Peaceful Knitter

Not much to report on this Monday.  We had a quiet weekend full of relaxing, completing some little projects around the house, movie watching, and some sewing and bib-knitting.  Seriously, I cannot stop knitting cotton bibs.  I don’t know what has come over me, whether it’s the Lays potato chip phenomenon (“Bet you can’t knit just one”), or an inability to focus on anything other than garter stitch, but it’s out of control.  I have literally pulled all the cotton out of my stash and put it next to my knitting chair and am methodically knitting my way through it.  When I realized I had a skein each of white, cream, and a different shade of cream left, I had to go out and buy some colors to go with all those neutrals.  And thus the cycle continues.

My main knitting spot.

After listening to the most recent episode of Stash and Burn, I am feeling validated in this approach.  Not only am I using up more yarn than I have purchased (at least for this particular project set), I am ostensibly getting a head start on Single Skein September.  This is a little thing they do over there each September which urges listeners to knit smaller projects to use up some of the single skeins in our stashes.  I’m fairly sure I participated last year by knitting one neck-warmer after another.  Hmmm…another knitting phase I went through…

Anyway, I am thinking about participating since all I can really handle these days is the smaller, instant-gratification type knits.  Plus, I have plenty of single skeins in my stash that I have accumulated over the last year.  I even have some single skeing projects on the needles that I would like to finish up in September, so any way you look at it I’ll be playing along.  If you want to play too, go over to the Stash and Burn Groupies group on Ravelry and check it out.  There will be prizes…

I have found a fun new game to play with my knitting.  It’s called “Grab some leftover cotton from the stash and knit crazy bibs.”  Sound like fun?  It is!

Not only is it fun, it’s a practical way to use up leftovers of all that cotton from my washcloth phase and channel it into a new phase.  Plus, I am challenged to come up with interesting combinations of colors and patterns, some of which are more successful than others.

A winner:

• Pattern: Baby Bib ‘O Love from Mason-Dixon Knitting by Kay Gardiner & Ann Shayne (Ravelled here)

• Yarn: Lily Sugar ‘n Cream cotton, more red than turquoise, approximately 50g.  I used up every strand of the blue; didn’t even have enough to sew on the button!

• Needles: US size 7/4.5mm

• Mods: I slipped the first stitch of every row purl-wise to keep the edges neat.  Added an embroidered embellishment.

This pattern is very easy– any level of knitter could churn one out in no time.  It could be adapted to play canvas to a variety of stitch patterns and color combinations.  I did a button hole for the closure on this one, but I am guessing it would be more practical to use a snap or Velcro underneath a cute decoy button.

I am deep in the throes of a love affair with garter stitch.  I love the texture and ease of the fabric.  I love the way you can choose to show off a color change and add a bit of spunk to an otherwise plain piece of knitting.  I love how it is so basic and beautiful at the same time.

I use hand-knits every day, whether it be in the bathroom washing my face, or in the closet or sock drawer getting dressed.  I look forward to forcing sharing this practice with the wee one, and I’m amassing quite a collection of functional and charming little knits for him/her.

One drawback to garter stitch: it is not an ideal surface to embroider on.  But like the ineffable Tim Gunn says, “Make it work.”  Are you as happy to see Project Runway back on as I am?!

As it happens, avoiding knitting the Coraline sweater has been good for my productivity!

This weekend I cast-on and finished one small project, and rescued a long-languishing work in progress from the pile and finished it too.

To be fair, I did take Coraline along to a cookout where she got to be with other knitting.

Then I ignored her for the rest of the weekend!  As some of you suggested, a time-out for knitting can be a worthwhile exercise.  We both got some time apart to think about what we’d done, and in the end came back together amicably.  I have decided not to rip her out, favoring instead the “slow and steady wins the race” approach.  I will knit steadily on this sweater, when I feel like it, and not worry when my attentions inevitably stray to other projects.

Yesterday I pulled out a project that I started back in May with the intention of making it as a gift for an expectant friend.  The pattern is Tiny Shoes, another pattern from Ysolda Teague.  They are precious, fiddly, and somewhat quick to knit.  Who knows why, after knitting the first bootie successfully, it took me 3 months to knit the second?

Sadly, one bootie turned out as expected: tiny, perky, and positively perfect.  The other one is more like the ugly step-sister of the first: loose, lopsided, and much larger.  A cute pair of booties this is not.

Sigh.

On right: offensive bootie

So now I have to ask myself: is this a forlorn finished object, with one bootie destined for the compost pile, the other to dangle from my rear-view mirror as a reminder of what could have been?  Or should I wait another 3 months and knit a third bootie, hoping it will be of the tiny and perfect variety?  Either way, I’m lacking a knit gift for my friend, and if I’m honest I never want to knit this pattern again.

Coraline’s looking pretty appealing right about now.

I’m feeling a certain amount of hesitation about my Coraline sweater.

There are plenty of things I like about the sweater, and a few things that are causing me to rethink my commitment.  The pattern starts out with a provisional cast-on and turned hem, which I decided to modify into garter stitch.  My foggy brain can only handle so much right now, and maneuvering a crochet hook around my knitting needles wasn’t something I was up for.  So I knit the garter border and really like how it turned out.  You can never have enough garter stitch in your life, I think!

Then I went up a needle size to 4s and have been working on the stockinette for the body.  The interesting detail here is that it has an i-cord edging which requires that you slip the first 3 stitches of every row.  It looks nice on the front, but it’s not quite coming together on the back like I had imagined.  Can you see the floats?

Then there’s the issue of this being a DK weight yarn on size 4 needles.  It feels like it will be 2020 before I get this sweater done and it’s only been a week! I’ve already knit an entire ball of yarn (that’s 144 yards) and feel like I don’t have much to show for it.  I only bought 10 balls altogether, and even thought that’s 1,440 yards I’m worried about running out of yarn!

So, I cast on a baby project in kitchen cotton to take my mind off these worries, hoping that things would become clear if I gave Coraline a couple of days off.  Thing is, I’m just not sure yet.  Sigh…

In the past couple of weeks I have fully entered into the “Show your baby some love by making things” phase.  You’ve seen the knit sweater and hat.  Now I’ll show you some sewing.

I am a novice sewer.  I remember first wielding a sewing machine in high school when I took (gasp) Home Economics from Miss Friday.  She was the same woman who taught my mother a thing or two in Home Ec when she was in high school! It’s possible my sister even took her class. Ah, small towns…

We never got to making garments or anything too complicated, but I do remembering sewing a small Easter bunny.  So I knew the basics of sewing a straight line, back-stitching, turning corners, pinning hems, and…well, that’s about all I know!

With this huge bag of tricks up my sleeve, I decided it might be time to get to work on a little something for baby.  I went to JoAnn’s looking for inexpensive trimmings for a simple baby quilt and was overwhelmed with choices.  I was suddenly inspired when I saw a quilt kit; these were the colors we’re working with for a gender-neutral nursery, and Sweetie and I are both toile nerds, so this was perfect.

This is where I should probably clarify that I bough this kit months ago.  I cut out all the little squares and sewed them into strips months ago.  The top was complete by the end of May.  I sewed the back flannel onto one side, then folded it up for one reason or another and let it sit until today.

Oh, it feels so good to finish something that you walk by almost every day, staring at you from its Unfinished Corner.

• Pattern: Cuddly Quilt Kit in Children at Play 2

• Fabric: flannel, cotton, and something like teddy bear fur

The lines aren’t perfectly straight, and it could use a good ironing, but it is full of love and hope and imperfections.  It was fun to daydream about my baby snuggled up under this blanket in the winter, or playing on it in the grass in the summer.  And that’s the beauty of making things with our own hands and hearts: it’s not perfect, but it’s filled with good intentions.  And I believe that those who wear and use these things can feel all that goodness.

Now that this is finished and the dust has been blown off the Singer, I am feeling like making some more baby items.  Have you seen Amanda Blake Soule’s newest book, Handmade Home?  I am loving her emphasis on recycling fabric and notions into new items for the home and those you love.  I wanna make like Soule Mama and sew up a baby sling, a beach blanket, and some cloth diapers!

I’d also like to make a generous pile of burp cloths and flannel receiving blankets.  Can anyone recommend some free patterns, tutorials, or interesting fabric sources?

I am woefully behind on knitting a sweater for a Knit-Along I joined this month.  In fact, when the month started, I wasn’t even close to choosing what pattern to make, let alone knitting it!  I was vacillating between several patterns, but in the end decided to make Coraline by Ysolada Teague.  The pattern fit all of my requirements: a cardigan that would look good worn open or buttoned; a fit that would flatter both my pregnant and non-pregnant self; simple but not boring in construction.  I did have to buy the pattern, and didn’t have the yarn for it in stash, so….a trip to Webs was in order!

I knew that I wanted a DK weight yarn with an interesting blend of fibers in it.  So I arrived at Webs with a short list of contenders.  Sweetie accompanied me and took up her usual post in an armchair at the front of the store, assuring me I could take as much time as I needed.  Awesome!

A preliminary loop through the store netted some good possibilities for yarn:

All lovely choices, but I wasn’t crazy about knitting with any of these colors.  As Sweetie was so bold to point out, “I’ve seen this basket of yarn before.”  I was busted for sticking to my comfort palette!

Armed with a challenge to choose colors I haven’t worked with recently, I set out on a second search through the store.  I was also looking for yarn for a couple of other projects, and this new perspective helped me find them too.  This is what I came home with:

Cherry, bubble gum, and raspberry!  I was definitely more excited about these colors than I was about my first basket, lovely as those colors were.  But Sweetie was right; sometimes we need to shake things up and try something outside the lines we’ve been coloring in.

I ended up choosing Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light for my sweater.  It’s in a vibrant shade of red that I think will punch up my fall/winter wardrobe quite nicely.

I cast on on Saturday and am already 4 rows into the pattern.  I know, it’s going to be hard to keep up with me at this speedy pace!

Not only was my knitting a little neglected this summer, the garden was as well.  I had enjoyed spring blooms with daffodils, crocus, tulips, and pansies.  When they were gone, my rosebushes and day-lilies perked up.  Then somewhere along the line, everything stopped blooming, the weeds seemed to invade, and some of my potted plants went crispy in the sun.  I suspect this transition began when we were out of town for two weeks in June.

Over the weeks I have slowly been reclaiming the flower beds and am happy to say things are looking lively again.

Since we bought our home in 2008 I have been trying to stock the beds with hard working perennials, based mainly on what I see thriving in neighbor’s gardens.  These Black-eyed Susans are new, purchased at the garden center end-of season sale.  Now is a great time to stock up on perennials on the cheap.  I also picked up a couple conefloweres (Echinacea) at the sale.

My favorite find, however, was a lush little pile of lavender.  I have been looking to buy lavender for two summers and could not find it anywhere!  I even attempted to grow some from seed last spring, and only have one 2-inch plant to show for it.  This is a welcome addition to the garden and is in a pot by the front door.

It’s supposed to be searingly hot here this weekend, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend tending to the garden.  It’s likely I’ll be inside with my knitting near the air-conditioner.  I hope you have a great weekend!

I can hardly believe what I’m about to say, but rest assured it’s true: I have two finished objects to show you!

The first is a little sweater that was a fun and satisfying knit.  This was my very first cardigan and button band experience, so I’m glad I got to try it out in a baby version.  The knitting and finishing were done on Saturday (you know, on the deck with a peach cobbler in the oven!), but I just blocked it yesterday and got the buttons sewn on today.

There are so many wonderful colors in this yarn that I new I wanted to have multicolored buttons to help show them off.  I ended up going to Michael’s (which is not known for its button selection) and was happy to find a bag of purple, green, and blue buttons of different sizes.  Here is how it all came together:

• Pattern: Little Coffee Bean Cardigan by Elizabeth Smith (Ravelled here) 6 month size

• Yarn: Purlsoup Fibers Worsted Weight, special edition colorway Sonia

• Needles: I did the ribbing on size 6/4 mm and the body of the sweater on size 7/4.5 mm needles.

• Mods: I knit the sweater in one color instead of stripes, but other than that I followed the pattern to the letter.

The second finished object is a product of my current “baby fever” knitting trend.  Another hat from the Wee Woolly Toppers collection.

• Pattern: Kilkenny from Wee Wooly Toppers by Wooly Wormhead, size Medium (Ravelled here)

• Yarn: Artyarns Supermerino, awesome yet unknown colorway, 104 yards/50 grams

• Needles: US 4/3.5 mm circular and double points

• Mods: I knit this as written until I got to the crown decreases.  I started off in pattern, but quickly realized it would use up more yarn than I had.  So I ripped back and did more swift decreases in garter stitch.  Made away with under a yarn of yarn left!

This was another fun and fast knit.  It starts out with the purled i-cord, which is something I had never come across before.  But I love how it matches the garter stitch.  You then work some increases to make the ear-flaps (twice) cast on some new stitches to connect them, and start knitting in the round.  That bit was a little fumbly for me, but once everything was connected it was smooth sailing.  The textured body of the hat is also very visually interesting but dead simple to knit.

One of my favorite things about both these projects (besides their obvious cuteness) is that they were each knit with one skein of yarn from my stash.  That’s a great thing about little knits, and I plan to do more stash-busting/baby knitting this way.

I have about 1 1/2 more baby projects to knit and then I’m out of ideas.  If you’re getting sick of mini knits around here, rest assured that I am in the beginning stages of an adult sweater for myself: Coraline.  More on that later…I’m actually headed off to do some swatching for that right now!

I’ve had a pretty great summer so far.  Two wonderful trips to visit friends and family, lazy afternoons reading and napping, and more recently knitting and baking again.  All good things in my book.  And yet there was something so perfect about this past Saturday that it stands out among all the other Saturdays of summer.

My day started with a yoga class that was both relaxing and invigorating.  On my way home, I decided to stop at our local farm stand to see what looked good.  I love just looking over the farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, touching and smelling, then deciding what I will eat that day.  It’s an ideal way to cook, I think, one I wish I could do year round.  But on this day, it was fruit that stood out to me; rotund peaches, glimmering raspberries, and bejeweled blueberries. I ate half the pint of raspberries on the drive home.  The six-minute drive home…

The rest I left out in the kitchen while I sat on the deck to knit and catch up on the Cast-On podcast.  I was a woeful 5 episodes behind in her newest series called Make Do & Mend.  Now I’m down to two episodes to go and feeling inspired to use it up and wear it out in my material life. I got a little taste of this doing the Wardrobe Refashion challenge last spring, but I feel ready to try some new ideas for reusing, re-purposing, and generally using less.  This has been happening in my knitting all summer long as I first look to my stash for new projects.  And in my efforts to organize and prepare the house for the new arrival, I have come across plenty of items that could be made into something new.  Now I just need to settle in and tackle some of these projects!

While listening, I finished my little cardigan; it’s just waiting for a wash, block, and buttons.  More on that later.  It felt so peaceful to sit outside in the sunshine, listening to great work on knitting and crafting, and daydreaming about what to do with my peaches.  I eventually had to ask myself: What would Ina do?

She would make a peach and blueberry cobbler, of course!  And since Sweetie doesn’t happen to like peaches or blueberries, I would get this all to myself.  I decided to split the recipe between two smaller baking containers–one for now and one for later.

This method worked out perfectly, as I enjoyed part of one about 3 minutes after it came out of the oven, and the rest for dessert later that night.  The second cobbler is just waiting in the fridge to be baked.  It could be dessert tonight, I suppose.  Don’t want to let it sit for too long, now would I?!

Saturday was a simple day full of some of my favorite things.  I love it when the hours fall together better than you could have imagined when you woke up in the morning, and by the time you’re ready for bed you feel full and satisfied with your day.  Don’t you?

The Early Bird paid a visit to our house this morning, and as a result we had homemade zucchini bread in our bellies by 8:30 am.  I’ve been wanting to bake up a batch of this kind of goodness since Saturday when we visited a friend’s farm stand.  Because of all the rain we’ve had this summer, many of her veggies didn’t exactly thrive.  The squash, and specifically the zucchini, have loved this weather.

Here is where I would put a photo of the mammoth vegetable we purchased, but I forgot.  It was at least 2 feet long and weighed about 2 pounds.

So up early with my Betty Crocker cookbook, I made this simple and delicious quick bread.  The recipe makes 2 loaves, so I wrapped one up and threw it in the freezer for later.  Of course, Sweetie and I demolished half of the other loaf for breakfast…

On to knitting news, I have two works in progress to show you.  I also noticed, as I was updating my Ravelry projects, that I have a few older and abandoned works in progress.  These are hibernating for now, and I have no plans to get to them any time soon.  This is very out of character for me, as I usually can only stand to have 2 things on the needles at a time.  Onward and upward is my current motto!

This is my second Ishbel shawl in Malabrigo sock yarn, color Abril.  I have finished the stockinette center and am currently waiting for inspiration to strike before I get started on the lace charts.  It’s been about a week and a half since I’ve knit on it.

Instead, I got excited to start a a baby cardigan.  This is the Little Coffee Bean Cardi in a hand-painted yarn from Purlsoup Fibers.  I am really enjoying the pattern and the yarn together.  The yarn is more lavender than I had realized before I started knitting with it, but I love all the bright flecks of colors that pop up.  All I have left is a sleeve and the button bands.

So that’s where my knitting is at today.  I am also making plans to start a cardigan for myself as well as more baby knits.  I don’t want to jinx things, but I think my knitting mojo may be creeping back!  Shhh…we don’t want to scare it away….