fair isle fanatic

Wednesday, I started a thing. 

Yes, those are leftover balls of yarn from past projects, and yes I'm patting myself on the back for yet another scrap buster project in the works. These vibrant colors are going to work themselves into some stranded colorwork mittens. I had so much fun with the little bit of fair isle in the socks I just finished that I wanted more! I've had this pattern in my Ravelry favorites for a while, saving it for the time when I felt like I knew what I was doing enough to try it out. They are deliciously complicated looking, but really not that bad. Or I've improved a lot in my knitting skills. Likely both. 

In just TWO afternoons I had a finished mitt minus thumb. I can feel it in my hands, for sure, but the knitting was just so addictive. The best part so far is the all over heart pattern on the palm, though I suspect I'm going to like the detail that goes up the thumb even more once that's done. I also love the color combination and how the green pops against the plum background.

Going to rest my hands a little bit after the ill-advised marathon on these, but I'm heading out on a plane soon so I still want to take something along. Maybe if I take something that isn't on tiny needles and doesn't require carrying a color in each hand I'll be better off. I don't think the Shetland shawl is a good candidate since it's at a pretty fiddly stage of development, so it's back to the stash to sniff out a new project!

do the wave

I'm on the home stretch of my Shetland shawl. It will be many rows of knit on border until I'm done, but I've got a decent start. It took me a bit of thinking to understand just how the border gets put on, but since I sat down to "just start" and did it wrong a few times it is now going along pretty smoothly. I tell myself if I can do two repeats a day (on average) then I'll be finished in a month! That's not that long at all.

This last border is really cool. The way the decreases and yarn overs work together, the pattern emerges as the crest of a wave. It even curls over on itself - so neat. Part of my issue making progress is going to be that I have to look at the pattern for this section, I haven't been able to memorize the chart yet. That means it won't be great football knitting, but it might make a good pre-bedtime meditation. I've got seven little wavelets done already, just three and a half more sides left! 

medallion magic

Sometimes it just takes a moment of assessing how far along a project is to motivate finishing up. That's certainly the case with this quilt top.

Since writing about it on Sunday, I got to thinking just how close to a finished top I was. Then, when I wanted to sit down and knit all afternoon today I got myself into the mood to press seams and sew the final quarter block of this top together instead. Once that was done, well, it was just three seams to glory. 

I have to say, I am really happy with it. I knew I liked the fabrics together as a group, and I knew I'd thought about the placement of the colors as best I could in my head, but seeing it all put together really tickles me pink. Or purple, rather. I like the pops of green, and I love the way the navy squares anchor everything. As this was coming together in individual blocks I was worried about the blocks where I substituted white for the background, but it doesn't distract me nearly as much as I was afraid it would. Stepping back from hanging this up and seeing the whole picture was pretty cool. First milestone down! Now on to basting, backing, and binding.

oh my! a quilt!

I'm working on a quilt, I swear, I'm working on a quilt. It's been so long since I have that it's a little hard to believe. My nieces even got in on the fun when they visited in August! Together we finished one quarter of it. The going is much slower now without helpers :) 

I started this back in June by sewing together strips of fabric and cutting out stacks and stacks and stacks of HSTs. Once the HSTs were done I had a pressing day (or two) where the triangles transformed into fully formed HST blocks which I then sorted into their respective piles. It felt like most of the work was really done at that point. What remains is "just" sewing squares into rows and rows into four large quarters of the quilt. 

While my nieces were here we devised a system where we stacked everything together ahead of sewing. Each row was labeled with the correct number and the squares were arranged in the order and orientation in which they were to be sewn. As you might imagine, this went very quickly with enthusiastic helpers!

I've got this stack of rows sitting on my desk waiting to be pressed and sewn together now. 

Current status: three quarters of the quilt are finished, and the rows for the last quarter are sewn up. So close to getting to sew these pieces together into a huge quilt top! It should be about 84" square, and all of these random looking stripes are going to come together into an amazing looking mosaic. Time will tell!

fair isle flamingo

I'm very proud of myself after this finish because I feel like I learned so much along the way. I've knitted socks with heel flaps before, but I don't think it made much sense to me in terms of "sections" of the sock until this project where I made each section with a different color. Working the contrasting heel flap and figuring out where to pick up the stitches to continue in the pink led to an aha moment for me, which is nice. Also working with three colors and a pattern that looks complicated (but isn't really, shhh!) and turns out looking like this is really rewarding!

The first sock looks very well planned out and super cute with this little toe cap of purple. I wasn't thinking of doing the contrasting heel flap originally, but it turned out really good that I did because the pink didn't go as far as I thought it would on the second sock! But because I did that, I didn't think I'd have enough gray to do both toes completely so I randomly picked a place on the toe to switch colors. 

I kind of wish I had planned my yarn use better so I would have a matching pair - I like the first sock so very much. But I tried and missed, that's ok. The goal was really to use up the leftovers, and that I did. I ran out of pink on the second sock much sooner than I would have guessed, so I just filled in with the purple. Then on the toe I kept knitting with the gray until I ran out, so the toes are also mismatched. But if they are in shoes, who can tell ;) 

Interesting thing about the fair isle band at the top - I knitted a little bit tighter on the second sock since the first was a little loose, and behold I started to see a 'dominant color' effect in the pattern that I didn't have with the looser knit first one. Arne and Carlos insist that there is no such thing as a dominant color, just tension problems, and now I understand what they're saying. Whether there is legitimately dominant color in fair isle knitting or not doesn't matter to me, who am I to say after all, but it was certainly interesting to see the difference I got just from a change in tension. 

They are not as snug as I would prefer them to be, so next time I know to cast on fewer stitches. I was worried I was going to cut off my circulation with the fair isle section if I did anything smaller, but I guess I was wrong! They still work though and will be able to go on over riding breeches which is a plus. I think the socks that have the heel flap and heel gusset like this rather than the afterthought heel I've been doing will also be bigger around the ankle on the natural, so I'll file that lesson away for later use. It makes sense when you think about it, but I just didn't. 

Pretty pleased with the way they turned out even with the mismatched feet. I'm also happy to have used up two of my leftover balls of yarn. Onward to the next stash buster! 

Pattern: Border Socks by Mary Jane Mucklestone (my Ravelry page)
Needle: US 2 and 2.5 (2.75 mm and 3 mm)
Yarn: Baah! La Jolla in 'flamingo pink' and 'grey onyx' and Serendipidye Kings Mountain Sock in 'claret'

warm ears

I had 30-something yards or so leftover from each of the yarns my nieces picked out for their mittens, so I decided to make a matching headband for each of them. 

It took some time to find patterns that matched the weight and yardage I had, but in the end I like the two I found. Each only took a few hours to make and they turned out super cute!

This one is a pretty geometric lace pattern that I thought matched the triangle motif in Samara's dragon themed mittens quite well. I needed a little more yarn than I had so I used a bit of the turquoise from Jasmine's pick. I do like the pop of color at the back!

For Jasmine, I chose a simple cabled band to go along with her mittens which are pretty much cables all over the place. The bulky yarn makes for satisfyingly squishy cables and the stitch definition is awesome. 

For each of these patterns I did this weird made up thing to connect the two ends together. I turned the band inside out, picked up stitches through the cast on row while simultaneously k2tog with the active row which left me with one active row of stitches off of the closed band. Then I just did a traditional bind off of those stitches. This gave me a nice seam on the outside, a sturdy join, and a clean and neat edge for the seam on the inside. I'm sure someone somewhere has done that before, but I was pretty pleased with myself for coming up with it. 

Time to pair these up with their mitten mates and send them off!

lilac mountain

At the end of last week I found myself browsing around Ravelry's pattern page (again). They have a "what's hot right now" list that changes regularly and I always like to click on some of those patterns and see what's what. This time around there was a cool modern looking cowl that had just been released and the designer had it downloadable for free for the first day. Lucky me! 

I stash dived and found a good yarn pairing with the right amount of yardage and just cast on. I enjoyed the break from the socks I'm working on, and with the pattern being pretty easy to memorize and super fun to see form, this piece was done in no time. I ran out of the background yarn before the last repeat, but it turned out plenty tall enough even so. It's kind of an unconventional color pair, but I quite like the way the lilac works with the brighter colors of the variegated background. The fabric is thick and sturdy and it's gonna be nice and toasty. 

Pattern: 66 Triangles Cowl (my Ravelry page)

Needle: US 5

Yarn: Lion Brand Martha Stewart Extra Soft Wool Blend in 'Lilac' & Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage in 'Rocky Mountain High, Colorado'