Sweater Update

No, I'm not done yet. And it looks like I wont be for a while...
Here's where I'm at:

I have one sleeve completely done, and one mostly done. I have the body done to the pattern specs (except the hem, which I can't figure out) but I think it looks bad. It in no way fits my body, which I admit is pretty unusually-sized.

 The body needs to be a lot narrower and longer.

 The sleeves could be narrower, too.

I was thinking that maybe I could give it away to someone else, but now I'm completely sure I will not have enough yarn. Plus, I hate trying to give things away that I spent so much time on, because then if the receiver doesn't like it, they'll feel bad that I put so much effort into it and wear it sometimes out of pity. It's a lose-lose. I think it will eventually be a pretty sweater, but it isn't going to be finished for a long time. And that means I'll probably get distracted by other projects, and maybe occasionally school work.

Racoon Hat

This is the very first pattern that I've come up with and shared with everyone. Please don't laugh!

It's a striped hat that's squared off to give the impression of ears. At least I think so!

Needles: US Size 9 (5.5mm) 16" and DPN's, or do the whole thing on DPN's.

Gauge: 4 stitches per inch

Yarn: Cascade Yarn Ecological Wool of any two colors, or any yarn that works with the gauge.

Other supplies: Stitch markers, yarn needle

Abbreviations:
     CO = cast on
     pm = place marker
     sm = slip marker

Directions:
CO 72 stitches using long-tail cast on. Place marker at the beginning of the row and...

Knit!

Now I made my stripes 9 rows each, or somewhere between 1.75" and 2". You can make yours as long as you want!

Keep knitting in stockinette until the piece is 7" long. This happened to be the beginning of my 5th and last stripe.

Decreases:
Row 1: K 16, pm, K 4, pm, K 32, pm, K 4, pm, K to end of row
Row 2: *K to 2nd to last stitch before marker, K2tog, sm, K4, sm, ssk* repeat once more and K to the end of the row
Row 3: Knit
Repeat Row 2 and Row 3 three more times. You can switch to DPN's at any time if you like.

Slip the first 14 stitches and the last 14 stitches of the piece onto one DPN, and slip the other 28 stitches onto another DPN. Sew stitches together using kitchener stitch. (I found this video very helpful)

Weave in the ends.

There you go!

Catching Up

As of a few hours ago, I officially unpacked the last box from my move. Yes, it took me a few weeks but it's better late than never. I have completed a few smaller projects, having put my sweater project on hold. First is this buttoned scarf/cowl/thing:

I deviated from the pattern in that instead of doing a knit row for the second pattern row, I did a purl row to keep it in stockinette. I did this to make it look neater, because the garter stitch-style pattern looked way too messy with this yarn.

Second project: the deer with antlers hat. I used yarn that I had on hand, so I don't think it looks ideal, but it's cute! The antlers, when I felted them as directed, really didn't shrink that much.

Second project PART 2: the deer with antlers hat done a little better. I bought some yarn specifically for the project and I like this one better. (You can check out the specific yarns I used on my project pages on Ravelry.) For this hat's antlers, I felted them as directed and THEN stuck them in the dryer on high with some other laundry for about 30 minutes. This shrunk them a little more and made them significantly stiffer.

Third project: I will create a new post for this because it's a pattern that I came up with myself, so I want to share the pattern with everyone!

Now that I'm all done being distracted, I'm going to finish that sweater. I REALLY AM!!! I might have to steal back some yarn from my recycled Aidez sweater, but I can always redo that one. I will finish this sweater.

Moving, etc.

So I haven't posted in a while because I've been busy moving to a new part of town. It's pretty neat, and I'll post some cool things about that later. But for now, some house-keeping.

My sweater is on hold because 1) I'm pretty sure I'm going to run out of yarn and 2) I'm almost certain it will not fit me and lastly 3) I'm kind of bored with it. A while ago I bought this deer hat pattern, and I actually bought yarn to start it but I lost it.


A friend gave me this nice colorful alpaca yarn, and I started making these hand-warmers, which I intended on just finishing off into real mittens, but this pattern has given me some grief.

Whaaaaat happened here??? I don't know. I messed up somewhere. But the biggest problem is that the bound-off stitches didn't match up with the yarn overs. Maybe I was just tired from unpacking and forgot how to read.

Is that a thumb hole?

The yarn didn't stripe as well as I thought it would anyways, so I'm looking for another project to use it on.

Google+

Google+: Facebook but classier.

I remember when I first joined Facebook. I liked how simple it was. Then it got less exclusive and more annoying. I think it's going the way of MySpace. I stopped putting my pictures on Facebook because of the awful privacy rules. I instead started using Picasa, but it was difficult to manage who is able to see my pictures. Now with Google+, that's really easy.

Now Google rules my life. Let's hope this turns out well.

Duckie

So, the sweater is slow going because I'm on the sleeves now, and it's just straight stockinette for the whole thing, and my attention span is pretty mediocre.

I'm taking a break to make these duck socks, because my boss is having a baby.

In the sweater from-the-neck-down class that I took, everyone was making baby/child sweaters, except for me. So while most people were on step 3 or 4, I was still stuck at step 1 because it takes so much longer to make an adult-sized sweater. I was so jealous of those other people. All the satisfaction of making a sweater, with a fraction of the time and effort. But I didn't know any babies or small children at the time, so I had no choice.

But now I know a baby. Or I will very soon. I've never made anything for a baby before, and I've also never made socks before. So this project will by doubly challenging.

The project so far has been pretty fun, but difficult. I didn't bother with the "magic" cast-on, and when I got to the Turkish cast-on part, I was just like "pffft... I can do this an easier way." So I tried k1fb to do the increases, until I got to the part where you do 12 increases at once. Yeah... that was a little tricky. I went back and actually learned the Turkish cast-on and guess what: it's totally easy! I was just over-thinking it. My advice: don't try to do it while reading the directions. Read the supplemental directions over once, then attempt it while looking at the example pictures in the pattern. The Turkish cast-on makes a lot of sense for this project.

I did the whole thing on dpn's, because I started out with no size 2 needles, and buying one set of dpn's was cheaper than buying a set of dpn's and two sets of circulars. But if I ever do this project or anything like it again, I will certainly get the circulars. I definitely got the gaps with the Turkish cast on as described on the Ravelry page, but that's almost certainly due to the fact that I used the dpn's throughout.

The applied I-cord is a pretty ingenious design. That's where I'm at now. I really need to hurry up though, because I wanted to give them to my boss before the baby arrived, and this baby is coming out any day now.

I am so obsessed with how cute these socks are. Here's one done!

I took this next picture when I was working the applied I-cord. I think this picture illustrates how much better it looks with the I-cord. It goes from having a messy-looking seam to looking like a real ducky foot!

In summary: I-cord is awesome. Ducky socks are extremely cute. I cannot wait to see how cute they look on the baby!

New Yarn!

As I've mentioned before, I love new yarn. Recycling is great, but nothing beats the feel of brand-new yarn. However, I rarely have enough money to buy new yarn for a big project. Well, someone who works in the Chemistry department with me is also a knitter, and bought a bunch of yarn for a blanket. She then discovered she hated the yarn, so she just gave it all to me! For free! I thought, wow, awesome, free brand new yarn. Well, let's take a look:

And there it is. Six skeins of Lion Brand Micro-Spun yarn of various colors. At first glance it's easy to figure out why it was given to me for free. It becomes un-spun at the drop of a hat.

 And I don't mean to be pretentious here but... it's acrylic so... yeah, ew. 

I'll still use it, that's for sure. For what, who knows. I'm a couple days into the Middlefield Sweater and I'm working about midway down the body of it so it will be a while before I can think of starting to use this stuff.

Speaking of the sweater, I'm starting to regret my haste in starting this project. It's pretty clear that there's a good chance I will run out of yarn, and since it's just from a taken-apart old sweater, there is no more. Making sweaters, especially from the neck-down I think, are arduous tasks. I'm afraid I will get to the second sleeve and then discover I'm out of yarn. Then I have to take it apart, again. That just sounds traumatic. We'll see, I guess! So far it's an easy sweater, though. Looking ahead, there's a fancy seam that I've never seen before. More on that when I get there.