New York Minknit

Pattern: The Every Baby Sweater, by Taiga Hilliard Designs

Yarn: The Fibre Company’s Canopy Light, from Purl Soho. Adam bought me this yarn for my birthday in 2009. It only took me five years to knit it.

Needles: Body on a 5, sleeves on a 6, yoke on a 4.

Project begun/ended: I think I started this maybe last February? Or maybe even before that? I’m not sure, but I kept adding length and it DOES fit Margot, even though it took me a year to make this.

Notes: Would I ever blog again? Would I ever knit again? These are the questions a new mom asks. I have gotten into armchair knitting (i.e. putting stuff in my Ravelry queue in the middle of the night while dealing with Margot) and am hoping to get more into actual knitting again. A row every night will eventually add up to something, right?!?

Photo by Angelica Glass.

So, like many a blogger before me, I succumbed to the most complex project/Finished Object of All Time: a baby. This is our little daughter, Margot, who arrived in the middle of summer. Of course, since she basically requires being fed and/or is pooping all the time, my knitting and blogging time is non-existent.

I did manage to knit her two sweaters (one of which had 2 rows and finishing to do after she was born, which took me weeks), mostly before she was born:

Pattern: Sunnyside, by Tanis Lavalee (free)

Yarn: Sundara Sock, from my old Seasons subscription, color, deadly nightshade.

Needles: I have baby brain and I have no idea. Probably a 2.

Project begun/ended: Maybe April to June 2012?

Notes: Easy to knit (well, if you don’t have a baby with you), but you have to keep track of the numbers.

Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket, by Elizabeth Zimmerman, from The Opinionated Knitter

Yarn: Southwest Trading Bamboo.

Needles: I think the same needle as above? A 2?

Project begun/ended: June to August 2012

Notes: This is a very non-intuitive pattern—I depended heavily on the Ravelry BSJ notes to help me knit this. Cute and unexpected though.

Pattern: Nutkin socks

Yarn: One leftover skein of Fleece Artist Merino Sock, $24 each , from Knitty City, from the Burgundy Bat Shawl.

Needles: Sock DPNs, size 1, I think.

Project began/ended: Um…have no idea. Started in late December 2011 and finished in April 2012?

A modern day SAT analogy for my rarely updated blog is:

Facebook : Personal blogs :: Ravely : Knitting blogs.

Pattern: This is my own pattern, but the colorwork pattern is from Fallmasche’s Strandlaeufer (Sandpiper) cowl. (Cowl pattern is free Ravelry download.)

Yarn: 2 skeins Anny Blatt’s Lady Blatt yarn, from our honeymoon, from The Bon Marche, in Paris.

Needles: I’m not sure—I’m too lazy to check, I’m guessing probably a size 5, 16″ circs.

Project begun/ended: My ability to note when I have started and finished projects has totally declined. I think it took me about three weeks to knit, but I managed to lose it (in my house!) for a while in there. So I probably started it in December and finished it last week.

Notes: By the time I found the hat again, I forgot what yarn I was leading with, so on the bottom of the hat, the dark blue is leading, and on the top, the light blue is leading. An interesting compare and contrast of the importance of yarn leadership in colorwork.

I also didn’t change needle sizes between the colorwork and the stockinette, which I think was a mistakes. Should have gone up 1 or 2 sizes for the colorwork. Laziness. It gets you in the end.

I was thinking of putting a pompom on it, but then Adam pointed out I have lost every hand-knit hat that has a pompom. So.

Also, I realize that my honeymoon was sufficiently long ago enough that this is a crazy name. (And that, in between then and now, I even went on a second honeymoon! With the same husband. We called it Honeymoon 2: Electric Bugaloo.) but I did get this yarn on my honeymoon, so it has nice memories.

Adam, said husband, was all like, “How is that hat honeymoon-ish?” (Since we went in the summer, I guess.) And I’m like, it’s like the sea!! And he was like “Okay, I guess, I can see that.”

Photo from my honeymoon, taken by said husband. This is along the Normandy coastline, inside a lookout point called Cabane Vauban.

I know I always say I’m going to try to blog more, but I don’t, so I have decided to embrace a blogging-as-much-as-I-feel-like-philosophy. Voila.

Blogging…something I apparently forgot how to do. 🙂

Pattern: Staccato Cowl, my own. I’ll detail how to make it below.

Yarn: Jade Sapphire, Angelwing Sport, 200 yards, 100% cashmere. I had a $20 gift certificate to Purl from my NYU Business School creativity project thing, and this was on sale. I think I paid an additional $12, so I think it was $32. The price tag says $46—yikes! Cashmere! I think it was about 30% off.

Needles: Clover 5, 16″ circs.

Project begun/ended: I think I made this in a month or so, just in time for the East Coast’s freak October snowstorm!

How to make:

Gauge: 5 stitches = 1″ in stockinette

1.) Cast on 105 stitches with a long-tail cast on.

2.) Join, make sure not to twist. Place marker.

3.) k1, *p1,k2,* repeat until the last 2 stitches, p1, k1

4.) repeat round 3

5.) *p2, k1* repeat until the end

6.) repeat round 5

7.) k all

8.) k all

9.) repeat rounds 3 through 8 until you run out of yarn. End on one of the non-knit-all rounds.

10.) Do some sort of sewn bind-off.

It is named Staccato because it has a staggered rib, like the way staccato sounds. On a semi-related note, I read that Rick Perry’s favorite movie is Immortal Beloved, which I saw in the movie theater, and is a semi-ridiculous bio-pic of Beethoven, starring Gary Oldman and a lot of hair. I find this a very weird choice for Rick Perry, but who knows? The power of Ludwig is great.

So, here’s my annual round-up of what I knit during the previous year. I didn’t knit Adam anything in 2010 (insert sad face), but I did get married to him, so he has many more years of suffering through knitted projects. HAHAHA.

From top to bottom, left to right, the projects are:

Garter Yoke Cardigan
Cashmere Tweed Ithacowl
Honeymoon Shawl
Scrappy Monet Mitts
Felicity Hat
Lemondrop Socks

I didn’t knit as much as I would like, probably because I became totally sucked into wedding planning and now am having wedding withdrawal. I am dealing with my wedding withdrawal by (a) offering to plan the weddings of strangers, with, as one stranger said, “the look of crazy in my eye” and (b) making the most comprehensive photobook of all time. I may write a post about photobook services later this month, which I hope will be helpful to other people trying to figure out which service to use. Anyway, I loved our wedding and our honeymoon, but now I am moving back into regular life, including lots of knitting.

I also started a new job at the end of last year, which means that I commute regularly again, which means more knitting and reading time. When I am at home, I always feel I should be doing something else.

I don’t have any real specific goals for 2011, except knitting more, which shouldn’t be too hard, since I only knit six things this year.

Before I do a 2010 roundup, I have one more 2010 FO to blog about. By the way, I switched my blog theme to match my personal website theme, but it’s a little tricky to comment in this new theme. You have to click on the post’s title to see the whole post and on the bottom there’s a comment form. Don’t let me blog into the void. 🙂

Pattern: My own. I cast on 108 stitches with a provisional cast-on with the smaller needle, knit 12 rounds, knit a purl round, switched to larger needles, knit another 12 rounds, undid the provisional cast-on so the stitches were live, knit the two rounds together with the second color and then knit 10 rounds of the second color (yellow), then 12 of the first color (blue), rinse and repeat. Decrease the top away, by dividing the total amount of stitches by 6, pm, knit 2tog every marker, knit one round plain, repeat decrease and plain round until you are satisfied. Also towards the end I started decreasing every round.

Yarn: Silky Malabrigo in blue and yellow from Imagiknit in San Francisco. I think I bought this in 2009, when I went to my friend’s wedding in September 2009. I love this yarn! It looks beautiful in stockinette and has a slight sheen and is super soft. Above is one of my favorite photos from that wedding that one of the guests took. The light is gorgeous!

Needles: Number 3 Knitpicks and I think a number 4 or 5 Addi Natura.

This is Ithacowl around my neck.

Project begun/ended: I think I started this in the beginning of December and finished at the end. So it took about a month.

Notes: I never watched Felicity, the television show, but I believe that she had a hat kind of like this. I saw everyone wearing these slouchy hats, and I wanted one, too. The color scheme was inspired by this random old French movie Diva (which the protagonist in High Fidelity considers one of his top five movies). I don’t remember a lot about this movie except that the titular diva had a very ornate sitting room done up in shades of yellow and blue on the wall, which I admired. Also, that there was a chase scene in a sketchy Paris bowling alley, which I think I’ve actually bowled at.

One of my co-workers has a beautiful scarf and she sent around the website for where she bought it (A Peace Treaty). There are so many inspirational items on it! These alpaca-silk scarves are hand-knitted in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, and according to the website, the designs were inspired by the Bauhaus weaving workshop:

Pattern: Smaragdi Mittens, by Liisa Lallukka. Free. [Ravelry link.]

Yarn: The main color is Frog Tree light fingerling alpaca in light blue, from The Yarn Tree, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Left over from my sister’s helmet hat, I had 1.2 skeins left over. It takes about .2 skeins for each mitt, so even if you had half a skein, you would probably be okay. I think at the time I bought it, it sold for $6. It now seems to sell for $6.80.

The contrast yarns are all leftovers, from bottom up. I’m not going to link, but if you want to see the original projects, just type the name of the project into search. I’m lazy, deal.

Greenish (cuff and 1st row) – Sundara FSM, from Honeymoon Shawl
Greenish/blue (2nd row) – Koigu, from Berkeley socks
Blueish-pink (3rd and 4th rows) – Traveling Rhinos, from Swirl socks
Burgundy (5th row) – Fleece Artist, from Burgundy Shawl
Hot pink (6th row) – Bonkers Handmade Originals, from Flamingo socks
Orange/green/blue (7th row) – Happy Hands Yarns Toe Jamz, from Loud Monkey socks

Needles: Size 1 and what I thought were 2, but my needle gauge also says are 1s. So maybe 1 and 1.5 DPNs.

The photos above show the mitts with the contrast side as the decorative motif and the one below show the side with the pale blue as the decorative motif, with the contrast colors showing as bands of color behind.

Project begun/ended: October 16, 2010-November 28, 2010. Each mitt took a week to knit, but I procrastinated in between mitts and blocking and weaving in ends.

Notes and modifications: I knit fingerless mitts instead of mittens–I did a row of purl stitches, knit a hem (should have knit a few stitches less to reduce bunching when folding over), folded over, and tacked down. My gauge was fine for fingerless mitts, but too tight for mittens.

The main modification I did was to use up sock scraps for the contrast color to create an ombre effect. Also, I reversed the patterns on the front and back (the mirror images) on each mitten so that the patterns would match when I wear them.

And for fair isle fans, the insides. Gorgeous, no? I recently saw a J.Crew sweater that had the fair isle inside as the outside. Looks woven and very modern. Especially love the thumbs.

You can see how I had some puckering issues on the hem.

So I knit the first mitt in a week, but then I got delayed knitting squares for my log cabin blanket, working, and watching tv, etc. Oh, I decided to make it a mitt because my gauge was too tight and I remembered reading this Grumperina post about how mittens have to have positive ease.

One side.

And the other.  Isn’t Central Park in Fall gorgeous?

Starting the second mitt.

And here’s a random photo of a creepily decorated ghost cookie. I went over to my friend’s house to decorate cookies (she is a professional pastry chef, hence the high quality of the base cookies). The odd decoration is all mine.