About a Sweater

Yesterday, I received a request to have a picture of my sweater featured on a pattern page.  Having your sweater featured is quite an honor, and I am suitably honored.

What's funny is that this turquoise sweater is more than a sweater to me.  It has matching socks too!

All kidding aside, I made the sweater and sock set for a special occasion, and the memory of that special occasion is linked to this sweater.  I made it to wear to my nephew's dedication ceremony at his church in April of 2011.

The pattern is "Jukebox Jingle" and can be found in the book, "The Ultimate Knitted Tee."

Useful knitting resouces

I have a number of sites that I consider to be good knitting resources, and here they are, in no particular order:
KnittingHelp.com
Knitty
Ravelry
KnitPicks Community
Learn to Knit at Lion Brand Yarn
Creative Knitting Magazine

Of course, I think the best resource is your Local Yarn Shop. There you will find knitting (and the occasional crocheting) enthusiasts who will gladly answer any questions you have. I have found my LYS, Off the Beaten Path, to be an amazing place. I've made friends with the owner and all the people who work there. They share in my joys as I complete a project and listen as I carp on about life or whatever. Of course, I'm not always as loyal as I could be. Sometimes I buy yarn at the other local yarn shops. This past weekend, I visited Lakeside Fibers and bought some yarn for making a tee shirt.

Green Socks

This is my first pair of lace socks. I'm quite pleased with them. :) I made these from Lanette sock yarn. It's tough to find a good, solid color sock yarn, but this stuff is great, very soft. Also I have been wanting to make a pair of green socks for a long time now but had been having trouble finding a yarn that I liked. I used a pattern from the book, Socks, Socks, Socks that I reviewed over at Universal Book Reviews.

Fair Isle Socks

These are one of the pairs of socks that I am working on currently. My first Fair Isle socks was a pair of slipper socks that I made for my mom for Christmas. They have hearts on the heels. These are a lot tougher though because the pattern is more complex. I'm enjoying making these socks, but they are definitely challenging.

Knitting Bags

I was at my friend's place yesterday, and she saw that I was using a zippered bag that curtains come in to store my current sock project. She said that she uses the same thing! I like zippered bags such as those for curtains, pillowcases, and for bigger projects, comforters or blankets. Some other bags that work great are the inexpensive "green" bags that are being sold all over town as a replacement for paper or plastic bags at the grocery store. Of course, I find myself using tote bags as well to store knitting projects. At garage sales, you can find a ton of tote bags really cheap. People go to conferences where they are given these bags they will never use again. I don't personally care what the bags say or where they come from because they make great project bags.

2009 knitting goals

I'm not a big one for making New Year's Resolutions. I am also not particularly goal-oriented. It seems to me that often life gets in the way of our goals. "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry," adaptation of a saying by Robert Burns. However, when it comes to knitting, there are some things that I would like to learn, and maybe I'll even learn them this year. So here are three of my knitting goals:

1. Learn to knit socks on circular needles.
2. Learn to spin yarn from roving.
3. Learn to knit cables.

I hope, but I don't know if it's true or not, that knitting socks on circulars will be faster than knitting them on double points. I'm currently knitting a pair of socks from Sandy's Palette merino sock yarn. This is super-soft luxurious sock yarn, but it's taking me simply forever to finish these socks. I started them during our vacation in November.

I suspect that my sweater-knitting has cut into my sock-knitting though. Since November, I have knit two sweaters, and I'm currently working on a third that I just started last week. What I love about knitting is that it finally gives me a good reason to appreciate winter. I can fight back against the cold and knit sweaters! My current sweater is a Neckdown Pullover for Women by Knitting Pure & Simple. It's a raglan. I'm knitting it from Cestari Cranberry Tweed 100% wool.

A stumper...

I'm trying to design a pattern for knitting socks, and here's something I am wondering about... If a number is divisible by both 4 and 3, is it also divisible by 12? If so, then I could make the number of cast on stitches divisible by 12 and life would be easy.

I want to do a ribbing pattern of 3 and 1, hence the 4. I like my stitches evenly divided among my 3 sock needles, hence the 3. I am strange, I know. Although I could do a 4x1 rib and deal in multiples of 5. I'm inspired by a cool sweater I saw somebody wearing. It was either a 3x1 or a 4x1 ribbing. I didn't want to stare though, so I couldn't determine which it was. But I thought, hmm that would look good in a pair of socks. And the numbers wouldn't matter so much, but I want to carry the ribbing down the top of the foot too.

Knitting: First pair of socks!

This is my very first pair of socks. I started them this winter when I took a sock-making class, but I missed a couple of classes. So, they remained unfinished in my knitting closet. I resolved to finish them this summer, and I did today. Yay!

One of the scary things about knitting socks is the kitchener stitch. However with good instructions, it's not so bad at all. First I visited, Knitty.com where I found a great tutorial. Then I found a great video tutorial on YouTube.

The way I did it was that I read and printed the tutorial. Then I watched the video to see it in action. I took it out to my couch, laid the directions next to me and went for it. Not so bad. I kind of got into chanting knit drop, perl stay, perl drop, knit stay. I'm glad nobody but the cats witnessed that silliness!

I knit these socks from tofutsies yarn. The finished product is really soft, but the yarn was a challenge to knit with as it was way too easy to split it. But that could also be my inexperience with knitting on small needles... Before this foray into sock knitting, the smallest needle I'd ever knit on was an 8! Now, I've used 5's a couple of times.

I'm Dreaming of a White... Easter?!

It's Easter, and it's snowing. There's still snow on the ground too. We've already broken a record. I don't know that we really need all that much more snow. Snow on Easter. I'm not sure if I can remember too many Easters when it's snowed, but then again, this year Easter is really early.

I *finally* finished my teal cotton sweater (see above) that I've been working on for what seems like forever! It felt really good to get it done. Of course, as I'm finishing it up, I had this terrible thought, "what if it doesn't fit?" All that work would be for naught! But I tried it on, and it fit nicely. I'm quite happy with it.

I knit with Plymouth's Fantasy Naturale, and I don't think it was a lot of fun to knit with! I kept splitting the yarn. And it was really slippery on metal needles, so I had to use bamboo needles, which meant that it took longer to knit. I'm just faster with metal.

Now, all I have to do is wait until it warms up so that I can actually wear something with short sleeves! I suppose I could just get impatient too and wear it over another shirt like I did in the picture.