Mitten maddness

Ok, take 2: I was writing this post when I hit a key a froze the screen and had to restart the computer and lost what I had written. Anyway, I decided last week I wanted to knit myself a pair of mittens. But I wanted mittens I could shovel snow in and get wet. I bought a very very nice well made pair of alpaca mittens in October at the sheep and wool festival. I do not want my alpaca mittens to get wet or felt or anything. They are the warmest mittens I have so far. So as we are in a small heat wave of 35-40 degrees for a few days, I wanted to get a jump on knitting mittens before the next snowfall comes.

My yarn store had a sale today on yarn I wanted. I wanted Rowan Purelife yarn. This is special yarn. The wool is from British sheep thus the British yarn! My skeins have Shetland Moorit, Masham and Suffolf sheep fleeces in it. I have not heard of any of these breeds before. The yarn is not baby soft but for a pair of rustic feltable mittens they are perfect. I want to let nature felt the mittens naturally. I could do it myself but I'm to lazy. I read somewhere that mittens that are felted are water resistant and warm. We shall see.

I made 1 practice mitten awile ago with Red Heart yarn and liked how it came out except for my crappy knitting. I decided to go rogue and try and adjust the pattern for the thicker yarn. I decided to not change anything. I used worsted weight for my practice mitten and this is the next step up in thickness. I figured the extra thickness would reduce or eliminate the bagginess and looseness my practice mitten had.

The problem is I wanted to use 2 circualr needles. I do not have 2 in size 5. So I decided to try and knit them on straight needles. The pattern calls for it to be knit on circular needles. We will see if it will work. I should know soon if it will. Why does knitting have to be so difficult? They are just mittens. I will keep you posted.

Ribbing frustrations

I started reIknitting Joel's hat on 2 circular needles. When i made the hat the first time my ribbing partially looked liked ribbing. This time not at all! One half looks like sideways garter stitch and the other half looks like a jumbled mess! What am I doing wrong!!!??? I know how to make the knit stitch and the purl stitch. I put the yarn in front for purling and in the back for knitting. I am seriously consdering ripping it out and trying it on straight needles. I will have to buy a pair since I don't have a pair of size 5's. Well, actually I do but they are metal and I prefer to not use them unless I have to. If that doesn't work, I will either give up or try to find a pattern that doesn't have ribbing in it. The first hat I did on size 7's, this hat I am trying size 5's. I am beyond frustrated. How can something so simple be so hard? I may have to break down and take a class on how to knit a hat or rather how to do ribbing with knitting a hat as a bonus. My hat pattern works-I knit the hat I just can't do ribbing!

Knitting pictures

Here is a black scarf I am making. You can't make out the pattern and it is a lace scarf so it has holes in it. Another really easy lace pattern.



Here is the hat I knit for Joel. The colors are NOT what the hat looks like. You can't tell but the ribbing is crap and there are holes in the hat in certain places. I haven't ripped it out yet but I will soon.



Here is a scarf I started on Christmas Day. The yarn is 80% wool and 20% angora. It is very soft and an easy knit.

Post Christmas news

Well, I gave the hat and the shawl to Joel and Grace. I explained they weren't done or needed to be reknit. So now I have to do that. They were good about it. I realized I have 7 unfinished projects laying around. I decided to print out the month of January and write in a project on each day and see how much I can get done in a month. If I finish something, I will add another project to that day so that project will get a second day each week to be worked on.

Two projects have been bothering me. A gray scarf made from baby alpaca with a twist yarn. It had been a UFO (unfinished object) for months. I dragged it out and looked at it. I hated how it looked. Like a 5th grader had knit it. Loose stitches and gaps and just bad knitting. I have learned that alpaca is a yarn that needs to be knit at a tighter guage to hold its shape. I was knitting the scarf on size 8 needles which is to large even for this tight knitter. So I decided to rip it out. I have 68 grams of the yarn. It is a DK (double knit) weight and not a worsted which I thought it was. I decided I want to make bed socks out of the yarn--if 68 grams is enough! DK is probably double the thickness of fingering/sock yarn. I don't know if I will have enough yarn to complete a pair of socks. I have only knit 1 sock so far due to not having a second skein and not finding the colorway anymore in stores. The reason I want them as bed socks is to give me something luxurious to wear to bed and keep my keep very warm. Being that we don't have any carpet in the house I can't wear them around the house unless I want to pretend I'm an ice skater! Plus I don't want to get them dirty or get holes in them.

I am enjoying knitting with two circulars! I finished Joel's hat with them and will make him a new one with 2 circs. I am finishing a practice mitten I started months ago on cheap red heart yarn someone had given me back in my loom knitting days. As I was getting close to the top of the mitten, I switched to 2 circs and it was so easy. I noticed an improvement in my knitting. No more ladders! I am now knitting the thumb and loving it. I can't wait to make more things with 2 circs. it is more expensive to have 2 pairs of every circular size but if it improves my knitting and makes me enjoy knitting more, so be it! I have an eclectic collection of circular needles. More than half of my pairs are from St. Vincent DePaul and they are old but they work. I want to get enough nice needles-either Knit Picks or Susan Bates so I can get rid of the Goodwill needles.

I have so many things I want to knit in the coming year but I also want to finish all my unfinished projects (UFO's) to. So I will be busy but I will keep you posted!

learned new technique

I am almost done with the hat for Joel. I was knitting happily on my circular when I noticed I was decreasing and I was struggling to get the stitches around the needle. In short, my needle was to long for the number of stitches I had. So in my "brilliance" I decided I could transfer them to straight needles. I soon found out you can't do that. I was wondering why I couldn't find anything on the web talking about transfering from circular to straight needles.

I went to my yarn store and she gave me 2 options. I could use 2 circulars or use double points. I choose the 2 circs. She showed me how to do it and I was a bit confused but something told me it was simple. And it is! I expected to get ladders but there are none. I get ladders in my socks working on one large circular or magic loop. It's smooth and I can decrease my stitches and low as needed and the 2 circs method handles it perfectly. I am quite impressed and surprised. I always dismissed patterns with 2 circs because it looked to hard with all theose needles hanging down. Ha! How silly am I? I am serioursly considering starting my next pair of socks with 2 circs. I'll do anything to get good looking socks. I might even use 2 circs when I rip out the hat and start over.

The shawl has screetched to a halt. I have been focused on this hat. It's much more interesting and I know it will get done for Christmas. I have a bad case of start-itis. I plan to start 2 scarfs on Friday and Saturday. One yarn is wool and angora and the other is a discontinued expensive yarn I found at Goodwill for $.99. Both scarves should go fast since one is 2 50gram balls and the other is just one 50gram ball.

I was doing it wrong!

I was at kniting group tonight and we were talking about reading the written chart. Someone mentioned doing the ssk stitch - slip slip knit. They described how to do it and I realized I was doing it wrong! I was slipping the 2 stitches and then knitting the third. Nope! You slip 2 stitches and then knit them off from the right needle. It's a left leaning decrease. I panicked because I have two projects that I think use ssk's. One is a shawl and I think I have not gotten to the ssk's yet. The other project is a scarf and I can't find the directions at the moment. Both these projects are UFO's-unfinished objects. I will attack them again next year.

I really like this group. It's at my local Ben Franklin once a month. I won a book tonight. They drew names. I hadn't won before. It's a book for beginning knitters. There are a few patterns I would knit.

Happy Anniversary to me!

Today December 6th is my 1 year knitting anniversary. A year ago today I sat down in front of the computer with needles and yarn and learned to knit. I haven't a lot to show for it. I have 11 projects done on Ravelry and 2 I knit on the knifty knitter loom. So I guess that's a total of 13 projects done in 1 year. I guess that's not bad. I have another 12 ready to be finished for next year. I am anxious to get started. I am going to have a fit of startitis when the new year hits. If you have never checked me out on Ravelry you can see all my finished projects, and patterns I would like to knit. Just go to www.ravelry.com. My user name is mlcspouse.

A quick update on my Christmas (turning into Valentine's day) knitting. The hat: I finally finished the 6,000 inches of ribbing. It was only 3 inches but ugh! I am now on the 10,000 miles of stockinette stitch. But doing it on circulars, I just knit every row to get the stockinette. I love it. I don't have to think. I haven't been working on the shawl. Grace commented that it was kinda small for the blanket I have told her it is going to be. I had the idea that I might have to knit a seperate panel to get it the right width. Sigh...The pattern called for cotton yarn. I am using thicker than worsted but not bulky yarn. I didn't swatch. I must learn to do that. It is supposed to be 11 inches wide. The last time I measured it, it was like 8or 9 inches wide.

I don't know if the hat will be done foe Christmas with all this ribbing and stocking stitch. I am a slow knitter but come on!