Knitting on Holiday Time

With extra time off around the Thanksgiving holiday and some serious laziness around the house, I wrapped up some knitting, including a complete project redo.

Once upon a time, in a place called Schaumburg, two of us visited a yarn gathering known as Stitches Midwest, but one little Sariebeth had to stay home. We missed her, though, so I endeavored to make her a pink cabled hat while we were away to give her when we returned. After all, Sariebeth loves all things pink! So I followed the hat pattern and even finished with some yarn to spare, but discovered that although it was marked as an adult pattern, it barely fit my head. It could be squashed on, but barely reached the top of my ears. I hoped that maybe I just had an unusually large head since I didn't have time to re-knit the hat before seeing Sariebeth. Unfortunately, my head wasn't so unusually large and the hat barely fit on her head either. So it became one of those gifts where "it's the thought that counts", but it bothered me that I made such a useless gift.

So, when the weather started to turn cold and I was still thinking about the sadly undersized hat, I asked Sariebeth's husband to bring me the hat so that I could fix it. He knew where to find it and returned it to me, and I set to work frogging it back to a couple of balls of yarn. I started over from scratch and added another repeat of stitches to the cast on (and fixed some of the mistakes I accidentally added in the first attempt when converting the pattern from flat to knit in the round). Then, to make it lengthy enough to cover the ears, I added a full pattern repeat before decreasing at the top. This time I had just a tiny ball of yarn left instead of half a skein and it fit my head like a proper hat should!

And so I re-gifted the pink cabled hat to Sariebeth this weekend and all is again right in the knitting world. The End.

Oh, and I finished my first pair of anklets this past week, too. While still in progress they even traveled to the Thanksgiving dinner festivities for both sides of the family, but I spent more time cooking than knitting.
Yep, I'm still knitting.

Finished Emerald City Socks

It took me a little over a month to get through all of the tiny stitches (US1 needles, oh my!), but my Emerald City socks are finished and they fit beautifully.

I say they fit well because I've tried them on, but I haven't actually worn them yet. I kept noticing a tinge of dye on my fingers while knitting them, so these were the first socks that got a good few rinses before their first wear. I actually only saw a hint of dye in the water, but the thought of blue-green feet wasn't really appealing so I went with the better safe than sorry approach. They should be dry by now, though, so they'll be in the sock rotation soon.

I am really glad that I bought a set of Kollage square needles in time for these socks, though. I'm a bit of a tight knitter and that sometimes makes things difficult on my Harmony wood needles with socks that have stitches with multiple increases and decreases and such. I was worried that it might get even uglier with the smaller yarn and needles (I hadn't knit on anything smaller than a US1.5 before). The square needles are metal and allowed the stitches to slide more easily, but the square sides did make it easier for me to keep the stitches on the needles. I loved working with these needles so I plan to reach for them whenever I work socks in this size in the future.

So I'm really happy with how these socks came out, but I'm done with twisted ribbing for a while. It's not difficult, but something about the tediousness of it with the little stitches got to me a bit on these. Now I'm just looking forward to wearing these and comparing the tight, tiny stitch fabric to some of my previous socks of a looser gauge.

The Finished Sweater

My first hand-knit sweater is complete and has already been worn several times. Unfortunately, by the time it was finished and ready for photos, a busy travel weekend and Daylight Saving Time conspired to make it difficult to get photos of it in any sort of natural light. But this past weekend was unseasonably warm and presented me with the best possible scenario to get some quick pictures.

As for the rumors of Dream in Color Classy growing when exposed to water - they're definitely true! When I laid the sweater out to dry while it was damp it had grown almost 4" in length, even after a short time in the dryer on a very low setting. But the Classy seems to have amazing memory and having worn it a few times it has sprung back closer to the original knit length.

Now I was counting on the crazy growth everyone was warning about after the first wash, and in hindsight I probably shouldn't have counted on it quite so much. I probably should have knit the body slightly longer, but it’s very stretchy and it's been very comfortable to wear and surprisingly warm for a cardi.

And fortunately the extra material that bunched near the armpits before the first wash has smoothed out considerably. It's still there, but it's much softer and not as noticeable and obviously hasn't kept me from wearing it. Whew!

So there it is - I've knit an entire sweater for myself! It's not perfect (the sleeve decreases I added are too obvious to me, but not as noticeable when it's being worn), but it didn't take as long as I thought it might and there's definitely something rewarding about getting to wear it. My first attempt didn't kill me so I might become a sweater knitter after all.

Woolgirl Oz Sock Club - Enchanted Forest/Flying Monkeys

The next kit in my Woolgirl Oz sock club arrived on Monday, this time themed for the Enchanted Forest/Flying Monkeys. It's the first of my Oz kits to arrive before I finished knitting the previous one - partly because I started knitting a sweater and partly because the kits are now coming monthly instead of every other month until the end of the year.

************ Spoilers from this point on! ************

So here it is all wrapped up like a gift:

And here it is unpacked:

Again, the included bag is a bit small to hold an entire ball/cake of sock yarn, but large enough for the rest of what came with the kit. I admit that on that point I've been disappointed with the kits so far. I only need so many small bags for tiny notions and things, but I could really use some that were big enough to hold a sock project while in progress. At least they've all been unique and of different shapes and styles, though.

The Oz pill box is divided into thirds inside, which although tiny will probably good for keeping stitch markers. The "Don't make me get the Flying Monkeys" button is actually a mirror on the back, which is fun. But my favorite accessory might be the little plastic boxy looking thing with colored circles - it holds a full-width post-it pad on one side and then a rainbow of post-it tabs on the other. Awesome! (Post-it tabs are things I've seen other people put to good use before but haven't yet tried. Now I have no excuse not to.)

This time there weren't quite as many goodies, but twice the yarn and 3 patterns!

There's a full-size sock pattern for the forest yarn (Curious Creek Wasonga), and both a Flying Monkey anklet and Flying Monkey fingerless mitts pattern for the Mama Llama DK. Now I'm not a huge fan of pink and I don't think it quite fits with the Flying Monkeys theme (I think they have more red than pink), but I think the anklet pattern looks fun and it will probably be what I cast on first. (Especially since my size 1 sock needles are still in use for the Emerald City socks, doh!)

But , it's getting to be that busy time of year again and so this is the first of my Oz kits that I haven't cast on within the first few days. I just have too many things going on so I'm not exactly sure when I'll get to them. My flying monkey isn't happy about it, but he's just going to have to wait his turn.