FO: Spattergroit Mitts

I have an actual finished knitting project, people! I spent a couple hours last week watching The Voice while I sewed on buttons and wove in ends on my Spattergroit mitts.

I think I’ve mentioned previously that even though the pattern is called “spatterdash”, I keep referring to them as “spattergroit” instead.

This pattern is perfect for a variegated yarn – this particular one is Dyeabolical Alter Ego in Katatomic. Such a great color. These mitts are just fun! I seamed the edge down on mine before I sewed the buttons on, as I knew there was NO WAY I’d go through buttoning them every time I tried to wear them.

I would definitely make these again, although there are several ends to weave in on each mitt, which meant I finished knitting them WEEKS before I went about weaving in ends & sewing on the buttons.

Pattern: Spatterdash wristwarmers by Dagmar Mora (free on knitty), size M.
Yarn: Dyeabolical Alter Ego in Katatomic.
Needles: Um, I forgot to note which ones. I’m gonna guess it was a size 3 (or maybe 4) since I knit tight.
Ravelry project page. :)

Knitting update, April 2013

The other day I spilled an entire glass of water onto a bag holding many of my current WIPs. Since I had to lay everything out to dry, I thought I’d take the opportunity to update the progress photos of all my WIPs & my two projects recently off the needles. There are several & I’m hoping to get some of them off the needles this summer (though I fear my knitting time for the 6 weeks I have class will be sorely lacking). Now I just have to get my last bit of homework turned in by Tuesday & I’ll have 3 weeks without classes – there are big plans to knit & read during that time. Woo!

Off the Needles:

Folded.

I finished this sweater for the second time on Thursday after some insane short rows, a bit more decreasing, and a few rows of garter stitch around the neck. I may have bound off a smidge too tightly this time, but I’ll know more once it’s been blocked again. At least now I can wear it without worrying about my bra straps showing all day.

Spatterdash Mitts

aka Spattergroit. These still need seamed up & the buttons sewn on, but I did finally get them blocked.

On the Needles

Camptown Races

I pulled this back out after I finished Folded this week & wanted something a little more exciting than stockinette. I actually wound up frogging the few rows I had done because I had made it too wide, so I went back to the recommended cast on amount & have made a bit of progress. I’m not as far as I was with the original color scheme, but I’m enjoying the knit. Now I just have to make sure I don’t pull my colors too tight on the inside when switching between them.

Eternity Scarf

No progress on this for several weeks, but I am done with the first cartridge rib section & have moved on to the horizontal cartridge rib section. I think I’m going to do fewer rows of stockinette at the top than the pattern calls for to alleviate some of the rolling that might try to choke me as I wear this.

Handspun Hitchhiker

Apparently, as I’ve said on twitter & in public, my goal is to have a hitchhiker on the needles at all times. It’s simple enough to work on in public, it’s great for variegated and handspun yarns, and you can just knit it until you run out of yarn, then bind off.

Souvenir Rayures

This is one of my projects that has kind of lingered in the background – I’m still excited about it, I’ve just had other projects jump ahead of it for knitting time right now. It’s fun to remember where the yarn came from while I’m knitting it, though.

Grim Adventure Socks

Not much progress in the last few weeks, but I do at least have the second toe done on these.

Hermione’s Everyday Socks

I’m getting close to the heel on the second of these. Loving the pattern – it’s simple, but has just enough texture to keep you engaged. I tend to work on socks when I’m at book club or somewhere else in public (that isn’t knit group).

Dark & Stormy

This sweater has looked the same for quite a while. It’s definitely an at home project, as I would mess up the cables in public (even though they aren’t very hard).

Gramps

I really need to work on this baby sweater more. It shouldn’t take that long to make it, but I keep knitting other things instead.

Swatched
Girl Friday

I swatched for this sweater a couple weeks ago – I had gotten some new yarn from Rachel that I was hoping to turn into this sweater, but couldn’t get gauge. I did remember that I had a sweater’s worth of malabrigo rios in Paris Night waiting for a project. Of course, this was right after I said “NO MORE BLUE SWEATERS!”, but I’m calling navy a neutral & thinking ahead to how cute it will look in the fall with a bright pink or magenta t-shirt under it.

Crafty update: sticks, string, needles, & thread.

One of the wisest things I did this semester was decide to take only one class. I knew two things before the semester started: 1) this class involved a lot of work; and 2) there was an excellent chance that I would be increasing my hours at work. Both of those things have proven to be true & have taken a toll on my crafty time, but I still manage to squeeze it in there once in a while (probably still more often than I should).

Recently finished:

A disappearing TARDIS bookmark, gifted to Rachel for her birthday. You can find the pattern at Dalek’s Teahouse.

Harry Potter trio cross stitch, pattern from Wee Little Stitches. I started this ages ago & got distracted. Finally spent some time finishing it while looking for my knitting mojo. No idea what I’ll do with it yet, but I also have Harry’s Friends (1 & 2) to stitch up if I want to do an HP cross stitch triptych. Again, no idea what I would do with it, but I do enjoy stitching the pixel people quite a lot.

I made the Eternity Cowl as a gift for one of the ladies at work, though I haven’t gifted it to her yet. I keep meaning to block it first, but I’m starting to think I should just gift it, as I seem to be terrible about actually getting things blocked lately. I want to make one of these for myself sometime soon.

In progress:

I’m only 3 characters away from having this finished for Mindy. She created the pattern before there was one available at Wee Little Stitches & it’s taken me a very long time to get it stitched up. I only have Sarah, Jareth, and Toby left to do, though.

These are the two projects responsible for my loss of mojo, I think. I need to finish this scarf & baby sweater, as they’re both gifts, but I’m feeling selfish at the moment. They’ll get done, just not quite as soon as I’d hoped.

I finally got over the cast on hump on the Hermione’s Everyday Socks & managed to get a good start on the second.

I started these Spatterdash mitts on Tuesday & am loving the way the Katatomic colorway knits up. I also keep calling them Spattergroit mitts, but that was the disease Ron’s parents were to say he had when he didn’t get back to Hogwarts in year 7. Apparently it all comes back to Harry Potter.

There are still many other projects on the needles, but these are the ones that have my attention at the moment. Well, these four and the one in line to be cast on.

I scored this yarn in a ravelry destash after falling in love with it eons ago and it’s begging to be made into a Millwater. Right now. As in it’s possible I started it as soon as I got home from knitting last night.

I also just acquired these lovely little mini-hanks of Dyeabolical Super Ego in highlighter colors. These will be paired with a neutral to make a stripey infinity scarf. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

So, there we have it. That’s a lot of crafty for a girl who should be reading up on her dissertation topic and the other readings for class. And as if that isn’t enough, I had been thinking for a while that the world needed a dose of Ziggy the Wondercat every day. I mentioned it to Rachel on Sunday & she encouraged me to do it NOW. So I did. If you want to get a daily fix of the Ziginator, it’s at The Daily Ziggy. :)

Handmade Holidays: Fabric & Thread Edition

I’ve already talked about the knits I finished for the 2012 holiday season, but there were also a few things I whipped out on the sewing machine as well.

I decided to make fun little drawstring bags that I could use as gift bags for everyone this year (and naturally grabbed a couple myself). These take 3 fat quarters, though you can mix & match the outer fabrics into a different bag. I used this super easy and excellent tutorial from In Color Order to make them all.

The fabrics were a mix of batik & Dyeabolical fat quarters, with the exception of the birds (they were part of a theme, as you’ll soon see). These didn’t work out as gift bags for everybody since some of my gifties were a little too large to fit in them, but I liked them as a fun little addition to everyone’s gifts.

Then I made a couple things for Sharon, who had fallen in love with the bird fabric I used in my newest Birdie Sling bag & iPad cover. So I made her a Swing Bag (Amy Butler pattern) & iPad cover of her own.

I kind of fussy cut the iPad case to make sure the birds didn’t get chopped in half or stuck in a seam when I was cutting the fabric. The zipper for the case was initially going to be green, but I didn’t realize the one I had was an invisible zipper until it was too late. After trying to work with it and getting very frustrated, I decided to go with the brown one instead.

And that does it for the holiday crafts of 2012. Now if I was only smart enough to start on the ones for next year before November 1st.

FOs: It’s Mitt-tastic!*

It all started when the Commuter mitts I made last year felted up & started pilling horribly. Then all my other fingerless mitts went missing and the ones I did eventually find weren’t thick enough to keep my hands any semblance of warm. So I had to do it. I needed a new pair of fingerless mitts.

I just didn’t need 3 new pair all at the same time.

The cashmere mitts happened when I saw someone post them on a ravelry forum. I had this lone skein of Plucky Knitter aran cashmere that had previously been mitts that didn’t fit, so I frogged them. But then the yarn sat for a very long time – what can one do with approximately 80 yards of yarn?

The pattern is One Cable Mitts from blue sky alpacas. As I had a bit less yardage to work with than the pattern required, I made a few modifications to make the mitts slightly shorter, which worked out fine. These mitts are nice and toasty warm – perfect for those chilly days when you’re outside long enough to get cold, but not long enough for your fingers to freeze off. (ravelry page)

Then there were the scrappy mitts – or Scrappily Ever After, as I called them. These are more fashion than function, but I still have so many leftover bits & bobs of yarn that I keep trying to find things to do with it. I decided to make these fraternal twins just for fun.

The pattern for this is Happily Ever After Mitts by Susan B Anderson. The yarn for these was various bits & pieces of Plucky Knitter fingering weight yarns. Quite a few of these turned up in my Rayures, so you may see a few familiar colors in there. (That scarf, by the way, has been getting a TON of wear this winter. It’s warm & toasty, but not TOO warm and toasty.) I can actually see making these again with some handspun yarn or something that needs a simple pattern to let the yarn shine. (ravelry page)

Finally, inspired by our young Knit Nighter Madeline, I whipped up a pair of the Political Process Mitts out of knitty. Madeline wore a pair to knitting one night & we all ooh’ed and aah’ed over hers, so I needed a pair for myself. These are actually the mitts that started the fingerless party, but they were also the last finished because they were just a hair more complicated. These are my favorite of the three, though, and I feel they will probably get the most use until I wear them out.

I made a slight modification to the pattern, shortening these for two reasons. One, I feared I might not have enough yarn for the longer version, as I was using the partial hank of tosh dk in Ink leftover from Sarah’s Sammie sweater. And two, once I started working on these, I realized they would be SUPER long if I kept going with the second repeat of the cable pattern, and SUPER long may have been TOO long. So I just eliminated the second pattern repeat & started the thumb gusset on the same row of the first repeat instead. (ravelry page)

Naturally, I finished all these as we were in a cold snap that required gloves or mittens to be worn at all times. Good thing I got some bright pink yarn from Rachel to make myself mittens out of. And of course, I have an idea for a lined mitten out of the eco wool leftover from my Twenty Ten Cardigan – how lovely would a pair of mittens out of that yarn lined with a cashmere blend fingering weight yarn be? They would be soft and functional (and great for making snowmen or snowball fights. Not that I do that, but yes).

*Yep, corny title. I could not help myself.