F.O. Update Extravaganza! December 26, 2008

Well, I’ve been working on a lot of little projects lately, but I’ve been so lazy about posting that I’ve never given them their proper webpages or anything. So since today has been a very lazy day for me, I decided to take this time to update on a few projects I’ve finished recently.

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The Impossibly Orange Beanie Recreation: Attempt One

I was working on re-creating my friend’s favorite beanie. As you can see, it’s seen its fair share of wear with the paint drizzles and fabric holes. Anyway, I’m not happy with how this one turned out, the needles made such a big fabric that I know he doesn’t like it as much as his old one. Also, I made the made the mistake of glancing at the pattern, assuming I knew what it said, and working the beanie without paying any attention to the written pattern. I worked the stripes in the 2×2 rib pattern, and they look crappy. Apparently the pattern had recommended that you K all stitches in the first row of a color change to make a clean line. I saw that note when I was working the decreases for the crown. Whoops.

• Link to Project Details page for The Impossibly Orange Beanie Recreation: Attempt One
• Link to Ravelry project page for The Impossibly Orange Beanie Recreation: Attempt One

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Baby Love Diagonal Baby Blanket

My best friend is pregnant with a baby boy, so naturally I’ve started picking out cute baby projects and working on some of them. The first of the many things I’ll be making is this baby blanket. The yarn made this blanket completely GORGEOUS! It’s so snuggly!! I plan on making a giant verison of this for myself The eyelets on the side where the increases are are so cute! And the yarn looks so pretty! I’ve never worked a pattern in garter stitch because I normally HATE the look of it, but the bumpy yarn I used disguised the garter and just made it look pretty! Yay!

• Link to Project Details page for Baby Love Diagonal Baby Blanket
  
• Link to Ravelry project page for Baby Love Diagonal Baby Blanket

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Clapotis

After MANY heart-wrenching mistakes with this project, I am extremely in love with how the scarf turned out. Its SO warm and cozy!!! And the color is lovely too! It’s called Marine Heather and when the light hits it, you can see both blue and green blending together.

• Link to Project Details page for Clapotis
  
• Link to Ravelry project page for Clapotis

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Well I think that’s PLENTY enough for any single blog post to contain. I’ll have more updates coming soon. I’m making progress on the 2nd attempt at the Impossibly Orange Beanie. I’ve donned it the Diablo Anaranjado (or, the Orange Devil, for anyone unmotivated enough to look it up in a translator lol) I also have yarn to make a few more quick beanies for friends, so that should be interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Plans for my second attempt at the orange devil. December 21, 2008

So tonight I finally finished splitting the orange yarn in half. I even had time to knit a swatch for the next pattern I’m attempting and had to try 3 sizes before I got the correct guage with size 1 needles. Crazy.

Since I consider the orange beanie I made him (but haven’t given him yet) to be an epic fail, I scoured Ravelry for beanie patterns until I stumbled across this gem. The pattern is called Pismo Hat and seems rather daunting as it is a 1×1 rib worked in fingering weight yarn. Unfortunately it is entirely perfect for the look I’m going for. What have I gotten myself into??! It’s a good thing for my friend that he’s very pretty! I  already yearn to work a project in bulky weight, and I haven’t even cast on for this beanie!!

Anyway, I thought I would record my mod plans here, for myself and posterity, since I will inevitably lose the piece of scrap paper I did all my math and planning on.

The beanie pattern looks like it will only make a hat that is 18.18″ in circumference, but I need it to be 24″. Since I got my guage to match (at least width-wise) the pattern’s guage of 33 stitches to 4 inches, to make the hat the size I need it, I will have to cast on 198 stitches. This will work perfectly because I will still have a whole amount of stitches, so when I divide the stitches into 6 sections when I work my decreases, I will have equal numbers in each section. IN DECREASES Pattern: 6 sections of 25 stitches will decrease to total of 6 stitches around. Mod: 6 sections of 33 stitches will decrease to total of 6 stitches around. I was afraid that this would elongate the crown and make it a weird beanie only suited for Cone Heads, but since I have a wider base that I’m decreasing it over, the difference in decrease length should be unnoticeable to the eye. The pattern’s slope of decrease (if you will. haha its like algebra 1 with the graph paper all over!) will be 18.48% and if my mods go as planned, the slope of decrease should be 18.54%

Sorry if anyone took the time to read that and it bored them to tears.

Here is a wonderful tutorial on tubular cast-on that does not require the annoying waste yarn. It’s an Italian method and it looks brilliant. I can’t wait to use it.

This is quite possibly the wierest post I’ve written yet. I don’t normally post the math or logic behind my mods on this blog, but I’m so paranoid of losing this paper and then having to do all this work and planning again, that I don’t mind posting a boring entry to ensure that it can’t get lost. Sorry to everyone else who finds this boring! But who knows, maybe someone else will need to make this hat for a 24″ head and will need to modify it for size 1 needles and will just so happen to come across this blog and I will have saved them from having to do the annoying work I had to do. Slim chance, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

It’s past 4 a.m. again. I had wanted to cast on for this beanie tonight, but I really want to get some sleep and know I could easily be up another 2 hours getting the first few rows done if I start now. So I will be patient and wait until tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

KIP, OCD, & Laziness. December 19, 2008

Hello, hello.

Time for an update. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted, even though I’ve started/finished/frogged/loathed quite a few projects in this time.

I’ll start with the easiest. I got caught KIP between sets at a coffee house concert and the photographer decided to get a few pictures of me. Haha, it was SO awkward! Here is a picture of me TRYING to look natural but completely terrified to have a giganto camera lens pointed at me.

You might notice my fabulous place holder, which also doubles as a paper clip The sweater I’m wearing zips together to turn me into a robot! Sweet!!!

Well, well, that was the easy part. It’s currently a little after 4 a.m. and I’ve been working on a new project (of sorts) for the last hour and a half. Here is a picture of what I’ve accomplished. Sorry that the picture is fuzzy, but I’m lazy and have recently discovered the joy of camera phones for uploading unimportant pictures to such sites as Flickr and Photobucket. I’ll bust out the good ol’ camera when I have a picture that’s important.

Basically, I knit a version of that ridiculously orange beanie that my friend wanted. I was using worsted weight and the original beanie was a machine knit fingering weight yarn. I finished the beanie a few hours ago and absolutely hate how it turned out. I showed it to my friend and he tried to be nice about it but I’m pretty sure he was disappointed with the finished item. I can’t blame him, I hate it too!!

So, my imaginary OCD kicked in, and I decided to take the orange yarn I have left over and split the 4-strand yarn into two sets of 2-strand yarn. Crazy? Yes. But I found a MUCH better pattern for a beanie in fingering weight yarn that I’ll use for another orange beanie. It actually looks EXACTLY like his beanie, whereas the one I used before was just a 2×2 ribbing pattern that I thought would be convenient and he said he liked. Anyway, I’m working on splitting the yarn for now and then will make him another insanely orange beanie.

I didn’t tell him that I was going to give the hat another go, so hopefully I’ll surprise him with a PERFECT recreation! I’ve already come close to telling him about it a million times. Mostly because his face would fall ever so slightly when I show him how the beanie was coming along. And I kept wanting to say, NO! Don’t be sad! Please love my work! I’ll make a better one!! But I was strong. So far. Haha..

I feel a little crazy, but oh well. That’s been the highlight of my day, finishing the beanie, realizing I detested the finsihed product, and making fingering weight yarn out of worsted weight. I’ll post more later when I have time to take good photos since I finsihed a few projects, one of which I’m REALLY pleased with. More coming soon!

Secret Knitting Fail & Beanie Project December 1, 2008

Ughh. Of course I mess things up with my secret knitting. I’m gonna be lazy and just paste the same update here that I had posted in Ravelry about this project so far:

11/29/08:
I feel dumb. My gauge was correct, but somehow my scarf is only 45” long instead of 60” so it looks like a child size scarf!

I’m gonna have to frog this all back and figure out whats going on with my gauge and start over AGAIN (making it 4th re-start) and use different needles.

I haven’t had the heart to rip it apart yet. It’s been sitting on my desk awaiting its frogging fate for about a week now.

:’(

I still haven’t frogged it yet. This one is gonna hurt.

In more pleasant news, one of my friends who now wants me to knit him a beanie gave me his favorite beanie in the world and wants me to recreate since its full of paint and holes. Haha, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge…

Have you ever seen a weirder orange for a project or what?? Haha, its kind of worse than Cal Trans workers. The white and the black will be cake to find, obviously, so the stripes are peachy. But I have no idea where I’m gonna find an orange this insane! Haha, and the outside of the beanie is less bright than the inside because it faded! (check out the 2nd picture)

Yeah, so if you’ve seen an orange this intense, haha, please point me in the right direction! I kept thinking I found good oranges last night because they looked REALLY bright in this one store, but then when I pulled up the same color on another website, they were all muted pumpkiny colors.

Bachelors and their clothes. *insert eye roll here*

Haha wish me luck!