Friday, February 13, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!!!

The day of love is upon us and of course I've made a few little goodies for the occasion:
I made Walker the little 'lovebug' and a few little stuffed hearts for my parents. A couple of them have faces on them, but that's a little hard to see in this photo. You just have to trust me.Our job situation hasn't really had any progress. We have a few prospects, but they're all moving at the speed of a molasses covered turtle. So hopefully I'll have some better news by my next post, but don't hold your breath. But that means that I've had plenty of time to knit!
I had some dk yarn kicking around and wanted to make some yummy gloves out of it, but couldn't find a pattern for dk-weight gloves, so I decided to try to write one. The one I managed to finish fits very well, but the one skein didn't quite cover both gloves, so I'll have to order another one...once I get around to doing that. So for now I have a glove and a half lying around. Once I work the kinks out of this pattern, I might get around to writing it out for various sizes and post it here!
I did manage to finish some other handwarmers, though! With some more leftover Christmas yarn, I did another pattern out of the Selvubotter book, but this one is for little girls. So if you know any cold little girls, let me know.Alternatively, if you know any medium-sized girls (or boys) whose hands are chilly, they might also be in luck. With some leftover white yarn from mom's Scandanavian scarf, I made some cute cabley mittens.So now all of my yarn is gone, except for that last half ball of bamboo yarn, which is turning nicely into the forest park scarf, which I found in the Designer One Skein Wonders book (as well as the cable mittens, actually). I made some modifications, like I made it one repeat wider, so I'll be able to block it between 12-16" wide and I'm not going to use the same edging. I won't put any edging along the sides and at the ends, I'm going to put in Pinapple Lace Edging. I'm about halfway through the body pattern (shown below) and then will put on the edging. I think it will end up being 5 1/2 feet long, but that kind of depends on how long the yarn allows for.After that, though, the knitting basket is empty: no more yarn. I will have to order one more skein of elegance to finish those gloves, but after that, I just don't know. I will try to write that pattern for Christina (once she gets me her measurements!) and then I guess I'll just get a lot of reading done. We'll see!
Here's Jericho, looking very comfy in Walker's lap, to wrap things up!

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

-Allie

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Maine!

Yay, we're finally in Maine! We've got everything moved in and put away and you can see some pictures of the apartment here. No jobs yet, but I'm sure we'll find something soon. The temp agency says they're working hard to find us something, anyway. As you can tell, I've gotten quite a bit of knitting done since my last post. So much for posting more often. Sorry :-/

I recently came to the conclusion that the hat I made for myself last fall makes me look like a pinhead. So I tried to make myself a beret and pretty much failed. I think my head's just too fat. Instead, I ended up making this folded brim number, based loosely on Knitty's Coronet hat, but bigger and with a different cable pattern on the brim, which is a little tough to make out in this picture.It's a little bit big, but that means, no more hathead! I'm in love with this yarn, too. If it wasn't so expensive, I'd make everything in Knitpicks' elegance yarn!
I mentioned in the last post that I would be making my mother a scarf to match the gloves I made her for Christmas, well here it is!It's pretty much just a big scarfy tube with part of the glove chart stuck on it and with the ends sewn together. Mom loves it, so it's a success in my book.

Now for the stash-busting. I still had a lot of fingering weight yarn left, but not much in any one color. So I made these little stripey socks in an attempt to kill a couple skeins. I think I'm going to mail these to a friend of mine.Unfortunately, they were unable to kill my remaining fingering weight yarn, so as usual with little scraps of yarn, I made this adorable trio of cat toys. Left to right: Asparagus man, Mr. Stegs, and Morlock.And Mr. Stegs from the side:

Our naughty kitty is so lucky he can benefit from my yarn scraps! Now all of my fingering weight yarn is left, a couple skeins of worsted (future mittens and valentines miscellany), one of dk (future gloves, elegance!), and that remaining ball of bamboo lace. I swear, this time, I'm really going to get back to working on the Seascape Shawl! I mean it!

Sorry, no pictures of kitties in the beret. It's too big for Jericho and Fatty flipped out when I tried to put it on him :( Also, if there was anything in the previous post that you would like, (as in the Alaska Hat, Vespergyle Mittens, washcloth, or cat beret) you're absolutely welcome to them. I have no idea what to do with them and don't really want to just donate them to charity.

Jericho will wrap things up for me with his customary shot of cuteness.

Cheers!