First things first

Last June I received a wonderful, yarn-filled package from Karen at Yarn Is My Métier. Almost immediately I cast on for Karen’s Mia Shrug (there’s a pattern link on the front page of her blog), using the Jaegar Shetland Aran. It is a lovely pattern (clear instructions! fun to knit!), and the completed shrug was sent—before I remembered to photograph it, alas—to my friend Valérye in Australia.

What to do with the Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran, though? This is really luscious yarn—the sort of thing I wanted to use for something that would be used for a very long time. About a month ago, I realized that in nearly five years of knitting I had yet to knit a scarf for myself. (Gasp!) I couldn’t believe it. So I started looking at scarf patterns. Plain stockinette or garter stitch were out (too boring), as were cables (ate up too much yarn).

And then I remember Wavy, from Knitty’s winter 2004 issue. I’d actually knit this scarf once before as a gift for a friend and had really enjoyed the pattern.* The result is slightly funky, not full of holes (lace scarves are not my thing), and easily dressed up or down.

I loved knitting this scarf again. It’s just long enough for a once-around-the-neck wrap with short tails hanging down—which is fine with me, because there’s no sense in using a lot of super-nice stuff like this for knitting that doesn’t actually touch your skin. The shifting rib pattern gives the whole thing some curves that keep it interesting both to knit and to wear. I may just make another one of these soon…

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*I did most of the knitting during the four hours I had to sit in a Quest diagnostics lab office while doing a glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes. I’d flunked the “quickie” test my midwife gave me at the birth center, so I had to spend half a day drinking a sickly sweet orange solution, waiting an hour, getting my blood drawn, then repeating the whole sequence a few more times. This knitting project and an audiobook kept me from going nuts in the waiting room. And I passed the test with flying colors, fortunately!

Shortly before my pre-Christmas mitten-knitting frenzy, I had started work on a sweater for myself. Not long after I first started knitting about five years ago, I got the idea of making sweaters for Jan and me out of the same yarn. I placed an order at Elann.com (my only one to date, now that I think about it…), and a box full of Gjestal bulky-weight 100% wool yarn soon arrived on my doorstep.

It didn’t take me too long to knit “the Beatles sweater” for Jan. I started on a funnelneck sweater for myself, put it down for several months, then ran into some problems. So I put the yarn away for several more months.

And then I saw the B.O.B. (Button on Blanket) Sweater and just knew that the rest of my Gjestal was destined to be one of these. The Ravelry page, with a link to the free PDF in the Ravelry library, is here. Those of you who aren’t on Ravelry can go here and ask the author to send you the pattern directly.

I really enjoyed working on this sweater, right until I got near the end of the raglan decreases at the shoulders. I was at the point there I should have been done decreasing (further decreases would have eaten into the cables on either side, thus messing up their prettiness), but I still had about six more columns than the pattern said I should. Hmmm. After consultation with–and lots of helpful advice from–my knitting group, I ended up winging it a bit. And it worked out all right.

Other than having to fiddle with the final decreases, I made two other adjustments to the pattern. First, I made the arms a couple of inches longer–partly to accommodate my long arms, partly because I wanted the sleeves to descend into the palms of my hands to increase their bundle-up-in-cold-weather utility. Second, I lengthened the body by about five inches.

I found some buttons I like at JoAnn, but after wearing the sweater for a few days I am finding that the buttonholes have loosened up, and I’ll need to get some larger buttons to replace them. Also, since I lengthened the body but neglected to increase the number of buttons (currently there are eight), the sweater has a little gappiness in front, particularly when I sit down. At first I didn’t think I’d mind (especially since the designer points out that “this is more a warm wrap around and bundle in on the couch for knitting and movies than svelte sweater-girl knit”), but now I’m think I will redo the buttonband once I find appropriate buttons.

Problems aside, this sweater was a lot of fun to knit (especially since it was for me–my first sweater for myself!). It’s very comfortable and very warm. I may very well make another one of these sometime!

The cake may be a lie, but this pattern is the real deal. I have no idea what I’d do with this when it’s finished, but I really, really, really want to knit a companion cube.

Show your favorite geek how much you care by knitting him or her a pair of mittens that say “I love you” in binary. And they have the Linux penguin, too!

And here’s a Drupal knitting chart for those who love open source efforts.

Here’s a lovely shamrock tea cozy.

And here’s one that claims to be a “proper” English tea cozy.

Do you have a single-serving teapot? We’ve got you covered, too.

And here’s a cozy with a “lid” that comes off the top, so you can open up your teapot without taking off the entire cozy.

Halloween is around the corner, so start knitting up some pumpkins with a pattern than works with any yarn, gauge, and needles you like.

After that, it’s time for Thanksgiving. And really, what is Thanksgiving without turkey finger puppets?

If you’re trimming a tree, don’t forget your own handknit-and-felted Flying Spaghetti Monster ornament. And if you’re not a tree decorator, well, I’m sure this little fellow can fit in just about anywhere.

Here’s another tree-trimming idea: knit mini-mittens. I bet they would look cute hanging from an I-cord across the top of a window, too.

The Jingles Bells hat comes in sizes to fit infants through adults, so you can torture delight everyone you know with the gift of festive headgear.

If you’re feeling particularly sadistic, whip up a knitted baby Santa suit and stuff a defenseless infant in it before he or she is told enough to resist.

It’s never a bad time of year to knit hats. If it’s summer now where you live, you can start planning for ways to keep your head warm when the mercury drops in a few months. And if you’re in a cold spot right now, well, take comfort in the knowledge that hats knit up pretty fast and you can be sporting new headgear in no time at all.

Like a retro look? Not afraid to toss your wool knitting into a washing machine full of hot water? This felted cloche may be just the ticket for you.

If you eschew head-hugging hats and yearn for something long enough to trip over, then give this stocking cap a try. The pattern is available for both kids and adults. They’re both based on the hat worn by Schwartz in one of my favorite holiday movies, A Christmas Story.

And here’s a whole page of free hat patterns, if you’re looking for more options. One thing I love about this page is the use of thumbnails and not just design names. So when looking at the list it’s easy to tell at a glance if something appeals to you rather than have to navigate to another page to see the images.

When I first started knitting, I did what pretty much everyone else does: I made garter-stitch scarves. After three of ’em, I decided to branch out. So I made a garter-stitch blanket for Sylvia.

And then I got the brilliant (ahem) idea of knitting a ruana for my mother-in-law. I had recently acquired Sally Melville’s very excellent The Knit Stitch and was feeling inspired to do something that wasn’t a scarf. But I was still a bit intimidated by increases and decreases and any sort of shaping. So I chose the one-size-fits-all Three-Scarf Ruana, figuring it would make an excellent Christmas gift for my mother-in-law. When I started it, I completely failed to realize that it is basically a scarf. A freakin’ huge scarf.

Melville annotates this pattern with “Lots of knitting”—and boy, she’s not kidding. It’s a lot of garter stitch. As I neared the end (after two Christmases had passed), I wasn’t really happy with how this thing looked. But because I was near the end, I doggedly continued. Some part of my brain thought, “If I can just finish this thing, then some miracle will happen, and it will actually look good.”

No such luck. I finished everything but weaving in the ends, then put the ruana in a basket on top of my armoire. It sat there for three years, a failed knitting project in every sense of the word. Finally, I decided to frog it and use the yarn for something else. But the thought of wrestling with a big tangle of yarn (and I knew I would be unable to frog this and get it into balls or skeins without creating some ginormous mess) made me pause.

Then I learned about the niddy noddy, a tool used to wind yarn into skeins. Then I found an excellent online tutorial for making my own—out of inexpensive PVC pipe. After a quick trip to the hardware store, I set up a little workshop on the front porch.
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Look! I HAS MAD SKILZ! See how a few deft cuts with a hacksaw (followed by a bit of sanding on the edges—don’t want to snag the yarn!)…
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…yields a niddy noddy that becomes flat for storage and cost about $2 to make!
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I was so pleased with myself (and had plenty of leftover PVC, since the store sold it only in ten-foot lengths) that I made another one for a friend. (There was even three feet of PVC left after this. It has been turned into a pole for Sylvia’s pirate flag.)

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The ruana is now frogged and all the yarn tidily wound into very curly skeins that make me think of poodles whenever I look at them. But all I need to do now is soak the yarn to get it all wet then hang it up to dry (with a can of soup acting as a weight at the bottom to stretch out the kinks). And then I’ll have ten skeins of Nature Spun worsted (in the Grape Harvest color) at my disposal. Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with it…

Well, maybe not rich, but the prize money could buy a lot of yarn.

The people responsible for Knitter’s magazine, XRX books, and the Stitches events are having a sock-design contest called Think Outside the Sox. The grand prize is $6,000, and the contest runs until 1 January 2009.

I wonder if knitting an oversized washcloth, folding it around my foot, then stapling it into place would qualify as a sock design. That’s pretty much all I could manage in the sock department, I think…

I received a lot of wonderful comments to my post about which sock yarn to knit up first. (Thanks, everyone!) The suggestions were great, and I agreed with them all—even when they didn’t agree with each other!

I decided to start with the Trampoline yarn. This was given to me as a gift, and it definitely falls into the “these are so not my colors” category. But Sylvia really liked the yarn, so I set out to knit a pair of socks for her.

I followed the Ann Norling pattern for baby and kids socks. This pattern is written for three different gauges and is clear enough that even a sock n00b like me had no trouble following it (until I got to the Kitchener stitch instructions at the end, which made no sense to me, so I looked them up elsewhere).

These socks knit up pretty quickly, and I really enjoyed working on them! The best part? Sylvia is excited to wear them—as soon as her feet grow a little more and the weather cools. I think they’ll be just right for her this winter.

And now…on to the next pair of socks!

The Thrifty Knitter (and author of Naughty Needles has posted a free pattern for her Spring Forward Fall Back Raglan, perfect for the warm/cool days of spring and autumn.

Do you find yourself saving the “disposable” wooden chopsticks you get a restaurants, not wanting to add them to the local landfill but not sure what else to do with them? Try making your own knitting needles! (Tutorial here.)

The Worsted Witch points us toward a tutorial from Lion Brand Yarn on using edible items to dye yarn. I’ve heard before of using turmeric and onion skins and other things for this purpose, but it’s nice to have the information–with recipes!–in one place.

St. John Ambulance in London (UK) is asking knitters to help with its fundraising by knitting 5,000 (yes, five thousand) tea cozies (which will be sold throughout the UK) by the end of November. There’s a funky free pattern here, and knitters are invited to create their own patterns, too. (Via Crafty Crafty.)

Looking to participate in a knitting competition? Round two of the Walking Stick Cosy Competition is underway; submissions are due 1 May 2008.

Why throw down big bucks for a row counter bracelet when you can make your own?