Category Archives: Knitting

All my knitting adventures

FO Friday: Helping Hippos Vanilla Socks

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My Helping Hippo Vanilla Socks have reached FO status just as I was literally racing a waking baby PB. They are speckled and tall and glorious! And this is my first FO in like….awhile. It feels nice.

Two toe up vanilla socks worked with 68 stitches with a gusset heel. I used just under 81 grams of yarn which leaves just the right amount of yarn left for repairs and putting some scraps in my blanket. I used US 1.5 needles so my fabric isn’t the densest ever. But I think it should hold up just fine.

One side has a little more “grey area” or blank areas without speckles. But come on, this is hand dyed yarn and that’s just pretty darn awesome. The fit is also pretty good. Admittedly they are VERY snug up around my lower calves. But as hand knit socks are want to do….they will stretch with wear and maybe this pair will then be able to stand up all day long!?

I did notice one small problem. In my haste to beat the clock also known as baby nap time…I was just eyeballing sock two against sock one and I shorted the second sock by like 1/3 of a inch. See above, sigh. But you know what? You can’t tell when they are on my feet and if anyone really gets that close to my feet to investigate….well they just might get a little nudge from said foot. I have a finished pair of socks to keep my footsies toasty in the Kansas winter. That’s a win in my book!

Happy Knitting!!

Sleeve Proportions

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Another WIP that saw some decent progress during the trip to my parents. I packed Jellybean’s Mackenzie 5-ply sweater and finished one sleeve. The new short circular needle was just the trick to reduce laddering and make the sleeve zoom.

Except for one thing that didn’t occur to me until I was completely done with sleeve number one. IT’S HUGE!! I mean like completely and totally ginormous.

That’s my adult 34 year old hand sticking out the end of my 4 year old’s sweater. I had Jellybean slip this on as well. The length was bang on and the fit in the sleeve cap was nice….the rest of the sleeve was just ludicrous.

I sat patiently in the winter sunlight and put my needle back in just past the sleeve cap where the arm started and RIIIIIPPPED back a whole sleeve. Based on some fussing around when Jellybean was wearing this I need to reduce the stitch count by about 1/3 to just under 1/2 over the course of the arm.

My plan is to get some locking stitch markers, work out the number of decreases against the finished length that works on Jellybean and just taper the snot out of this puppy. Using the locking stitch markers as a guide to help me re-create what I did on the second sleeve. I don’t know if this is a pattern feature or problem. I am making the 7 year old sized pattern to fit my larger than average 4 year old. But these sleeves had 70+ stitches….that seems excessive for even a 7 year old!

This will need a tiny time out so I can pout before picking this back up again. The silver lining? With all the extra decreases I won’t have to work as many stitches this time and it should go faster!

Happy Knitting!!

This Might Be Insane

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I’m INSANELY close to finishing my Helping Hippos Vanilla Socks. And last weekend we spent some time at my parent’s house….which meant BABYSITTING! I’m also trying to up my daily step count for health initiative at work. So I decided to see if I could multitask!

I did managed to stay upright and add some decent leg length to my sock. Lots of people walk and knit, so why would a treadmill be different. Now, I don’t know that I would do this all the time as this particular treadmill is a little finicky. But it was an excellent use of my time on a cold winter morning when neither PB or Jellybean were glued to my hip.

What is the best thing you have ever multi-tasked while knitting??

Wishful Knitting: Hedgehog Fibers Merino DK

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I keep finding my thoughts drifting to the Merino DK I have in stash from Hedgehog Fibers. I have roughly 650 yards between my grey and blue colorways. I REALLY want this to grow up to be a shawl.

I had originally thought about doing Touchstone by Laura Aylor. But it’s a one color shawl I would have to commit brain cells into converting to two colors in a logical way. So I did some more Ravelry searching and came up with a few more options.

AAACK! Why do I have to have so many options. All of these would be lovely but I don’t have a clear front runner that scream KNIT ME! Perhaps these precious skeins just need to marinate a little longer before they decide what they want to be when they grow up…

Happy Knitting!!

More Conference Knitting

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A couple of weeks ago I attended another professional development conference. (If you haven’t figured it out I have to rack up a ton of CPE hours for my professional certifications each and every year.) This conference was held in a lovely event center that even had a good mother’s room for breastfeeding moms! But the topics weren’t exactly targeted towards this municipal governmental employee. And I was still fighting a terrible cough from the upper respiratory bug that went around my house.

So basically I was bored and miserable. Thank goodness I packed knitting!! I pulled my Mood Indigo sockhead slouch hat out because it was the easiest no-look auto pilot knitting I could lay my hands on. I added maybe 2.5 inches to the brim? This is a DK weight modification to the traditional sock weight sockhead slouch. I probably could have/should have gotten farther but I even had trouble concentrating on ribbing.

But progress is progress! I think I have roughly another inch to go and then it’s stockinette for days! I’m really liking how the colors are spreading out and almost striping? And the cashmere content in the yarn doesn’t hurt either. It’s just about the right kind of meditative knit!

Happy Knitting!!

Snow Pretty

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We are gearing up for another round of winter weather this weekend. But I thought I would show you some of the beauty from the last snow storm. This one was pretty mild in my area and fell mostly over night.

It was a nice wet soft snow that literally blanketed everything in sight!

But yet didn’t make travel too terribly bad. The streets cleaned up nicely.

But best of all, it was perfect snowman snow for Jellybean and the hubby! Jellybean says his name is “Snowy”, lol

Happy Winter to everyone!!

Preparation

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I have been itching to work on my memory sock yarn blanket. And it’s been pulling all of my knitting focus. But close on its heels is my Northeasterly blanket. I have scraps, needles, pattern and my coned yarn to hold doubled all kitted up in a bag. And after a helpful comment on this blog about coned yarn….I decided to wind off a skein of the white yarn and wash it.

This being for two reasons, one to wash off the spinning grease that is used to manufacture coned yarn and two to see if the yarn blooms and shrinks up. I wouldn’t want wonky fabric after spending so much time knitting a blanket for Pete’s sake! So I stole some quiet time while PB was napping and while hubby and Jellybean were out building a snowman last weekend. I had yarn and a podcast….it was heaven!

I wound off yarn until I felt like I had a decent amount and tied off a skein. Don’t mind the dog hair, it’s just considered extra fiber content in this house. (Dex is blowing his coat yet again and I’m now vacuuming almost daily and still can’t keep up!)

The skein has since had a bath and is drying (slowing) in the laundry room. When sufficiently dry I will wind it into a cake to be ready for blanket knitting! Jellybean seemed keen to work my yarn swift and sad I finished my skein without him. So as a mommy and me project we might make a second skein to wash one of these evenings. We will see if his interest abides ninja figures and magnetic tile building.

Happy Knitting!!

Carrot Knitting

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At the moment within easy walking distance I have one adult sweater, one child sweater, a frogged shawl, a really close to be done pair of socks, a DK hat and the yarn to start another scrap blanket. I really could focus and finish the socks and child’s sweater soooo easily but my mojo for them isn’t there. All I REALLY want to knit right now is my memory blanket.

I finished the column I had started this summer. My blanket is now 13 squares wide by 11 rows long. It’s a nice one person lap blanket size now. I think I want to add two more columns in width and see how happy I am with that size. This for whatever reason has been balm for my tired mom soul that has battled pink eye, cold viruses, and rotovirus all since Christmas. It’s just so pretty and I love adding more and more color.

My knitter brain wants to clean up my WIP pile and have those FOs in my hot little hands. But my tired mom soul just can’t quite manage that, especially when she tells me to go to sleep at 8:30 pm right after the kids. I may make a deal with myself….knit on my WIPs for 30 min and then 30 mins on my blanket. Just to make my two halves happy. I mean a little carrot knitting didn’t hurt anyone right?

P.S. What you can’t see? I took this to work for a TWO HOUR long webex meeting and wove in all my ends. The back of this thing is pristine!

Happy Knitting!!

Wishful Knitting: Late To The Fade

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One of my purchases from Winter Woolfest 2019 is already hopping into my knitting queue. The Fade has been around for what seems like forever now and just about every knitter has faded something. I’m not generally a bandwagon knitter and take awhile to come around to a trend. But I have been feeling the pull of Free Your Fade from Andrea Mowry. This is more my speed as it’s only three skeins so not as large of a time commitment as some of the others. I just don’t get enough knitting time to spend months and months on the same thing. I would explode. Plus this shawl comes in Fingering and DK. And I just so happen to have a pretty neat fade in some Sport weight yarn.

From left to right is my One Twisted Tree Lavish sport in the chaotic neutral, followed by the Leon Alexander DK in the Oh La La color and lastly some Anzula Ava sport in the Raspberry color. I think these make a nice shift with a tonal solid on either side with a speckle in the middle. No clue when I will get to this one but I have the pattern purchases and yarn all kitted up together just waiting for the Perfect cast on day.

Happy Knitting

Winter Woolfest 2019

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The Christmas season is over and it’s back to real life. And that real life has involved a lot of germs and coughing around here. So I made sure to take some time away from nursemaid duties and re-charge my batteries a bit. I made a trip over to Wamego, KS for Winter Woolfest 2019!

First I’ll flash all the goodies I found with my Christmas cash. I focused my monies on independent dyers and especially those I haven’t seen before. I grabbed a Little Lamb children’s book with pattern from Melissa Dallke. And four 20 gram mini skeins from her Acorn Willow yarn line for my scrappy blankets. Then I snagged a speckled DK yarn from Leon Alexander in glorious shades of purple. Next up is a dark grey and rainbow-y skein of sock yarn from the Wichita Woolery. It’s called Prism Break and it should micro stripe if I get the gauge right. Finally I finished up at a LYS booth that had several indie dyers. I gravitated to the speckles again. I picked up some Super Sock 4ply from Twisted Owl Fiber Studio in the Razz-ma-tazz color. I listen to their podcast, the Worsted Knitting Podcast when the occasionally drop episode and it’s hilarious. And lastly I picked up some Pebble Sock from Black Trillium Fibers in the Happy Fun Times color. I didn’t go overboard and I was very pleased with my purchases.

It was a beautiful sunny and weirdly warm January day here in Kansas. The attendees were slightly sweltering in their knitwear this year!

This year’s theme was Classic Rock N Roll. It wasn’t quite as cool as last year’s female super hero theme but still adorable.

And this festival has really grown. This place was PACKED by 11 am after the doors opened at 10 am. It was honestly hard to move around and get into most of the booths. This kinda triggers some anxiety in me and was my least favorite part.

P.S. This Wamego is kind of Wizard of Oz themed because they have the Wizard of Oz museum. And the whole town has kind of rolled with it. They have a tulip themed Toto that made me smile!

Happy Knitting!!