Mittens and Mitts, oh my January 15, 2011

I cast on a mitt for a “good luck” project on Jan 1st. The pattern is Cabled Lacy’s from KnitPicks. The yarn is also from KnitPicks. It’s their Stroll Sport in Jack Rabbit Heather.

 

I’m just about finished with the first one. Just got to pick up the stitches for the thumb and do 6-7 rounds. It worked up rather easy considering it included both lace and cables.

It’s not a real good picture for the cables and lace. I have to get a better picture when the sun is out.

 

I also started a cabled mitten class at the LYS. The first class was last Sunday. I’m almost done with the first one. I started to do the decreases at the top, but screwed something up on the second decrease round. I lost a stitch somewhere. So I successfully unknit the second row. My first decrease row has the right amount of stitches, so I’m waiting until the second class tomorrow to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong on the first decrease row. The teacher told us to at least finish up to the row before the thumb gusset starts, but I was only two rows away from that when I left class last week. So I kept moving. I’ve taken a lot of this teachers classes, she doesn’t mind if you work ahead, she just wants you to be at a certain points, at minimum. I figure it’ll give me a head start on the second one. I want to have them finished before I start the Fair-Isle class at the beginning of February.

 

Again, the lighting is horrid, but here’s a picture of the first mitten so far:

The yarn for these mittens is Plymouth Yarn Baby Alpaca Grande Tweed. The colorway number is 798. It’s sort of a tweedy dusty-green.

The First Entrelac Project January 5, 2011

I just finished binding off my very first Entrelac project. All it needs yet is the felting. I took it as a class at my LYS. When I first read through the pattern, I wondered to myself, “how am I going to do this? It looks really difficult.” That wasn’t the case. I knitted it up really fast. Faster than I thought I would.

The yarns used in the Entrelac bag are Noro Kureyon in colorway 229 and Lamb’s Pride Worsted in colorway Plum Smoke (color #M166

 

I enjoyed knitting Entrelac so much that I added another project to my queue on Ravelry. It’s a scarf, but it looks perfect for the the two skeins of Noro Taiyo in colorway 13, (black, white, green and pink). It was in the sale room at the LYS and I couldn’t pass it up.

 

Needs more felting… September 27, 2010

I took a quick trip to the yarn store yesterday afternoon with my bag. The ladies there agreed that it wasn’t felted enough (unless I wanted it partially felted, which I didn’t). So I came home and gave it another 7 min run in the washer. This time when I took it out it was felted like it should be. It’s nice and sturdy now and it won’t need any lining. Now I gotta wait another few days until it dries again.

Wholly Guacamole! I actually finished something September 26, 2010

I actually finished a project that is larger than a scarf or a hat. I’m one of those people who like to start projects and not finish them. I get bored rather easily. I guess the one thing that helped is that I did this project for a class at my lys, Yarn Gallery.

The project was Fiber Trends Fabulous Felt Tote. I did the smallest size since I am currently taking a “learn to knit socks on DPNs” at the store. The yarn used for my project was Ester Bitran Andes Hand-dyed. I used color-way 13. It’s a blend of pink/olive. As the novelty yarn, I used Muench Fabu in colorway M4325

I did the bag a bit differently than printed in the pattern. I modeled mine after the store sample. So the novelty was used in the majority of the bag and not the top portion. But I did have to skip about 1 1/2 inches of the top border since I would have ran out of yarn were I to do the stated length.

Here is the unfelted bag and the felted bag (the felted picture was taken while the bag was drying).

I think I’m going to line it since I probably could have felted it a bit longer. It doesn’t seem as sturdy as the shop sample, nor as small. But it’s the first time I’ve felted anything and I was a bit scared that I’d get a matted mess of felted yarn out of the washer so I was very conservative with the felting time.

But I did buy yarn to make another one, this time I’ll be making the medium size. But that will come after I’ve finished my socks I’m working on for class and get my scarfs done that I started this summer (both in classes at the lys).

First Knitting Class June 10, 2010

I took the first class of the beginner knitters series at my lys last night. We learned to cast on and do knit stitch. The wonderful instructor also went through different types of yarn and other things you need to know about knitting. I tried to teach myself at one point. I got as far as the long-tail cast on, knit and pearl. I need practice at that stuff, but I didn’t develop my crochet skills in a few days, so I know the knitting skills won’t come that fast either. We’ve got homework for next week, knit a 4-inch long swatch in knit stitch. Next week is pearl, stockinette and seed stitch. I’m really anxious to get to the increases and decreases. I’m debating taking the the lace knitting class that is coming up afterwards. The instructor said that after completing the beginner class, everyone should be able to do the lace and/or the cable class without difficulity.

I did have to chuckle though. This is a local LYS, nice, fancy yarn. None of that red-heart acrylic stuff. So understandably they state that class materials must be bought at the LYS. The lady sitting next to me had Red-Heart. A lot of LYSes are adamantly against “big box” store yarn. But the instructor didn’t seem to care. All the beautiful yarn in the store and the lady brings scratchy RH. Whatever.