More crochet

My crochet fever continues, and I’ve been churning out four-row squares for Babette. 

The plan is to make a bunch of them, making sure that I use all eight colors equally, and then add to them as need be to make the six- eight- ten- and twelve-row squares.  I found it a bit overwhelming to decide every time how big a square to make and which colors to use.  Now I’m approaching it by saying “I’m making a set of eight four-row squares, with three rows of A and one row of B, and each color will be used once as A and once as B.”  That way I can do it a lot faster and make sure I’m using the colors in a balanced way.

In other crochet news, I got my package from the potholder swap about a week ago.  Starting with the white and multicolor one in the upper left, they were made by Priscilla, Nana, Nannette, Melissa, and Debbie.  They’re really cool, and I’m happy I did the swap. It’s so neat that Priscilla lives in Oklahoma, and one of my potholders apparently made it out to Hawaii!

Fiona says hi.  She’s settled in nicely.

Crochet Fever

Between getting the new kitty and starting my summer job downtown, I sort of forgot about blogland for awhile there.  So, hi!  I hope everyone has been doing well. 

I’ve barely knit at all since I finished the yellow ishbel.  I’ve been crocheting up a storm though.

These are the potholders I made for the crochet potholder swap (I think I can even catch a glimpse of them in the center of the right edge of the first photo here).  It was a lot of fun doing them, and I definitely think that there are more crocheted potholders in my future.

I don’t like knitting with 100% cotton yarn, but I thought crocheting with it was just fine.  So then I thought of the stash of Berocco Comfort I have.  I got it to make an afghan awhile ago, but I abandoned the project quickly because I didn’t like knitting with the yarn. Again, though, I don’t mind crocheting with it. So in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been churning out squares for the Babette Blanket.

Those little crochet squares are perfect for summer crafting, because they lead to a sense of accomplishment and there isn’t a big, hot pile of yarn sitting in your lap. I’m so glad I found a good home for all that yarn!

Tales from the Crypt

Thank you for all your warm wishes on Fiona!  She is a very cute kitty and we love her very much.

Today when I was doing laundry (laundry is in the basement, which we have to go outside to access) Fiona escaped and returned to her natural habitat (she’s finally back inside now).

I tried to catch her but it just made her run away, so I decided to wait until she felt like being a cooperative kitty. I wanted to stay outside to keep an eye on her, so I took the opportunity to go through the yarn “crypt” – a box of yarn in the basement holding UFOs and random scraps.

I think that’s the yarn-y equivalent of a bloodcurdling scream, no?

Once I fought past the tangles a bit, the box was an interesting tour down pre-blog knitting memory lane.

Here is a scrap of the Wedding Afghan I started for my friends Kate and Evan, who got married in July 2005.  I ended up making them a  feather-and-fan afghan out of this yarn here.

It’s Valley Yarns Charisma, which has been discontinued. Evan is from New Zealand (and so is the wool) and Kate likes bright colors, so it seemed perfect. I still kick myself that I never took a picture of the finished item.

On the trip to Chicago when my grandfather passed away in December 2006, I got it into my head to make a top-down leaf patterned lace sweater. It didn’t turn out, but the idea later mutated into Foliage.

I frogged it, and the yarn became Wicked.

This hot mess is my second attempt at Unbiased, from circa fall 2004. 

The first attemt was according to the pattern, but the notch in the top allowed too much to spill out the sides, so I decided to modify it, but that didn’t work out either. I ended up frogging some of it VERY slowly and starting over on a purse of my own improvisation.

I kind of like it, I may finish it now that I remember it exists.

So, have you come across any interesting reminders of your knitting past lately?

Meet Fiona

A couple of weeks ago, this kitty took up residence under our porch.

She was very friendly with us and the other people in the building, coming onto the porch whenever we were out there. She clearly wanted a family, so we decided to let her live with us.

She’s very little, only 5.3 lbs. The vets think she’s between 6 and 12 months old, but there is a chance that she’s just a petite adult.

She’s basically healthy. We have to give her medicine for some kitty cold sores, but she’s doing well other than that. She also seems to trust us already, which is nice.

She has settled right in.

Yellow Ishbel

Much to my own surprise, I finished the yellow Ishbel in time to give it to my friend Jennifer at her graduation party yesterday. I chose the color yellow for my own reasons, but it doesn’t hurt that it fits with Project Spectrum too!

I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and happy that I could get it done so fast. I went to Sit-n-knit in Wethersfield on Wednesday on a mission to find the perfect yellow yarn. The ever-enthusiastic and helpful woman there helped me find all the yellow fingering and lace weight so I could choose the shade I liked best. Online yarn sources are great, but I was really glad I had an LYS nearby so I could talk to a live human.

Malabrigo sock (in Ochre) really was the perfect yellow yarn. There was enough variegation to make the stockinette portion interesting, but it didn’t detract from the lace portion at all. It also has great yardage – I was able to make the large size (turned out to be 61 inches across the top) and have 8 grams left over.

The yarn is also super soft and it blocked into the lace pattern nicely.

Speaking of blocking. What do you do when you cast off for a lace project less than two hours before you need to get in the car to go give it to the recipient?

I’m sure speed-blocking wouldn’t work for every project, but it worked for this one, anyway.

I’m really happy with how it turned out. No wonder it is such a popular pattern!

Ahhh…

After an intense semester, I am delighted to report that this is all I have on my plate right now:

(not exactly true – I really need to clean the house!)

I have a sense that I’ll do a lot of lace knitting this summer.  I’ve been drawn to lace weight lately, and specific projects in mind.  The orange one on top is for a design project I’m working on.  I think the teal will be either the Seraphim Shawl or the Peacock Feathers Shawl. The color is really perfect for Peacock Feathers, but I think it might be a bit much and that Seraphim is more my style. The yellow in the middle is actually already in use.

A very old friend is graduating from my alma mater on Sunday, so I’m knitting her an Ishbel in yellow. The yarn is Malabrigo Sock, which is divine.

I chose yellow because yellow is my alma mater’s main color.  Also, each class at my school is assigned a color on a four-year rotation, so 2005 (my year) and 2009 share the color yellow.  (Yes, I’m a nerd about school spirit.  No, I’m not embarrassed.  See here).  So really, yellow is the perfect color.  I’m not a huge yellow fan in general, but this is an especially pretty yellow and I’m really enjoying working with it.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, especially mine.

My mom is a biology teacher who has a great sense of humor and appreciated the heart I made for her. There was really only one logical choice for what I should make her to mark the occasion.

My dad, when he realized what it was, said “well Em, I’m looking forward to Father’s Day.” LOL

I hope everyone had a great day!

(Womb, M. K. Carrol, Knitty Winter 2004)

In case you missed it – April 2009

Hi there! I’m in my law-school-finals cave, so posting will be very light for the next couple of weeks. But I can’t ignore the awesomeness I saw in April!

Cutest Felt

Most Awesome Mittens

Prettiest Purple

AWESOMEST Crochet

Cutest Hat (and hat model!)

Best Problem-solver

Cathode

Have you ever seen a pattern and said “what a preposterous garment.  I would never wear it in public, non-knitters wouldn’t get it” . . . and knit it anyway?

Meet Cathode. It’s completely preposterous and non-knitters don’t get it. Heck, even knitters don’t get it. Just ask the new SnB I’ve been going to (God bless them for humoring me so ).

I don’t hate it. I actually kind of like it. The superdeep ribbing with extreme negative ease makes it about as flattering as any sweater with bulky boucle could be.

Look at that negative ease! It doesn’t even look like a sweater when not being worn, it looks more like a washed-up sea creature.

The thing that makes it cross the line from simply odd to utterly bizarre is that collar. It looks particularly weird from the back.

The real reason I knit this, I guess, is that Artful Yarns Circus was on sale at Woolcott about three years ago when I was living in Cambridge. I completely fell in love with the colors, and Cathode was the most obvious use for it. I found this yarn to be a real bear to work with – it was so fluffy that it was much easier to pierce the stitch than to knit it properly.  The finished product is very warm though, even with the short sleeves.

Oh, who am I kidding? It doesn’t make any sense (at all!) but I like it anyway.

Week 16 – Clamshell Pattern

Today’s swatch is Clamshell Pattern, which is a total pain in the butt to work! I found it impossible to k5tog tbl with knitting needles, so I used a crochet hook.

This is the wrong side, which I thought was interesting too.   If I ever needed a stitch to approximate toad skin, this is what I would use.