Last Year’s Projects

I’m going to tackle these unblogged finished projects in the order in which they were completed. I figure I may as well pick an order that makes sense!

The oldest finished project on my list (nine projects. This is going to take a little while!) is a Christmas gift that just went out to its new home a little over a week ago.


I’ve been working with Jeff, my personal trainer, at my gym for several years now. Not only does he help me keep this aging body in one piece and in good working order, he’s become a damn good friend.


Jeff is a Penn State grad, and was on the Pirates bandwagon earlier than anyone else I know (we’re talking 4-5 years ago. When that was just nuts.). When he and Kate got married a few years ago, I wove a blanket for them, and of course I ordered extra yarn to make sure I wouldn’t run out.

The navy in the blanket bled like it had never been set. So my good friend Stephanie offered to set the color on two of the leftover skeins of Cascade 220 so I could knit a scarf for Jeff. She couldn’t believe how much they bled either!


From there, it was off to the races. My usual 70 stitches in the round, 20-row stripes, cut the fringe before I start, and knit until I run out of the end-color. Zoom. Jeff and Kate both liked the gift. Probably because it means they can dress like the Nittany Lion for football games now.

Nittany Scarf 

Pattern: House Scarves, Year 1-2, from Charmed Knits 

Size: Scarf-sized 

Yarn: Cascade 220 

Colors: Navy, White 

Amount: 2 skeins of each color 

Needles: US 8, 16” from my KA Switch set 

Started: 16 January 2013 

Finished: 24 March 2013 

Mods: I don’t count stripes, just knit until I’m out of yarn. Is that a mod? Probably not.

WiP Wednesday

OK! It’s been lots of simple knitting around here. When I’ve been watching the Pens or reading, it’s been my Harry Potter scarf. I’m into the second skein of each color and it’s moving right along.


But, because the scarf now requires a larger project bag, I needed a smaller project for last week’s trips to the theater. Last week started with a field trip with my former co-workers at Bloomin Yarns. When we visited Wexford Dry Goods, there was a really cool dishcloth they had in many colors. So I decided to give it a try!


It’s great for short stretches of knitting, and I’m happy with how it looks. There won’t be a ton of knitting time over the next two weeks, but we’ll see what happens!

WiP Wednesday: Re-entry

Back from Florida and trying to catch up. I managed to take a picture of my scarf last Wednesday, on the pool deck at my Dad’s house. Woo 4.5 stripes!


And here it is this morning. Yay 10+ stripes!

I
n other news, I got a big hunk of slipper knitting done before I left on my trip. It wasn’t trip-appropriate knitting, so it stayed home. Hopefully I can finish my pair this weekend. The first slipper is waiting for its exterior second sole, the second slipper is ready for decreases. Zoom!


Of course, the scarf is too big for travel, the slippers are too complicated, so I’ll have a new tiny project to entertain me during intermission at the theater tonight. Lots of littles happening around here, plus planning for sewing stuff. Oh, and two finished project posts coming right up!

WiP Thursday: Sunshine

I’ve been in Florida since Sunday. First it was three-plus days in Bradenton with the Hubster, now I’m finishing my first full day in Vero Beach with my Dad and Aunt Suzie.

I didn’t want to bring any of my other in-progress projects on this trip. I wanted simple. Period. Of course, I also needed something simple for the theater last Wednesday when the Hubster and I went to see Les Mis (stage show, NOT the movie!), so I cast on a Harry Potter scarf.


This is leftovers from my Nittany Lions doubleweave blanket from two summers ago, and the scarf will have the same recipient. Now you will excuse me while I go back to my book. There is sunshine to chase tomorrow, pictures to take, and Roaming Tigger escapades to document. I’ll be back!

WiP Wednesday

Still Wednesday? Yep, just barely. Good!

We had intermittent power outages all morning and my “routine” is all jacked up. Four sets of interviews probably had something to do with that as well.

My weaving time got chomped on Monday when I wound up burning a few hours on getting stuff in the mail. But I’ve now treadled my way through all three mug mats. Here’s the third one.


I’m guessing I’m about 1/3 of the way through the warp. Possibly a little less. The remainder of the mats, well, at least the next third, will be woven with the colors reversed. Limestone gray as the light weft, green for the heavy weft. It’ll make more sense when you see it, I’m sure.

In knitting news, I only have one thing to show you. That’s because I have another finished project that will post in the morning. And I took a chunk of time to sew binding on that quilt I showed you a few weeks ago. Now I just need to hand-sew that binding down, and I’ll have a new quilt for the bed!

But that wasn’t handwork that would play nicely with football watching. So I worked on this.


I knit three repeats of the garter mosaic scarf instead. It really goes pretty quickly. Hooray!

WiP Wednesday

We spent a goodly chunk of Tuesday evening plotting some home improvement, so I do not quite have a finished pair of Northman Mittens, The Sequel to show you. I’m just a liner-thumb away from being finished. So close, yet so far away!


I knit a round on the Musique socks, but that’s hardly worthy of new photo. I would have knit more on Saturday, but I couldn’t tear my attention away from the game. They’ll jump up a rung or so in the near future.

I will show you the next project to get back into the rotation. It’s a test knit I did for the wonderful and talented Susan Pandorf, and it’s a garter mosaic scarf. This un-named pattern could be part of her LOTR series, at least that’s CelticQueen’s guess. It has a really cool knit edging, then you drop stitches for the fringe and pick up and knit the mosaic. I’m one repeat in on the body of the scarf. And yes, I got Susan’s permission before I gave you this peek. It will most likely replace my Northman’s Mittens in the rotation.


I got one more mug rug done on the loom. I’m definitely improving and have high hopes that I’ll be cooking with gas when it’s time to do my rep weave placemats.


I’m doing better with writing deadlines vs. free time this week, but there is certainly still room for improvement. Here’s hoping I keep getting better at balancing my time. I’m lucky to be in a position that the freelancing is working and I’d like to keep this system going.

And maybe, next week, I’ll have a little quilting to show you!

Herringbone Möbius

There are a few perils of working at a yarn store. One of them is walking in to a new shipment of yarn when it’s immediately obvious that you’re going to call it George. It happens to me about once a year, usually in the fall when the new stuff comes in.

You may remember seeing these beauties showing up on this here blog a few weeks ago:


Manos Maxima, and they're beautiful. After working with them, I would say that my initial instinct was correct. Malabrigo with better variegated colors. Very nice.

So I picked a project that would show off the yarn. A simple Möbius with a stitch pattern that was going to look good on both sides.


I picked the “Herringbone Rib” stitch from the Harmony Guides. I’m sure it’s in the knit/purl book, but I pulled card #32 out of my “101 Stitches to Knit” card box. Why use the cards instead of the book? The cards are charted. The Harmony Guide book is not.

I also did my “standard” möbius bind-off, an applied I-cord. I love the way it looks and for me, that makes the extra time and yarn worth it.


Oh yeah. The bind-off. I kind of ran out of yarn when I was about 60% finished with the bind-off. Fortunately, I knew that CelticQueen had purchased this same yarn out of the same shipment and she was kind enough to let me mooch enough of her yarn to finish my project.

It’s longer than I had planned (oops) but I’m still a fan. I forget how much I enjoy möbius knitting until I have one on the needles. Then I remember. Must remember more often!

Herringbone Möbius

Pattern: Card #32 from 101 Stitches to Knit by Interweave and Cat Bordhi’s Möbius cast-on
Yarn: Manos Maxima
Color: Beehive
Yardage: 2+ skeins, roughly 500 yards
Needles: US 9/5.5mm KnitPicks Options
Started: 14 September 2010
Finished: 2 October 2010
Mods: Not really a mod, but I cast on 304 stitches for a multiple of 16 to work with my chosen stitch pattern, which means each round was 608 stitches or 38 repeats. Probably should have done something more like 256. Oh well.

Farmhouse Scarf

As I mentioned in last week’s WiP Wednesday post, I got home from The Mannings and was nearly desperate to get something on my very own loom. I needed to do the whole project process by myself, start to finish, to lock the info into my brain.

I started with a skein of Fannie’s Fingering Weight in Old Glory. It was a sock yarn skein I’d admired for a very long time. Did the same 3 yard warp length that I’d one for my class scarf, but when I had 120 ends measured (10” on-loom width), I looked at the cake of yarn I had left and decided “what the hell.”

I came a lot closer than I really should have to using the entire skein, but what the heck. I have a wide scarf that used the vast majority of the skein. I think that’s a win.


The varying chunks of darker color that you can see come primarily from the weft. I chose two skeins of JoJoLand Melody superwash sock yarn, which is a very subtle self-stripe in colors that complimented the Old Glory nicely.


In the darker chunks of fabric, that’s where the warp was more of a dominant red. Once the loom was warped, this scarf flew by. I tied the knots for the fringe at knit night a mere 72 hours after measuring the warp.


There was a minor fringe fail, which is why this scarf does not have a twisted fringe. I started weaving closer to the front edge of the warp than I thought. Once I trimmed the fringe to the longest possible even length, there wasn’t enough length to twist. So it’s au naturel.

Scarf was wet-finished with the first dollop out of my lifetime supply of Orvus Paste, then a bit of hair conditioner in the rinse. Spun out in the washer and air dryed on a rack at the bottom of my driveway. Took about 10 minutes to dry, since it was about 90 degrees outside at the end of last week.

At the end of the day, I learned stuff and still came away with something useful. Isn’t that what a first solo project should do?

Please pardon my skanky lightpost. Someday, I will re-paint that thing.

Farmhouse Scarf

Warp: Fannie’s Fingering Weight in Old Glory from Farmhouse Yarns
EPI: 12
Width on loom: 12”
Weft: Jojoland Melody
Pattern: plain tabby
Warp measured: 29 August 2010
Loom Warped: 30 August 2010
Weaving finished: 1 September 2010
Project Completed: 2 September 2010

I’m still figuring out what details should go in the “recap” for my weaving projects. Yell if you have questions!

Class Scarf

The final project that I did during class last week (geez, that was only last week? I feel like it was a lifetime ago!) was my scarf project.


When I went yarn/thread shopping for my scarf, I knew I wanted wool. A scarf, to me, is not decorative. It’s for warmth. Cotton is pretty, wool is warm.

Tom pointed me in the direction of the sock yarn section. Ironic, huh? I chose Knit One, Crochet Too’s “Crock-o-Dye” yarn as the warp. 65% superwash wool, 20% nylon, 15% silk. I even managed to get some warp stripes. Totally unplanned, but equally awesome.


For the weft, I picked another sock yarn, Panda Superwash, in the Neptune colorway. 51% bamboo, 39% superwash wool, 10% nylon. It’s splitty as all hell, so I wouldn’t chose it for most knitting applications, but it was great for this project.


My mother loves to call me “Gadget Girl,” and there was one true gadget that I felt I needed to bring home, a fringe twister.


There is something about a twisted fringe that just screams “weaving” to me. I blame Dave Daniels and his fabulous blog for this association. (and I decided to leave the fringe on the sampler as-is. I’ll trim it down when I’m through toting it all around the ‘Burgh for show and tell)

Our scarf projects were a major demo for finishing information. There’s definitely some info that will transfer to my knitting and quilting projects as well, but bottom line I’m very happy with my scarf.


In fact, I liked it so much I now have another woven scarf that’s completely finished. Now to do the maths for my next project to jump onto the loom!

WiP Wednesday

We’ll take a little break from Weaving Week recap and I’ll show you what I’m currently working on!

Since I was too busy to post last week, you didn’t get to see Daybreak as it started along. Now I’m into the border section and the end is near.


As with most shawls, it looks like a blob of nothing while still on the needles. But I’m digging it.

I really wanted to get my first project on the loom as quickly as possible so I didn’t have time to forget what I was doing. So I copped out and threw another sock yarn scarf on the loom. Farmhouse Fannie’s Fingering for the warp and some JoJoLand Melody for the weft. I’m already a good chunk into it and am somewhat hopeful I can finish it today.


And since she always seems to be popular, I snapped a few pictures of my favorite puppy since she was outside while I was picture-taking this morning.

Hi, Sydney!


And a close-up!


Back to weaving tomorrow. Happy Hump Day!

Five Hours

That’s how long I was on my work conference call last night.

Five. Hours.

Ya know what you can do in five hours?

• Fly from Pittsburgh to Houston (I have to do that tomorrow)
• Spend an entire evening with the Hurricane Knitters
• Watch an overtime hockey game (I missed all but the first five minutes of the Pens game last night)
• Watch two movies

Lots of other fun stuff I can’t think of right this more.

-or-

Pick three All-America teams via conference call. Blech. Did I mention that the call started at 8 pm? Yeah. 8 pm to 12:45 am. Yuck.

Anyhoo, the Cables & Corrugation sock is no longer kicking my ass. I missed a cable cross, but I decided that I don’t care.

I can’t decide what knitting to take with me on this trip. Obviously, the C&C sock. And the Noro scarf. I’m definitely taking another sock. Probably my March RSC Leafling socks, and I think I have yarn for another “plain vanilla” sock that I’m gonna take with me

I did sign up for the Summer of Socks. As much as I’d like to do a thicker yarn sock now, I’m gonna save those for SoS. ☺

Well, I’m gonna go watch some Fake News and get to bed.

Oh, and the best part about the damn conference call last night? When I finally went to bed at 1 am, I kept waking up all freakin’ night thinking I was back on that call asking for another vote. I slept like crap. Here’s hoping tonight is better.

Brrrrrrrr!

It’s freakin’ cold outside. At 2 pm, it’s 20 degrees with very few clouds, fresh snow and it’s just … COLD. The year I lived in Minnesota, we had a week where the high temperature for the week was -10 before windchill. It’s not that cold, but after eight years in SoCal? BRRR!!!

So I sent Joe outside in his jacket to model a finished object!

It started out as this


That’s the yarn with the parka I’m hoping will wear it with. Pretty damn close match, huh?

I started it on Christmas and finished knitting and blocking it on New Years Day.


I fringed it last night at Hurricane Knitters. Since I didn’t have anything on the needles. At all. Really. (that is no longer true, btw)


Pattern: Year 1-2 House Scarf from Charmed Knits
Yarn: Cascade 220. Two skeins each in 9487 (Puget Sound/blue/from Natural Stitches) and 8412 (Pear/gold/from Bloomin Yarns)
Needles: US 8 16” KA circs. Still lovin’ these needles, even though they got put away weird at some point and the cable needs to be steamed back into shape
Started: 25 Dec 2007
Finished: 1 Jan 2008
Mods: I finally got smart and did two things with this scarf (my third of this ilk): 1. I wove in all of the ends as I knitted. 2. The stockingette edge was curling on itself as I started and I decided to encourage this behavior, as seen in last week’s WiP Wednesday post. Made it much easier to wrangle, although once I got to the halfway point, I could roll it no farther. It still was easier to twist/untwist the thing this way.
Destination: It's a birthday gift (Jan 2 b-day) for the head coach I worked with last year at UCLA. My goal in life is to make it to the post office tomorrow to get it on its way to LA.

I have two more FOs ready to post. One has had its photo shoot, the other has not. I'll be back!

Purpose!

"Purpose ... It's that little thing that lights a fire under your ass!"

I have a Purpose! (Purpose is one of the songs in Q) … to get this blog post up and running in the 10 minutes before my mom picks me up!

We’re going to see Avenue Q tonight at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh with Colin and Erin (brother and sis-in-law) and, of course, the Hubster. Hubster and I saw this show on Broadway with the original cast shortly after it won the Tony for Best Musical. I’m psyched!


This is an almost-finished object. I made the pompoms today for my Bright Stripes scarf.

My mom likes to give me a hard time about being Gadget Girl (different from Gidget, believe me!!) but I’ve gotta say that it was insanely easy to make the eight pom-poms for this scarf with this gadget I got at Natural Stitches last Friday. The included instructions are very easy to follow. I recommend this tool for the next time you need to make pom-poms. Totally worth the $6 because it makes the task SO easy.



OK. Gotta post and run. I’m gong to try to get a Turkey Day post up tomorrow, but if I’m lame and late, HAPPY TURKEY DAY!!! It’s my favorite holiday. It’s gonna be a great next 36 hours. ☺

WiP Wednesday: Scarfs R Us

I tried to blog yesterday, and it was a disaster. I started with a post that would make Eeyore proud, then re-wrote something else that would rival Beaches in sap-factor. Seriously enough to give you a cavity. They were both awful, so I spared you the carnage and decided to wait for a nice, boring WiP Wednesday.

Today’s agenda is to post this blog entry, run to Staples for printer ink and then get my sorry behind out the door in time to go see Bruce and the E Street Band at the Igloo. RT will make the trip. We’ll see how the ‘ol camera phone performs in its first use. I haven’t listened to the new album (Magic) as much as I would like, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy the show regardless. Woot!

On to the WiPs!

First in line: My second Jaywalker scarf.

The color changes are very subtle, but the more I knit this, the more I think it becomes apparent that Javajem had the correct idea when she did her scarf – as many coordinating heavily variegated yarns as possible. I started this scarf as a good traveling project, and it’s going to jump into the starting lineup tonight. Because I finished Jeweled Steps last night.

I’ll try to get a sock photo shoot tomorrow. More blog fodder! Yay!

Second is the scarf I was mocked for last week at Hurricane Knitters. Yes, I swatched for a scarf. The only reason I did that is because it is knit lengthwise, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be insanely short or long.

This is an intentionally average photo.

And this one better shows how far into the scarf I've climbed. Yes, it's intentionally a shot of the "wrong side." Better photos will follow when it’s finished. I’m loving this scarf, but because it’s lengthwise and has color changes, it’s not particularly portable.

So that’s about it from chez DPUTiger. The Hubster and I have been taking turns not being home for the evening. He got home at 9 last night after having to work late and tomorrow will be similar. Tonight, I’m hangin’ with The Boss. Oh, and due to tomorrow’s late work night for Hubster, I plan to head on over to knit night at Bloomin’ Yarns, where I hope to finish the second armpit sleeve on the purple sweater!