Christmas Knitting

I'm counting on the fact that the folks in my life who will receive knitted gifts are not generally readers of this blog.  Isn't that a life irony?

This year I'm working on "manageable" which means things that happen fairly quickly.  This means no complex shawls, no afghans, and no sweaters.  (Confession:  have started designing a vest for myself using some stash bulky -- size US 10 so that might happen too!)

A portfolio of sample projects --

Matching hat and toe-up socks.

The Hat is called Grammy's Knits from Tanis Fiber Arts blog.  The pattern includes mittens.  You must check her site!  She has some fabulous patterns.  The blog is well-written.  The pictures are wonderful.  The hat is a free pattern so it's in my Hats folder on Goodreader.

My first time with toe-up sox.  I have a copy of Socks from the Toe Up by Wendy Johnson.  She includes at least 6 different cast-on methods.  I decided on the "Easy" Toe -- if you have the book it's on page 18.  Worked out quite nicely.  I decided to do two at once and will make a red toe and heel, a black foot/instep and finish with ribbing in a stripe of all 3 colors.  

It's 'fussy' I'll admit.  Cast-on is with waste yarn, 1/2 of the
stitches you'll need at the toe.  

Two toes.  Pattern is Worsted Weight Sock from
Big Book of Socks by Kathleen Taylor.
Love, love, love this book -- great variety of
techniques, designs and yarn.

I'm also sorting this out --

Major heartache here.  It's a nice lace beret, from Webs, the Willow Beret.  Great yarn from Valley Yarns Merino, knit on US7 and 8.  

Big "however", however -- five lace repeats around the 120 stitches.  Somewhere in the middle of the second set of the 10 row repeats I stopped looking at the beginning of the round.  Managed to do only four repeats and didn't realize this till I was 4-5 rows into the mess.  

If you look closely above you'll see that I slipped the 'good' knitting onto a smaller circular, a US4.  Then I carefully frogged 5 rows in one section.  I was able to locate the last row of correct pattern knitting, but only after I knitted 2-3 rows and -- Yikes! -- it still wasn't right.  

Might have been less time-consuming to frog the entire hat down to that spot but I just could not bear to unknit stuff that was knit correctly.  Eventually the problem was corrected and I'm now half way thru the last repeat of the 10 row pattern.  And then there's the last 15 rows of decrease pattern to form the crown.

Hope to finish later so you'll see this one again.

Used alternate US 7 and US8 to recover the section I
frogged.

Back on track with US8

Highlighting my progress on Goodreader.
(Very hard to capture color on this yarn.)

Blue skies here, plus some sunshine.  Everything is sparkly.  Leaves are mostly on the ground and form piles and piles of yellow and brown ground cover.

I hear the East Coast is setting up for YAS (Yet Another Storm).  Yikes!  No knitting there.

I sure am grateful I can still knit.