Unfinished Fidget

So, this little beauty is my badge of shame.
I've been done knitting it for over a month and have yet to weave in the ends and sew the buttons on.
I give you....
My adaptation of the Fidget.



Well, there it is.  I knitted it up with Bernat's Bamboo blend yarn in linen and dill.
Four pattern repeats per stripe.
I HAVE NO MOTIVATION TO FINISH IT!!
*Head*
*hit*
*desk*

Help!!!

It's supposed to be a birthday gift for one of my best friends, whose birthday is in May.
I HAVE to get it done by then, and there's not much left to do, there's just so many freaking ends.
I should have woven them along as I went, but that's really tricky on a school bus with shot suspension and no scissors.

Great Cloth Knitalong 2008!

So, I joined up on www.craftster.org's knitting forum and joined the 2008 cloth knitalong.
I need washclothes for college, I love knitting, the two were made to go hang in hand!
So, here's what I've done so far (all are on either Peaches or Sugar n Cream with US size 7 needles):

Chinese Waves.  I LOVE THIS PATTERN!
It's so simple, and the cloth is so scrubby!
I believe the colorway is Pink Lemonade (Peaches).
Bear with me, a lot of the yarn I used was bought several years ago, so some of the ballbands are gone.




Elvish Leaves.  Colorway is Rosewood (Sugar).
I liked this pattern a lot more than I thought I would.  It's complicated-looking, but really very simple.




Open Star Dishcloth.  Colorway is Over the Rainbow (I think) (Sugar).
This was a cute pattern.  Great for knitting on breaks because it's just a four row pattern repeat.  Really easy to memorize.




Ballband Dischloth.  Knitted in one color (Peaches).
This was actually my second attempt.  The first one failed horribly.




This one's just seed stitch on white Sugar.




This one's just your basic dishcloth pattern (k2, yo, k to end) in colorway Swimming Pool (Sugar).




Diagonal Owl Dishcloth in Early American colorway (Sugar).
I don't like this pattern in verigated yarn.  I need to redo it....




Was initially a swatch for My So-Called Scarf.  Knitted up in Midnight Magic (Sugar).




Another basic dishcloth done in Country Stripes (Sugar).




Checkered dishcloth.  Sort of my own pattern.  Rougly an inch border on each end.  Done in blocks of 6 (k6(border), p6,k6).  Knitted up in Sugar Stripes, I can't remember the colorway.




Another basic dishcloth.  More Sugar in a colorway I can't remember.




More basicness, though I forgot to mention on the other ones so far that I made the center areas stockinette stitch, rather than just plain garter.




I call this one "Almost Lace" because I had originally started out with the intention of making a lacy cloth (not sure how effective that would be) but wimped out and did this instead.  It's pretty much just a few rows of stockinette with a row of k2tog, yo thrown in now and again.




Needless to say, because of all these cloths not taking up full balls of yarn, I've had quite a bit of scrap yarn.  So I made some garter stitch basic dishcloths.







This next one is done in the stitch pattern for the Fidget neckwarmer, which I knitted up just before this.  I love this cloth, it's currently in my shower!




This next one (and last for now) is called Wheatfields.
I love the turnout of the pattern, but you constantly have to keep an eye on the pattern, because it changed every line.






I've knitted quite a bit more, but I think this is enough for one post.

Viral Mitts

Viral Mitts

I knit the vast majority of the first of this pair of mitts in my health class, during a video about viruses, hence the name. The fact that my Health teacher is a disease is completely inconsequential.
I would just like to note that I do my knitting in the round using the Magic Loop method, NOT dpns, so if I miscount the stitches for the thumbhole, I apologize.

Gauge:
Pretty unimportant, the whole thing is knitted in ribbing.

Size:
My hand is about 7.5 inches at the palm.

Materials:
1 Ball Lily Sugar’n Cream (100% cotton. Roughly 90 yards/ball)
Size 8 32-40” circular needle (or dpns)
Stitch markers
Needle for weaving in ends

Directions:
(Make 2)
CO 28 sts
Work 16 rounds (approx 2.5 inches) of k1p1 ribbing.
Work 14 sts in pattern
Work thumbhole (instructions below), k1p1 to end of round
Work 4.5 inches of k1p1 ribbing.
BO loosely.

Weave in ends and enjoy!

Thumbhole:
Sl 1 st as if to knit, move yarn to front of work and leave it there
Sl next st as if to knit
Pass 1st slipped st over 2nd
Repeat 6-7 times (6 is a bit snug on me)
Sl last st on right needle back to left needle
Turn
Bring yarn to front
At edge where the hole was begun, CO the number of sts bound off +1
Turn
Sl 1 st from left needle as if to knit
Pass extra CO st over next st, then slip this st back to left needle

Recommended Cast On (Twisted Purl Cast On):
Insert right needle into the next st on left needle through back loop
Purl st, place on left needle

Birthday/Christmas has been good to me.

Alright.  Since my last post, I have managed to complete:
The handwarmers for my cousins.
7 Calorimetrys
1 Ellen
1 Danica Scarf
1 Pair of Susan Mitts (all that's left is finishing)
More dishcloths than you can shake a stick at
The start of a pillow from all my novelty yarn.

First things first (that I have pics of)
The Danica.
I started it Christmas Day, when I was in bed and VERY sick.

That was the point I stopped at when I went to sleep on Boxing Day.
I used Emotive wool in a nice green shade for the main color, and various bits from my scrap basket for the colored panels.

That was about a week after Christmas.
I finished it around January 10th.
My baby sister loves it.

She carried it around all day.
Sorry for the crap modeling job.




I loved this pattern.
It was fun to knit :)))

I knit my other sister a Calorimetry a few days ago out of some horribly rough acrylic yarn:


My grandmother gave me a $75 gift card for Michaels.
I spent most of it on yarn.
Specifically a ball of Bernat Natural Soy Blends.
Which I turned into an unblocked (really need to get on that) version of a pattern named Ellen, which I found on Ravelry:

The cast off row is too tight, so it's a bit hard to get on and off.

My New Year's Resolution is to be able to keep ALL of my yarn in my under-bed tote.
Well, the real goal is to fit all my knitting stuff, but I am rational enough to realize that will prolly never happen.
Well, I stumbled upon a HUGE stash of Novelty fun fur and crap.
So I wanted rid of it.
I'm triple stranding Boucle, eyelash, and fur yarn into a pillow:



Santa was good to me.
I ended up getting:
KnitPicks Nickel-Plated Options set.
40" cables (one of the set pulled out, so they sent me two new ones O.o)
47" cables
5 Balls of Palette yarn
1 hank of Shadow laceweight yarn
Knit Socks!
I Can't Believe I'm Knitting Socks!
Sizes 0,1,2,3 40" circular needles (I'm only missing 1.5 and 2.5 now)
Woot.

Can has yarn now plees?

FORGIVE ME!
In the madness of what we call "Christmas Knitting," I've been so rushed, I haven't even paused to consider posting stuff yet.
So pretty much, what I've got for you is a bunch of knitted up stuff that needs seaming, buttoning, weaving in of ends, or any/all of the above.

I'm currently working on finishing up a set of fingerless gloves for my cousins, Kelsey and Miranda.
Kelsey is partial to blue, always has been, and I wanted to work with cotton.
So, here's what I used for her gloves:

Basic notions box
Pattern notebook
Pencil
Needle gauge
Size 5 needles with row counter
SugarnCream cotton worsted yarn in Swimming Pool

This is a self-made pattern, similar to that I did my own gloves with, but for a much smaller hand (they're 10 and 12).

Cast on 30 sts.

K1P1 10 rows.

K3P3 20 rows.

K1P1 another 10 rows, Bind off.
Finish up, seam (still have to do this >.<)

So, I was way proud of how this pair turned out, but then I noticed this:

I'm going to assume its a twisted stitch, cause I don't know what else to call it.
No one notices it but me, but they aren't the perfect pair I thought them to be :/

Now, Miranda has always liked purple, so I took that and ran with it.

Same thing as Kelsey's pair, except the yarn is Hot Purple.
I knitted most of this pair in class, where I'm not allowed to have my cell phone, even just to take pictures, sorry :/
But here's the results:



And I have to kidnap my sister at some point during this week to get an idea of where I should leave the thumb gap in seaming.

I got sick to death of gloves, understandably.
So I was perusing the Craftster message boards, and saw a knitalong for a pattern called Calorimetry.
I checked it out, and found it to be absolutely adorable, and something both my cousins would wear.
So I made two ^.^

Miranda's came first, as a sort of guinea pig.
I altered the pattern from 120 sts to 80, just cause I tried the first row with 120, and it was GINORMOUS on me, let alone a 12 year old.

This is about halfway through.
I used a verigated skein's leftovers from a donated scarf. The ball leftover was about the size of a stunted kiwi, and I still have a little tiny bit left over, so I switched to some purple Red Heart for the second half.

And thus is the result ^.^

And Kelsey's was slightly easier, as I had the pattern memorized at that point.


It's not in me to make these with a solid color or just solid verigation, so I used green as the solid to compliment the green in another ball from my scrap basket.

I plan on making myself one in navy blue and maybe black between now and Tuesday.

But so, for the gloves, I need to weave in ends and seam.
For the Calio's, I need to weave in ends and sew on buttons so they can be worn.

It should be no big deal at all for me to knit myself one up before Tuesday night.
There's a blood drive at my school, and the wait for the last one was about 3 hours all told.
I'm not too concerned with it, though it'd be nice if they could find a vein straight off this time.
I've still got the needle scar from last time and had a bruise in a nice shade of green for about two weeks after *shrug*
Oh well.
It's worth it.

Success of the handwarming variety

Remember how I said I frogged that other pair of arm warmers?
Here's the result!
They were really simple to make.

On size 5 straight needles with worsted weight yarn:

CO 36 sts
Garter stitch 5 rows
K2p2 pattern for 35 rows
p2k2 for 5 rows
BO
Seam as needed, leaving a gap for the thumb.

Fun stuff, huh?

Past Projects

Well, I figured I might as well get all of my past works out of the way, so I'll post them now and tell a bit about them.


This was knitted on size 15 needles from Red Heart Symphony yarn (everything I've knitted with is either acrylic or novelty. I'm broke, and those whose knitting habit is fed solely on gifts can't be picky). It's about 5 feet long and 15 stitches wide. It's a bit light for my tastes, but one of my friends was raiding my yarn a few months ago and tried to steal it. This is for her.


I love this scarf. It is mine. It's roughly 8-9 feet long with a purple novelty yarn I got for Christmas last year. It's insanely soft, but the thicker strand of the yarn is soo warm. I think it might be chenille. The fringe is just purple fun fur. These were also knitted on my size 15s, as are nearly all of my scarves, and they're usually 10-15 stitches wide.


This scarf is large, comfy and warm. Knitted on various colors of Red Heart from my mom's plastic canvas stash (shhh) on size 15 needles, 25 stitches wide. It's about 8 feet long and you can use it as a shawl if you feel so inclined. The one flaw is that I had misplaced my row counter when I made it, so the sections aren't equal, but I love it anyway. I might eventually frog and redo it though, just to even it up some.


For someone from Michigan who wears t-shirts year-round, arm warmers are a must. These were my first patternless project, knit on size 6 needles with black Red Heart yarn. Nothing in the round (I have an intense hatred of dpns, mostly cause I can never get them to work right), I just knitted a large rectangle and seamed it up, leaving a gap for the thumb. I frogged these today, actually, and I'm currently working on a ribbed version that fits better.


Haha, three guesses as to what these are.
No? They're actually cat/fox/whatever ears. I got a crappy felt pair at this year's Youmacon, and I went and hunted down a pattern for my own. With a bit of tweaking, I should have enough to sell at next year's convention. My friend Melissa is getting a table for her artwork, which alone, most of the time, doesn't get much of a draw, but these should help add to it :). I just have to go out and find some headbands to attach them to somehow....


This little pretty is actually crocheted. I got bored in AP Government one day last year, and had a crochet hook on me for finishing up another project, which was long ago lost.
I grabbed a ball of yarn, keep in mind that I don't really know how to crochet, and this was the result.


Hoorah for slippers. They were knit on size 7 needles using Red Heart yarn in a nice shade of blue. They're too big, but my feet get really cold, so I usually wear them with 3 other pairs of socks, so they stay on nicely :)



More arm warmers. Knit on size 7s from the same yarn as the slippers. My own patter, a p2k1 rib with some stockinette on both ends. They fit quite nicely, and I left the thumb-hole out to maintain the shape of the ribbing. These are so comfy!

Well, that's all for now, I'll have to hunt down the rest of my work later to photograph it.