Another pattern that, as soon as I discovered it, knew I would have to make. What else do you give a fellow fan of Hilda?
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| Nothing for scale! He's about a hand high. |
Yarn: Berroco Vintage DK in Oats, about 15 grams/44 yards, black scraps
Hook: E (3.5 mm)
Pattern: Transatlantic Crochet's Woodman [Ravelry link]
Mods: as is my practice with such figures, I inserted (in this case, folded over) chenille sticks through the body for his arms and legs so that he would be posable
This was a deeply satisfying project. I've had the pattern bookmarked for quite a while, and when I realized I had a Christmas recipient all lined up, I ordered the yarn. I made it with worsted weight instead of DK, and on 5s instead of 3s (the yarn is held double throughout). I had 6s on hand when I cast on, in case the fabric turned out too stiff, but it was perfect on 5s, soft but dense, so that no stuffing shows through. I sewed it up with the yarn held double as well.
I nearly gave up on the project when I read the first line of the instructions: cast on 10 stitches. That doesn't sound alarming, does it? I knew I was starting with a leg, and not the body, but I was imagining that this piece would be folded in half, and I could see for myself in the photos that there were more stitches than that in the leg. I took a look at other people's efforts on Ravelry, and was alarmed that there were so few of them. And of those, hardly any looked like the original pattern. Now deeply alarmed, I read through everyone's notes. One photo cleared up the mystery of how the thing is constructed, and a quick re-read of the instructions showed what I had missed. You start at the front of the legs, knit up the body, over the top of the head, and back down to the legs again. Arms happen by magic at some point. And the whole thing is sewed together at the sides. I could see where others had strayed from the designer's intent, and I thought I could avoid the pitfalls. First and foremost, NKD's earliest doll was knit in garter stitch, and she delighted in giving him "growing lessons" until he was quite a lanky fellow. So I knew that I had to stuff carefully so that the tiger filled out instead of just growing taller.
Getting the face right on toys and dolls is immensely important. The face in the original pattern was perfect, so I zoomed in and counted stitches and placed markers, all to make sure it had the personality it deserved.
I nearly forgot the tail, but the entire household kept reminding me.
Needles: US 5 (3.5 mm)
Yarn: Knit Picks Mighty Stitch in Satsuma, White, and Black
Pattern: Lyn Livingston's Tiger in Garter Stitch
How much did I love this pattern? So much that without pausing, I cast on the leftover black and white yarn for another friend (who didn't need a tail):
Recently I acquired two skeins of this lovely -- but sadly discontinued -- yarn, Rowan's Wool Cotton 4-ply, in the Butter colorway.
I looked around on Ravelry and saw that someone had made that exact yarn into a pretty little fichu using two skeins.
Needles: US 5 (3.75mm) and US 3 (3.25mm)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton 4-ply, 307.3 yards
Pattern: Sarah Hazell's Short Row Shawl
Mods: a lot of people had trouble with this pattern. The version I used seemed to have all the corrections. It still took me a fair bit to understand that the K2togs and P2togs in the short row section referred to picking up wraps, not to actual decreases.
Recipient: KD
So I did that, only to discover that they meant they had not used more than two skeins. So I still had pretty yellow yarn left.
Next, I made a produce bag, a Christmas gift for the household, as we are trying to use less single-use plastic in our lives. Although it looks small, it holds a decent amount of fruit.
Needles: US 5 (3.75mm)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton 4-ply, 78 yards
Pattern: Julie Tarsha's Weightless Produce Bag, available here
Mods: Used figure-8 cast-on to avoid sewing the seam at the end; used dpns instead of circs; used 3.75mm instead of 3.00 mm needle for end; used Double-Chain bind off and Chinese Waitress cast on; cast on 30 sts for each strap.
Recipient: R
Speaking of small, that left enough yarn to make part of a tiny Christmas gift.
Needles: US 1 (2.25mm)
Yarn: Rowan Wool Cotton 4-ply, 8 yardsl Lang Yarns Jawoll Magic, 9 yards
Pattern: Anna Hrachovec's Cat in a Bag, totally delightful
Mods: I started with a figure-8 cast on
Recipient: M
And that is the end of the Butter Yellow yarn.
Last spring, some household pets escaped in our neighborhood. Most were quickly recaptured or made their way home at feeding time, but one adventurous black bunny moved in under our neighbor's back porch, and worked at keeping our front lawn trimmed all summer. I tried to convince him to just work on the edging, but had no luck. The kids named him Bunnicula, and by the end of the summer he would eat carrots from NKD's outstretched hand. He was too canny to get close enough to be picked up and returned to captivity. I worried that he wouldn't survive the winter. In fact he disappeared in late fall, coincidentally the same time a fox appeared in the neighborhood.
Needles: US 4 (3.5mm)
Yarn: probably about 85 yards of no idea what in Black
Pattern: Sara Elizabeth Kellner's Henry's Bunny
Recipient: NKD
Finished the hat by the deadline:
Needles: US 1.5 (2.5mm) and US 2.5 (3mm)
Yarn: 1.5 skeins of Patons Kroy Socks in Gentry Gray
Pattern: Raven Sherbo's Mjolnir
Splitty yarn (with a fair amount of vegetative matter, and white blobs in the 2nd skein only -- neither problems I usually have with this yarn) meant I kept leaving strands behind, and traveling stitches meant it was impossible to drop down to correct things.
There was a mistake in the pattern that I did not make in my knitting, because I didn't even notice until the third repeat, like typos that your brain corrects for you. I just did what should have been done without thinking about it.
KD just informed me that it's the best hat ever, though, so it was all worth it.
And with that, I'm going to take a break from knit-blogging until the New Year, because all I want to talk about are Secret Projects, and that's no good.
That is, not a hat for emergencies, but an emergency need for a specific hat to be worn at a specific time.
Believe it or not, this is a black hat, in yarn with a lovely sheen to it. As a result, the sheen reflected all the sunlight when I took the picture.
Half the time is up; half the hat is done. Onward!
When the time for the 2020 Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival rolled around, I went to the vendors I always visit, and bought things. I just did it online. I've been working my way through summer colors of Yankee Dyer Yarns Yankee Breeze merino/cotton fingering. This year I went with a summery green. So I wanted a sock pattern that went with images of summer leaves. I settled on this pattern because, despite the name, it reminded me of the shadows made by trees in full leaf. And it reminded NKD of the vines in her garden.
Needles: US 1 1/2 (2.5 mm)
Yarn: Yankee Dyer Yarns Yankee Breeze in Wasabi
Pattern: Melanie Berney's Snowflake Lace Socks, originally published in MagKnits and available from the Internet Archives here.
I'm leaning towards a purple for next year's selection. Maybe that May Mist if she still has it in stock by then. The serendipity of indie dyers is the best.
They'll be finished before you know it.
But you know what's even worse than Second Sock Syndrome?
I've had this pillowcase embroidery kit for decades. I broke it out back in March, when I started taking afternoon tea in a chair by my window, looking out on the forest. It seemed like a good time to resurrect an old skill. I was quite pleased with the result. So why haven't I even started the second one???
The scarf is half-done, and not mysterious at all. The knitting is easy to read as far as the pattern is concerned, the yarn is still attached, and it even had a needle still in it. No telling how long my sister intended to make it, but I'll just use up the yarn.
But first, the same reason she stopped: to make sure she had enough yarn for the matching fingerless gloves. Fortunately, one was complete except for the thumb-top:
She was holding two different colorways together in the scarf, a black and a black-and-gray variegated, for a subtle variegated heather look. She clearly did the same in the body of the glove, then switched to just black for the finger-tops. I guessed that she used the same size needles as the scarf, counted stitches and rows, and quickly made a match.
The finger-tops are a bit of a poser. I don't often make gloves, and figuring out how to divvy up the stitches for fingers has taken several tries.
Which is to say, the sock is all done:
And the best course of action is to immediately cast on for the second one. Especially now that the weather has turned fall-like, and thoughts of wool are dancing through my head.
Here we are, safely around the corner. Yesterday I knit the heel flap, turned the heel, picked up the gusset stitches on one side, and checked the pattern to be sure I was supposed to continue the lace pattern across the instep stitches.
That’s when I discovered that the pattern had politely asked me to stop before the heel flap on the next-to-last row of the lace pattern. And after all that careful exposition in my last post!
I almost wrote “there’s no coming back from that kind of mistake,” but of course that’s the glory and delight of knitting: unlike real life, you can go back and fix things. So this morning I did just that, ripping back to the beginning of the heel flap, tinking back that last knit row, and starting off again.
I wound up knitting the first row of the heel flap, because otherwise I would have been slipping yarn-overs and creating large holes just where I don’t want them. But after that I proceeded with my usual heel flap, and everything went smoothly.
Now I will just continue with lace on the instep and stockinette on the sole while I decrease the gusset stitches, and before you know it, it will be time for the toe. Which I might start a little earlier than usual, since I don’t want my little toe catching in the lace.
How do I know?
Well, I know that - unless I'm making footies - I generally like my handknit socks to hit just as my calf starts to widen, what the wide world calls "mid-calf" but isn't. I also know that I generally like my summer socks to be about an inch shorter than my winter ones. No idea why, you wouldn't think an inch would add that much warmth. Anyway, I'm looking for a leg length of 5-6".
The stitch pattern matters, too. Since I want two matching socks, it's always wise to start the heel at the end of a pattern set, just because it's easier to remember. Happily, the end of the 5th pattern repeat hit right at 5 1/2".
Definitely time to start the heel, which starts, in this case, with a heel flap. The pattern actually calls for plain knitting, and I could do that. But I like a bit of bulk in the heel flap, so that it wears longer. I could go all out on an eye-of-partridge heel, which I'm fond of. But the stitch pattern is already textured and interesting enough, so I'm just going to go with a regular heel flap, the kind where you slip 1 - knit 1 across the heel flap and slip 1 - purl across on the way back.
See you around the corner!
I would just like to point out that this entire garter square blanket is predicted on getting two squares out of each skein of yarn. Eight squares in, this happens:
I shall continue on, and see if I come up with some extra blue by the end.
Meanwhile, now that it's September, I've finally started my summer socks.
This took a while, but the finished object is really nice.
To recap: this was a kit produced in 2000 by Carolyn White, that included pattern instructions and the central woven piece in various fabrics - we approve the choice of elephants! My sister had completed knitting the pieces but had not begun to assemble the jacket. I attached the side pieces, sewed the the seams, and knit (and hemmed, and re-knit and re-knit) the hem, collar, and front edging. I found buttons and added them. Then, realizing that the sleeves were too long for the intended recipient, I shortened them.
As I was discussing how to eliminate the extra fabric from shortening the sleeves, one of my knitting friends kept telling me it wasn't going to work the way I thought. It wasn't until I actually tried it that I understood what she was saying. The knitting was going to unravel. Fortunately, before that could happen, I unpicked my sewing, ripped back the extra fabric
put the live stitches back on the needles
and Kitchener-stitched them closed, which is what I should have done in the first place. Then I did the other 3 seams.
This project was a constant lesson in trying something that did not work, and then trying something else.
Kit: Carolyn White's Carolyn Jacket, now available only on eBay
Yarn: Imperial Tracie in Pearl Gray and Spring Sage, Reynolds Soft Sea Wool in Dark Blue, and some unknown yellow.
What do you do when the amount of yarn is a little too much for a hexipuff, but not enough for two hexipuffs? You make baby socks!
Yarn: unidentified leftover sock yarn
Needles: (US 2) 2.75 mm
Pattern: Toe-Up Baby Socks in the 0-3 month size
Someday I'm going to meet a baby with cold feet, and I will be so prepared!
I took a few minutes this week to clean out leftover sock yarn.
Someday there will be enough hexi-puffs (and half-puffs) for a blanket.
Many years ago, I had the bright idea of leaving a stash of yarn at the cabin, so that no knitter would ever have to run out of something to knit while on vacation. I settled on acrylic yarn in local colors, and a simple garter-stitch square pattern.
Then life happened. Time passed. Family member knitters died. I gained some eye-opening experience sewing together blankets from squares other people had knit. I forgot all about the whole project.
Until the yarn turned up last month, and I dug around to figure out what on earth I had bought it for. Ah. Well. Tempus fugit, and all that. I took the yarn up to the cabin, and I started knitting it into squares, and sewing them together. I'm not sure the cabin even needs another blanket, but I will soon have a nice squishy blanket in Camp colors.
Finished! It's quite difficult to show off the zigzag without putting them on. Alas, that will have to wait for the recipient.
Needles: US 1 1/2 (2.5 mm)
Yarn: Cascade Yarns' Heritage Paints in Spark, 64 grams
Pattern: Susie White's Zigzagular Socks, a free pattern on Ravelry
The first step was to remove the seam from cuff to underarm. I probably could have done it without this step, but it was certainly easier with the seam open.
Next, I chose where the shortening seam would go. I tried putting both rows on needles and employing Kitchener Stitch. I tried just eyeballing the correct stitches in each row and sewing it together. But what worked for me, and for making sure I hadn’t missed any stitches, since I intend to remove the excess fabric later, was to put the two rows of stitches, carefully, on needles.
Then I sewed up the seam, loosely. Then I removed the needles and tightened it up.
Voila! A shorter sleeve. Now I need to do the other sleeve.
And later, remove the excess fabric.
It goes fast when I remember about it.
There’s plenty of time before cold weather, but I have two or three other socks in the queue.
