PDXKnitterati

Christmas sweaters

Posted on December 10, 2009 | 19 comments

First, a disclaimer: I didn’t knit this.

Grant Butler over at the Oregonian/Oregonlive is collecting pictures of ugly Christmas sweaters. I don’t think mine is ugly; I think it’s kitschy cute! But I told him I’d send him a picture, anyway.

It’s so NYC. We lived in New York for 9 years, and this sweater at Nordstrom Rack just spoke to me. I think I’ve had it for 6 years or so, but I can’t remember.

I hate knitting intarsia, so I would never make something like this. But look at the detail! From the sequins on the gift and the beads on the hat…

To the beads for tire treads…

What’s not to like? What do you think? Cute? Ugly? Kitschy? Would you wear it? I love it. But only once a year.

19 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit

Tagged christmas sweater, Knit

It’s December, which means it’s time for the sixth and final 2009 offering of the Single Skein Club at Twisted. This club has been a ton of fun to be in, even if I didn’t knit most of the projects! There’s something so tantalizing about about knowing that a surprise is waiting for you at the yarn shop. If you haven’t picked up your kit yet, or if you’re non-local and waiting to receive your shipment, avert your eyes now. Oh, wait, I’ll distract you with this other picture, first.

One of these things is not like the other…

But the color is pretty similar! We love clementines at our house; they’re sweet, juicy, seedless. A perfect small snack. My mom gave me this persimmon before we went away for Thanksgiving. After seeing them on a tree in North Carolina, we came home to eat this one.

Have you ever eaten a persimmon? The Teen laughingly insisted that it was a tomato. But it didn’t taste anything like a tomato! Sweet, but not overly so, and firm-ish like…a not quite ripe mango? Anyway, it was good, and it’s gone.

Okay, back to the Single Skein Club. Last chance to avert your eyes.

Ready?

This month’s kit has a very timely pattern for mittens, 100 grams of yarn, and a ruler with a built-in needle gauge. Always handy! Oh, there was also a twizzler that matched the yarn, but that was munched days ago.

The yarn is Hempwol, a 65/35 wool/hemp blend. It feels nice. The color is a heathery red. Love it!

I don’t think I’ll be knitting this into mittens until after Hanukkah and Christmas. There’s a lot of knitting going on here, and I’m pretty pleased with all of it. More, later.

8 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged Knit, single skein club, yarn

Quincy rocks!

Posted on December 5, 2009 | 10 comments

I finished my second Quincy hat (ravelry link) yesterday. This is just the cleverest construction.

One of the other knitters at knit night (Toni, if you’re keeping score) actually did the garter stitch kitchener join on the moebius strip. I commend her. I thought about doing it. BUT! She also turned the strip so that the join was under the twist of the moebius. Brilliant! I decided then and there that I’d use the three needle bind off again, and hide the slightly irregular join under the twist. Double brilliant! Because it’s hard to be chatty and learn a new technique at the same time, and knit night is all about the chatty. Check this out.

Isn’t it cool how the join is just sitting under the twist? I love it. So much that I’m going to take out the crown on the first Quincy hat and scoot that join under the twist, too. I’ve noticed that there’s a little garter bump on the i-cord, right where the join happens, and if it really bothered me, I’d do it differently next time (will there be a next time?). But it doesn’t really bother me, so I’m definitely not going back to re-do the first two!

Details: Quincy hat by Jared Flood
Yarn: Bulky Merino from Knitted Wit in Passionflower colorway
US size 10 needles for band, and size 9 dpns for crown
Mods: 3 needle bind off instead of grafting the ends of the moebius strip, and placing the twist under the twist line instead of opposite the twist

In other news, I just taught a Christmas stocking class at Twisted, using my snowflake Christmas stocking pattern. It was really fun. The group was great, funny and intrepid. They learned to turn a heel, a neater way to make a circular join, knitting in the round, working with two colors, and reading and following a chart. That’s a lot of ground to cover in 3 hours, but they were up for it, and they did great! They’ve promised me pictures of the finished stockings. I’m looking forward to them!

Knit on!

10 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged brooklyn tweed, christmas stocking, jared flood, Knit, quincy hat

One skein projects

Posted on December 1, 2009 | 11 comments

My little purple Fetching mitts have gone AWOL. I’m sure they’re in a knitting or music bag, somewhere in this house, but for now I’m wearing these instead.

These are my Chunky Piano Mitts. The pattern is free here on my blog. They take less than 100 grams of chunky yarn, and they are fast!

Speaking of free, and one skein, Peggy and Mims at the Oregonlive knitting blog are featuring a free one skein knitting pattern every day from Nov. 28 through Dec. 24. My spiral rib hat was featured on Sunday, Nov. 29.

You can share patterns, too, as long as they’re available for free. And there are prizes for sharing!

What’s your favorite one skein project?

11 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit

Tagged free pattern, Knit, one skein

Happy Thanksgiving! Happy FO…

Posted on November 26, 2009 | 17 comments

Happy Thanksgiving! We’re at the point in the day when the turkey is roasting (on the grill) and everyone is just hanging out. Must be time to blog…

I’m working on a set of cowls for a pattern for the auction knit party at Twisted. I finished one yesterday, and today was a picture perfect day. Too bad the other cowl isn’t with me; I guess it will have a photo shoot later.

This is knit with Malabrigo Chunky, colorway Noviembre. Pattern coming as part of a set. The yarn is really fun to knit; it’s big and chunky like al dente pasta.

And pretty fun to wear!

The teen likes it, too.

We took a walk this afternoon and saw this persimmon tree.

And the neighborhood football game.

I looked up and saw this:

I don’t think I’ll be taking a nap outside. They’re circling…

Wishing you lots of turkey and pumpkin pie!

17 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, travel

Tagged cowl, Knit, malabrigo, neck warmer

As luck would have it…

Posted on November 22, 2009 | 14 comments

I’m pretty lucky! Bonnie picked me as the winner in her drawing for some yarn and her new pattern.

This yarn is 50 grams/146 yards of Alpaca Silk in the Ice colorway from Blue Sky Alpacas. It’s a gorgeous shade of gray, and the silk in it gives it a beautiful sheen. It feels great, too.

See it glow? I love it!

The pattern is called Buttermilk Sky; it looks lovely. I”m looking forward to knitting this sweet little cowl.

Thank you, Bonnie!

14 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Knit

Tagged alpaca, buttermilk sky, Knit, silk, yarn

November, the yarn

Posted on November 19, 2009 | 11 comments

I bought a little more Malabrigo Chunky the other day. I’m still working on a pattern for our knit party auction event, and I needed to try one more variation on a theme.

Isn’t this gorgeous? The color is called Noviembre. And yes, it looks like fall. These are so not my colors, but they are gorgeous, and I’m sure I can find a worthy recipient after the pattern is written and the pictures are done. And this yarn is so much fun to knit with; it’s firm and bouncy like knitting with al dente pasta! Speaking of food…

I posted on Facebook that I was baking applesauce blueberry bread; a lot of my posts seem to be about food. There were a couple recipe requests, so I’m posting it here for your enjoyment.

Applesauce Blueberry Bread

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup blueberries

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in eggs. Blend in applesauce.

Blend dry ingredients, fold into applesauce mixture only until blended. Fold in blueberries.

Bake in greased loaf pan at 350 degrees, about 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean. (Mine usually takes at least an hour and 15 minutes, especially if I’m baking two. You really don’t want this to be gummy on the bottom.) Cool in loaf pan on wire rack for about 30 minutes, then turn out onto rack and cool completely. Scrumptious!

ETA: The reason mine takes so long to bake is probably because I put the berries in frozen, directly from the freezer. These are the berries that we grew last summer, and they are wonderful!

Oh, I almost wore the clear Converse sneakers today. I tried them on again, but I still felt clunky and flat-footed. So back they’ll go. Well, it was worth a try, anyway!

11 Comments

Posted in Knit, pattern design, recipe

Tagged applesauce, blueberry, bread, Knit, malabrigo

Quincy is qute

Posted on November 17, 2009 | 18 comments

Well, cute, really.

I finished my Quincy hat last week at knit night, and it’s taken almost a week to get some time on a day where there was enough light to get a decent picture!

This hat is absolutely adorable. We passed it around on knit night, and it looks good on everyone. Even me, the one who doesn’t wear hats because they flatten my hair.

Do you wonder why I take so many pictures at the piano? It’s because the black and white are balanced so well, the exposure and colors generally turn out fairly true. But I digress.

You can turn the hat in any direction. Except this one. Because I wimped out at our chatty knit night and used a three needle bind off to join the moebius instead of slogging through a kitchener stitch join. The seam is pretty obvious. I’d like to make another Quincy, and see if I can either finagle a better result with a three needle bind off (right side to wrong side? right side to right side? wrong side to wrong side?), or else just kitchener the darned thing!

Here are the details:

Quincy Hat by Jared Flood
Classic Elite Ariosa (as specified in pattern) 10% cashmere, 90% superfine merino
Size 10 and 9 needles
Mods: just substituting the 3 needle bind off for the kitchener stitch join

I liked working with this yarn. It was a loosely spun single which seemed to want to untwist itself, but it’s so soft, I forgive it. My next one will be in a different yarn, though, because this one was pretty spendy!

@@@@@

Thank you so much for weighing in on my clear Converse shoes. I still haven’t felt compelled to wear them, so I think I’ll be returning them. And I’ve figured out why. They’re not very girly! I don’t find them flattering. And it’s not that I don’t have shoes for showing off my hand knit socks. You saw the Danskos. I also have these:

These are cuter than the Converse. But like the Converse, they’re not that comfortable. So it’s a good thing I have these:

These are Skechers, too; the model name is Biker. They’re really comfortable, and they’re cute! I wear them a lot, but not when it’s raining, because they’re so holey.

18 Comments

Posted in Knit

Tagged brooklyntweed, jared flood, quincy

Verdict?

Posted on November 10, 2009 | 36 comments

I bought these clear Converse All-Stars a couple weeks ago. It’s taken me this long to think about wearing them. Is that a bad sign?

I put them on this morning, and I’m not sure I’m feeling the love.

You don’t see a lot of the sock, since there’s so much going on with the laces. And they’re under jeans, too.

The plastic tongue isn’t the most comfortable thing, either. I’m inclined to return them. I’m pretty happy with my Dansko clogs, which are what I decided to wear today. I bought them at Sock Summit.

What do you think?

36 Comments

Posted in Knit

A veritable potpourri

Posted on November 5, 2009 | 10 comments

Let’s see, where am I? Oh, yes, the contest!

I ran the random number generator at random.org and the winners are: Susie (KnittingKnoobie) for the purple Berroco Vintage Wool, and Marie (permissiontounwind) for the blue Lanaloft. I’ll be sending out yarn soon.

Just a bit of knitting going on here. We started the Quincy hat knitalong at knit night last week; I love the way the i-cord just happens on the edges. This will be the moebius strip of the hat band around the head. Isn’t it pretty?

Here’s a better look at the edges. Don’t worry; the green is temporary. It’s a provisional cast on so the beginning can be grafted to the end.

And I’m still highly distracted by my new guitar. It has a lovely voice, and I’ve been playing a lot. I had the action adjusted (lowered) by our luthier, and it’s easier to play. Dreamy. Now I just need to learn to play better! I’m learning to pick arpeggios rather than just strum. Doing that while singing is an interesting exercise in coordination, but it’s getting better.

I’m also writing a couple songs with a friend (he composes the music; I write the lyrics), and that’s been a lot of fun. I’m so lucky to have all these creative outlets in my life, and I know it.

Knit and play on!

10 Comments

Posted in Knit, music

Tagged guitar, Knit, quincy hat, yarn