I just received this wonderful picture of my gloves being worn. That is a knitter’s favorite kind of picture — or, at least, this knitter’s favorite kind of picture:
2 Pairs of Gloves Update
January 8, 2012
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Posted by turtleknits
2 Pairs of Gloves
December 17, 20112 of my friends are young men who have trouble buying gloves that fit well. I had a lot of fun knitting these unique gloves, even if I did need to do quite a bit of rework to get them right. (Well, I hope they are right – I haven’t seen them worn yet.)
The first pair is for a student who’s high school colors are orange and black (the Panthers).
The second student’s school colors are red and white – the Wildcats.
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Posted by jillnj
Occupy Wool Street
December 12, 2011
My dear friend Aimee of Compassionate Conversations told me about Occupy Wool Street, an effort to provide warm clothing for the Occupy Protestors. Occupy Wool Street started in Chicago, but I decided that I’d rather keep my items a little closer to home, so I sent these things to Occupy Boston. After a bunch of research, I found there’s a Ravelry group for Occupy Boston AND a Facebook group for knitters who support them.
I mailed them a warm wool scarf I made
as well as 2 headbands / earwarmers that were in my UFO pile and really needed to be finished and donated to someone with cold ears:
The Occupy encampment in Dewey Square was broken up on Saturday morning, but I am hoping someone picked them up from the OB PO box a couple of weeks ago and someone got some good use of them. A little support from a couch potato [wink].
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Posted by turtleknits
Designer Knows Best
December 10, 2011Well, I found a cowl that I really liked and wanted to make. As usual, I made a few “tweaks” to the pattern, and by “tweaks” I mean I COMPLETELY CHANGED IT. It’s the Amanda Cowl and it’s knit in the round with a lovely stitch pattern.
I decided I wanted it knit flat, with buttons, instead of being over-the-head. Which means I needed to convert every other row. Usually very easy, in this case, I made a couple of mis-steps, and had to restart it twice. Normal for me. OK, so here I am:
Will it block into a rectangle? We’ll see…
It’s intended for a gift. If it doesn’t block well, I can always sacrifice (cough-cough) and keep it for myself.
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Posted by turtleknits
Warm the Children
December 8, 2011Here is a collection of hats I made for the local Warm the Children.
The boys’ school has a “mitten tree” every year to collect warm items. I can’t believe how many of the items this year (other than mine) were handmade!
This is Cascade 200 Superwash Handpaint from Metaphor Yarns (random pattern out of my head).
This is an earflap hat made of Wool-Ease, a free pattern on the Lion Brand Yarn site.
Here’s another Wool-Ease hat, this one made out of “Thick & Quick” left over from my mom’s sweater (another random pattern).
The third random hat is made from Wool of the Andes Bulky.
This isn’t a great picture, but the hat is quite cute. It is made from Luisa Harding Kashmir Aran using the pattern A Hat Fit for a Fella (AKA Men’s Cabled Hat). This is one of my favorite yarns, very soft and sqooshy and extrememly warm.
In case you are wondering, the tags are care tags. All are machine washable except the Wool of the Andes hat.
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Posted by turtleknits
Sock Monkey for My Favorite Monkey
March 1, 2011I made this hat for my favorite little monkey, to keep his head warm this winter:
The pattern was the Sock Monkey Earflap hat from Trappings and Trinkets.
The brown and cream yarn was Cascade 220 Superwash; the red is Minnow Merino Superwash.
The only modification I made was to crochet round eyes and sew them on instead of using buttons.
This was a fun and fast knit and I may just have to make another one in my size!
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Posted by turtleknits
My 15 Minutes of “Fame”
December 3, 2010I just happened to be at knitting circle at Metaphor Yarns yesterday, when a photographer from The Recorder came in. He had noticed that there were a lot of cars in the parking lot, and he asked permission to take photos of us knitting.
And, I made it into the paper!
That is my sweetie’s lovely Malabrigo sock I’m working on. The pattern is Jules (Ravelry link). Of course, you can’t really see how pretty the yarn or the pattern is in this picture. You can see the waste yarn from my sloppy provisional cast-on (the provisional cast-on is not in the pattern – I did it that way so I can make the cuff longer if I have enough yarn).
I think it is ironic that the knitter who is newest to the area is the one who made the paper. I think some of the other members of the group should have also been photographed, but since they weren’t working on socks, I guess they would not have fit the “punny” headline.
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Posted by turtleknits
Go Mohawk!
October 3, 2010Ray at Knitivity shared a lovely but simple mosaic pattern called “Dots on the Half Drop.” I wanted to try it, and I wanted a break from my other projects. I picked these colors because I had forgotten to pack them with the rest of my yarn, therefore they are the only 2 colors of cotton that aren’t in our storage unit.
Partway through the dishcloth I realized they are Adidas’ school colors – Go Mohawk!
My selvages are a little wonky, but it’s just a dishcloth for us to use so I didn’t bother to fix them. Love the pattern. It would make a great wool hat because of the extra thickness due to the slipped stitches.
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Posted by turtleknits
Happy Birthday ES!
September 16, 2010My dear friend had a milestone birthday and I couldn’t be there. We used to live less than a mile away and now I live 200 miles away and I MISS HER. I wanted to make her something special and useful. I came across the fingerless gloves, Handed Yes, Fingered No. I discovered this pattern via the Rainey Sisters, one of the most-read blogs in my blog reader.
This pattern is great because 1) it comes in small, medium and large sizes, and 2) it is not symmetrical – the left and right hands are made to conform to one’s actual hand shape.
I used Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran which is merino wool, microfiber and cashmere and wow, do I love this yarn. It is squishy and warm and great to knit with. It only took 2 skeins (with leftovers). I see some more gloves out of this in my future.
I made the medium but they turned out to be a little big. It seemed like it would fit OK on the wrist but I didn’t want the hand part to be floppy, so I decreased about 4 stitches at the wrist to snug up the hand. I decreased every other rib, so that the hand part on the back of the hand has alternating K2 and K1 ribs (instead of only K2 ribs). I also used a regular rib instead of the broken rib, so they are very stretchy.
I added buttons which I got out of Grandma S.’s button box. Sending the love from generation to generation.
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Posted by turtleknits
Summer is for Ice Cream
August 25, 2010I was browsing Ravelry for baby hat patterns and when I came across “Soft Serve” (Ravelry link) I knew I had to make it:
Our former next-door neighbors will be parents in October so I hope their baby likes this whimsical hat!
It is knit from fingering weight acrylic (from my stash) on US 3′s. I had to modify the pattern because the 0-3 month size came out to be 10 inches – way too small. So I picked up stitches along the cast-on edge, increased 12 stitches evenly spaced, and did another band of stockinette and another band of seed stitch. Now it will easily fit a 12-14+ inch head. I also changed the “swirl” on the top to make it more ice-creamy.
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Posted by turtleknits
