joyousknits

The need to knead

My older boys requested felted slippers after I made these for the little one back in 2006.  (It was only fair that everyone got to 'skate' around the house!)  I made six pairs of those house slippers that year, so I was looking forward to trying a different pattern.  (Don't you have a limit for the number of times you'll knit a pattern?)  This time, I used Fiber Trends' Felted Clogs pattern, 'narrow feet' 2006 edition.  The yarns used were 200g of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes (Stream, now discontinued) and 100 g of Cascade 220 (Dark plum).  The knitting was straight forward, but the felting bit nearly did me in.  My washing machine doesn't use hot water, so I had to felt by hand.  The Knitpicks yarn felted quickly enough, but the Cascade 220 took foreeever (over an hour) and it still wasn't totally felted. 

You can imagine I hesitated a bit before starting the second pair, for which I already bought the yarn, including 200 g of Cascade 220 (Italian plum) for the soles and trim.  The green yarn was some Peruvian wool purchased from the lys.  Just like the first pair, the green yarn became a cohesive fabric in less than half an hour, but the Cascade 220 was more resistant to felting.

Maybe it's easier to see in this picture. The purple Cascade 220s are not as shrunken as their counterparts, and the knit stitches are still slightly visible.

Brotherly clogs.  I made the women's large for H and women's medium for L.  The pattern states to make them on the tighter side because they stretch a bit with wear.  That's a good thing for boys with fast-growing feet!

Thank you for the comments on Brambling.  It feels to good to finally post all those finished projects.  I'm not done yet, and will continue after I come back from vacation.  I'll be bringing some Noro Silk Garden sock yarn with me for some simple knitting bliss.  :-)  See you soon!

Brambling

Remember this?  I started it about a year ago, and the knitting was quite straight forward but it was put in the time-out pile because the sleeve caps were too shallow for the armholes.  When my niece's ninth birthday came in March, I sucked it up, and re-knit the sleeve caps by trial and error to make them fit.

I knit the largest (10 yr old) size, so there'd be room to grow into, and used just over nine balls of Jaeger extrafine merino aran in Persian.  I shortened the sleeves by about two inches.  Actually, most of the patterns in Rowan's Story Book of Knits have reeaally long (around 17" for 10 yr size) sleeves for kid-sized clothes.

 

There're lots of details in this knit, such as pleats and buttons in the front and back, and a knot in the back.

A pocket on the sleeve, cuffs, and more buttons.  Eighteen buttons in all!  There was the one thing I couldn't tame though: the collar.  It kept flipping up, and I had to tack it down at the back.

This turned out to be quite big, even with the shortened sleeves, which means the niece can wear it for another year. Yay!

Booties, Blankets, and a Surprise

I love knitting baby stuff (no secret there) so I was quite thrilled to learn that some colleagues and friends were expecting earlier this year.  Finally, a great excuse to knit up some of those patterns in the queue.

 

It was love at first sight for the Merry Janes and Moc-a-Soc patterns, so adorable that I would have knit these even if I didn't know anyone expecting.  I knit both in the smallest size.  The yarns used  were Filatura di Crosa Cashmere/Seta (less than 20 g) for the red booties, and Rio de la Plata sock yarn (in French blue, about 15g) for the blue.  All the 'socks' were knit in Louet Gems Pearl in white.  The pattern calls for sportweight yarn, so the blue ones turned out a bit smaller than the red, maybe more like newborn-3 month size.  The red ones were a little more fiddly than the blue ones because of the straps and buttons, but it was certainly worth the extra time. 

I don't think EZ's Baby Surprise Jacket needs any introduction.  I used up a whole skein of Fleece Artist's 3/6 superwash merino (sportweight version of their sock yarn) in the Sunrise colorway, and didn't make any alterations to the pattern.  It was as much fun knitting this one as I had the first one a while back.  Certainly part of the fun is not having much seaming to do. :-)

    

As cute as the booties and clothes are, the practical side of me prefers to give blankets, which babies can't outgrow so fast.  Besides, they're great stash-busting projects too!  The pattern for the white blanket is from Sarah Dallas' Knitting.  I used Rowan Handknit Cotton (Bleached, 10 balls instead of the 14 in the pattern because that was all I had in the stash), and for the edging, used remnants of the same yarn from this sweater.  Finally, a use for some of the odds and ends (there was less than 10 g in this case) from all the projects that I keep hoarding. 

The knitting was very quick for this simple pattern, and the final measurements were about 30 x 32 inches.  This went to a colleagues's little boy, along with the little blue suede shoes, way back in March.  He's probably outgrown the booties a long time ago, but I'm sure the blanket is still going strong!

More stash busting by knitting the Mason-Dixon Baby Moderne Blanket.  The white and pink Rowan Cotton Glace were in the stash so I only had to buy some green.  This blanket used up three balls each of Bleached, Bubbles (dark pink), and Shoot (green), and four balls of Glee (light pink).  I knit it on 3.5 mm needles, and only knit more rows in the last section to use up most of the yarn, and also to widen the blanket because the gauge here was smaller than the one in the pattern.  The final measurements after washing was about 29 x 32 inches.

One of my favorite blankets ever! 

Summer of socks (mini edition)

I've hardly knit a stitch in the past few weeks, but there's a whole stash of fos that go back to the beginning of the year.  I will be heading off for vacation in ten days, and I would like to post most of that pile, before I forget all the details of the projects. (Don't you hate it when that happens?)  Let's start with the most recent knits: summer socks in simple patterns.

 

The pattern is Jules (it's free!), knit in Shibui sock yarn (color peacock, 2 skeins).  I was worried that this yarn would pool, so I chose this pattern which has purl ridges and slip stitches.  I think I changed the cuff slightly, and subbed a round toe. I knit the 60 st size on 2 mm needles, and there was only a bit of pooling in the gusset area.

 

I really liked knitting with this yarn, and the pattern is highly recommended if you're looking for a simple pattern.  Into the sock drawer these go!  Next, some socks for my fil's birthday in mid-June.  It was easy deciding on socks for his present because my mil had been hinting that the last pair I made him (Log Cabins), though nice and toasty on those odd cold days, couldn't be worn in his shoes.  Good point! :-)

Here, they're worn by a reluctant model; the hubby has the same sized feet as his dad, so no guesswork about that.  These are the Ringwood socks from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, knit in Lorna's Laces sock in Charcoal, 2 skeins.  Rather than doing calf decreases, I knit the whole thing in 72 st but made the leg sections shorter. 

Can you tell the difference between the left and right pictures?  After I finished knitting the socks, I was a little dismayed by the banding, which took me off-guard since this was a semi solid color, so I overdyed them with charcoal dye (Country Classics).  The colors do look more blended after the dye job, right? ;-)  And these are my Project Spectrum air socks!

These stripy socks are for H, the 12 year old with size 41 feet. Yeeps.  Pretty soon, all the boys will have bigger feet than me and as much as I like knitting socks, I think they'll be generally of the st st or very, very simple pattern variety, especially since they'll outgrow them so quickly.  This pattern (Crenellated toe-up socks) is from Lucy Neatby's Cool Socks, Warm Feet. The toe is started with a small garter stitch square, and the sock is knit into a tube, with contrasting yarn knit in for heel placement.  I like the way the heel stripes up when knit this way, but I wish there was a way to not have gaping holes at the corners to fix up at the end.

I couldn't decide whether to have square or diamond toes, so I made one of each.  I hope H can still fit into these when cold weather arrives.

H picked this colorway himself, Kaffe Fassett Regia sock yarn in the Twilight colorway.  We're going fishing tomorrow, and he's better at that than I am at knitting, so I'm hoping we'll have some fresh fish for dinner!