

LOOK!

looklooklooklooklooklooklooklooklooklook!

I made socks!

Can you believe it? I made socks!!
Aren't they just the cutest socks you ever did see? I love them! I'm wearing them for the 2nd day in a row! And it's warm enough that I don't have to wear socks. That is how much I love them!

These socks have been a long time coming. I've wanted to make a pair of socks for a long time. Years, maybe even. But somehow socks always seemed too hard for me. Too advanced. But like for Marvin K. Mooney the time had come for me too, and I did it! 

I'm so glad they worked out so well. I'm pretty proud of them! And even better, with their completion I've accomplished 2 or my 3 knitting goals/ resolutions for 2009. (Left handed knitting remains a mystery to me.)

As for the sock pattern, I liked it. After learning short rows and other techniques earlier this year there wasn't anything new to me. It was just piecing the techniques I've learned from other projects together to use in this one. The simple one stitch cable embellishment was easy enough to do without a cable needle, so that was nice. 

I used double pointed needles, but I'm interested in learning how to use circular needles to do socks. 

All in all, I'd say my socks were a success. So much so that I want to start my next pair right NOW! Hmm... I wonder if I can convince my roommate to wind my next ball for me...

No Joke

No joke. Sometimes I'm really not as good as I think I am. 

Honestly. How hard can a pattern using only single crochets be? Unfortunately, the answer seems to be, very hard.

See those tiny yellow and green... things? Well, they were meant to be an amigurumi frog and bee. Meant to be. I don't think they ever will be. You see those things? That is the result of 5 hours of crocheting. No joke. You would not believe how many times I ripped out everything and started the pattern again. There just might have been some foul words involved! 

So dearest, bestest friend. The one whose birthday is today. (Happy Birthday!!!) You will not be getting a cute little amigurumi pet. I was hoping to have a few done for you, but as it turns out... I'm just not good enough to make them. (Next time you notice a pattern, I hope its a knit one.) So, please pick something else... and I hope you don't mind a very belated birthday gift.

I really don't know what my problem was with these patterns. I've never crocheted from a pattern before, more than finding a base repeat to use for an afghan, so maybe I wasn't doing it close to right. Maybe reading of the pattern threw me off. And the green yarn wasn't nice to crochet with. 

Whatever it was... I guess I know I need to work on my crocheting skills.