Soft Like Kittens socks

In my ongoing effort to make sure everyone in my family has at least one pair of hand-knit socks, I made these for my sister:

The pattern is By the Seine River by Dona Knits, and the yarn is Soft Like Kittens Noodle Sock in a prototype colorway. The creator of this yarn, Annette of Gentle Ribbing, has decided to take an indefinite break from hand dyeing, which makes me very sad. She has understandable reasons for her hiatus, but selfishly I was hoping Soft Like Kittens would be around forever because her colors are my favorite.

Here's another pair of socks I made with the same yarn base, in the Sashiko colorway, this time for my mom:

The pattern is Bowties are Cool by Mandie Harrington, and the stitch pattern makes tiny bowtie or butterfly shapes - nice texture for a variegated yarn, or a good way to add patterning to a solid color yarn.

And of course, I had a skein of Soft Like Kittens set aside for myself, too, in the Double Helix Sock base:

I used Becca Compton's Vinnland pattern for these. The original pattern is toe-up, which I try to avoid, so I knit them top-down instead. To keep things simple, I just followed the chart as written, so the leaves on my sock point in a different direction than on the original pattern. I'm really happy with how these socks turned out, and they feel great... I'll miss you, Soft Like Kittens...

Seine socks
Sashiko socks
Vinnland

Another Henslowe

I promised my sister a pair of socks (she will get them, at some point), but for her birthday this year I wanted to surprise her. Last year I made her the Grey Loop infinity cowl, which she seemed to like well enough, but which was for me a lesson in the downfalls of free patterns and super-growy alpaca. She admired my Henslowe shawl when she saw me wearing it over the holidays, so I made her one of her own, in a similar yarn.

I knit it in Zen Yarn Garden's Serenity Silk Single, a merino/cashmere/silk blend. It has nice drape and a bit of sheen, and I think it will be warm as well.

I almost never make the same pattern twice, so this is a statement on how much I love Henslowe. It's my go-to shawl to wear because it's both functional and beautiful. The garter stitch is warm and hugs the shoulders, the shape makes it easy to wear either traditionally or bandanna-style, and the lace is delicate and pretty without being fussy. And knitting this shawl is enjoyable too. The construction is a little unusual, but it's explained clearly, and the lace sections are really simple to knit but look deceptively detailed. I have the feeling that I'm not going to stop at two Henslowes.

(You might notice that this Henslowe has a bit less lace at the edge than the original pattern - I played yarn chicken, and things didn't look good, so I did two rather than four repeats of the Roman Stripe pattern. I like it a lot this way, and might actually use this modification again if I make another shawl for myself).

Socks for dads

My dad's Christmas list this year included hand-knit "cozy socks." Of course I would never turn down a sock request, especially when the requested socks would be best knit in worsted weight. These are the first non-fingering weight socks that I've made, and it felt amazingly fast to be knitting rounds of only 48 stitches! 

The pattern I used for these is Thuja, available from Knitty, and the yarn is Malabrigo Rios. I really enjoyed working with the Rios, and I'm already planning to get some more to make cozy socks for myself once my LYS gets a restock in. (There wasn't much Rios left on the shelf when I bought this, which is why I had to get 2 skeins that came from different dye lots. The difference between the socks is obvious to me, but I hope my dad won't mind.)

My boyfriend's dad also got some cozy socks this year. These are also in worsted weight, Cascade 220 Superwash this time, and the pattern is one I made up myself. I cast on 52 stitches and did 2x2 ribbing all the way around, except for one column of faux cables, created by doing a left twist (or a right twist, for the other sock) every 4th row.

Christmas gifts

Remember that cowl I made for myself, using the leftovers from a secret project that I couldn't talk about yet? Here is the secret project, a Christmas present for my boyfriend's sister!

This is the Greyhaven Cowl and Greyhaven Hat by Robin Ulrich, knit out of Malabrigo Worsted in Polar Morn. As with her Amethiste, this is a well-designed and well-formatted pattern. The only modification I made was on the hat, which turned out a little too long and slouchy. I think that was due more to the way the Malabrigo Worsted was working up for me than the pattern, but I've seen other people make similar comments, so maybe keep that in mind if you make this in a heavy worsted. To reduce the slouch, I just did one pattern repeat before the decrease section, instead of two repeats as in the pattern.

And for my honorary brother-in-law (my boyfriend's brother-in-law), I also made a hat:

It's Turn A Square, a very popular pattern by Jared Flood, another designer whose patterns are not only well designed but so beautifully formatted! The yarn is Cascade 220 Superwash - I already had the lighter one (Feather Gray), and the other color is called Jet, which is one of my favorite colors Cascade makes in the 220 line. It's a deep, slightly heathered gray that I have been wanting to use for a while. I changed the stripe pattern in the original pattern to something a little more minimalist, and I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Dyade set

For my mom's birthday this year, I made her a matching cowl and mitts from Vanessa Smith's Dyade set. I had a full skein of tosh sock in Tart that I bought for my Amethiste shawl but didn't end up using, plus a bit extra. Tart is a glorious color, but not one that I wear often, so I wanted to use my extra skein to make a special project I could give to somebody else. I thought something warm and pretty that my mom can wear either inside or outside would be just right.

Little pilgrim booties

Once upon a time, a coworker who was moving apartments kindly donated some of her yarn stash. She gave me a ball of super-soft Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino, and suggested that I could crochet a little critter out of it, but to me it was too nice to become just another amigurumi. So it sat and waited, and I fussed occasionally about what to do with it.

Several years later, another coworker from the same job announced that she was pregnant. I don't work there anymore, but it's a baby that belongs to a friend so of course, I wanted to knit for it! And finally, that Baby Cashmerino found its destiny.

This baby's mother is a scholar who studies pilgrimage, and who went on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route the summer that she was pregnant. She was pretty pleased to have such a well-traveled pilgrim baby before she was even born, so I wanted to make her a fitting welcome-to-the-world gift. Footwear seems like the appropriate thing for a tiny globe-trotter, and the symbol of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage is the scallop shell.

I combined Petits chaussons gris, a free pattern for baby booties (available in English), with these free instructions for knitting tiny scallop appliques. The booties are knit in the Baby Cashmerino with accents in Cascade 220 Superwash Sport, and the smaller of the scallop applique patterns turned out to be the perfect size. These booties are wonderfully soft and cute, and I hope that Pilgrim Baby (and Pilgrim Mama) like them.

Calligraphy shawl

My boyfriend's mom is a talented pottery artist. We're lucky to have quite a few of her pieces for everyday use and for special occasions, and some just for decoration. I thought it was time that I make something pretty for her, so I knitted this shawl as a birthday present.

The pattern is French Cancan by Mademoiselle C, available to purchase through Ravelry. I knit it in madelinetosh Tosh DK (wonderful wonderful yarn), in the Calligraphy colorway. Although the pattern recommends a silk/merino blend for added drape, I think the superwash merino makes a great fabric and has excellent stitch definition.



This pattern was so much fun to knit. It combines some of my favorite design elements - lacey mesh and braided cables - in a unique but balanced and beautiful way. I think it's eye-catching but not over-stated, especially in a nice neutral. I won't say that it lives up to its recipient's handiwork, but I'm very pleased with it!

Tree of Life

My other main project in May was also a present, for two friends who were getting married over Memorial Day weekend. They are both lifelong fantasy/sci-fi nerds (like me, and most of the people I hang out with), and were having a Middle Earth-themed wedding. I thought something knitted with a cabled Tree of Life motif would be a perfect gift for them.

I picked Nicky Epstein's Tree of Life Afghan, which is a free pattern available through Lion Brand. Rather than doing a whole blanket, I wanted to use just one tree motif on a pillow. Many other people have done the same, and I used some of their projects as inspiration, especially Karen1959 and franconia.

I first mentioned this project back back in March, when I started making a prototype so that I would know what I was doing. I'm not really a fan of that kind of preliminary work, but at that point, I had never knitted cables or a pillow so I decided the practice was worth it. I didn't actually go through making an entire practice pillow, which I should have done - in hindsight, I could have left a little more selvage for sewing together the front and back panels. I'm very happy with how it turned out, though!

I used Berroco Comfort again for this project, so that the pillow would be easy to clean (they have a couple of messy kitties). The front panel is the tree motif surrounded by a two-inch border of seed stitch, and the back panels are plain seed stitch, overlapping in the middle - more notes on my Ravelry project page if you're interested.

Elephant blankies

It's been quiet on my blog again, partly because in May, most of my projects were presents (and partly because I'm lazy). But now that all the presents have been given away, I have quite a few posts to catch up on.

Two of my friends from grad school had babies within a few weeks of each other this spring, and I thought it would be nice to make them matching presents. Since I'm not that confident with baby sizing, I wanted to avoid sweaters, and I get the impression that most booties don't stay on that well. I was searching for something cute and cuddly, that the babies wouldn't instantly grow out of - and look what I found!

The pattern is Grace - Elephant Comfort Blanket by Dedri Uys and is available for free on Ravelry. I would happily have paid for it, though, because it's detailed and well written. The construction of the head and ears is slightly complicated, but every stitch is explained, and the result is super cute! The only change I made was to crochet a few more decreasing rounds at the back of the elephant heads before sewing them on to the blankets, to help keep the stuffing secure inside. I also sewed on black pieces of felt for the eyes rather than using safety eyes. I think opinion is mixed on whether safety eyes are really baby-safe, but I didn't want to take any chances.

I used Berroco Comfort DK in alternating colors, and each blankie took about one and a half skeins, which makes this a very affordable project!

Both babies have received their elephants now and I've enjoyed seeing the pictures of them with their new buddies. I hope they can enjoy them for several years.

WIP Wednesday: Socks and a secret

I skipped WIP Wednesday last week, partly because these socks were giving me such a hard time. I'm not sure I can even call them these socks, because I restarted and ripped them out so many times that I had to throw away the first few yards of yarn from this skein. I don't know what it was, but for some reason I had a huge crisis of confidence about whether my gauge was right. As I've mentioned before, I've been trying not to knit so tightly, so I'm making these socks on US 1 1/2 needles from Knit Picks, down from my usual 2s. Now that I've gotten this far, I think I can say that I will either switch back to size 2 needles for my next pair, and/or go back to the ChiaoGoo RED Lace ones that I have been pretty happy with before. I wanted to try some Knit Picks needles just to see if I liked them better, and I thought that slicker needles would help with my tension. But actually, I'm finding that I can't knit as loosely as I'd like because I feel like the yarn is getting away from me.

All that aside, I'm pretty happy with these socks now that they're behaving. The yarn is GnomeAcres House Gnome in Lucky Ewe and I love it, of course. I think it's meant as a St. Patrick's Day colorway, but to me it looks like the colors of daffodils just starting to bloom, so I'm calling these my Daffodil Socks. The pattern I'm using is Jeck, by Regina Satta, and I'm enjoying it too. Originally, I was using the Hermione's Everyday Socks pattern, but I didn't think the texture of that pattern was really working with this yarn. I'm glad I switched because I think the yarn suits Jeck nicely.

I'm also working on a secret project that I can't say too much about, because it's a present. This project involves a few techniques I haven't done before, including cables, and needs to come out a certain size. I think I've learned my lesson about making presents - I always want them to come out really nice, but if I'm learning something new while making the actual present, I usually end up feeling a little frustrated even if the recipient is happy with it. So, I'm doing a test run with some stash yarn in the same weight as the yarn I plan to use. It's going well, and I think a lot of that is due to not putting pressure on myself to make a brand-new-to-me project come out perfectly.

Check out more work-in-progress posts at Tami's Amis!

Dad's mitts

My dad had one thing on his Christmas wish list this year, which made it a little tough to shop for him. Coupled with my perennial worry that I'll buy people all the same presents that somebody else got for them, the obvious solution was to make him something, but it took me a while to arrive at that conclusion. The year I first learned to crochet, I made him a scarf that he and I were both happy with, so I think I sort of permanently crossed him off my gift-making list: he's not an accessories kind of guy and since he liked the one scarf I made, it seemed redundant to make him another one. Plus, while there are some patterns for crocheted hats and mitts that look nice on guys, I was not so much into making garments, and I do think crochet in general lends itself better to more feminine designs (or stuffed toys, also not really up my dad's alley).

I don't want to say that knitting is "better" than crochet, but it has expanded the possibilities of what I can make for somebody, because I do think it's a lot more versatile. So, since the mitts I made for my boyfriend were so quick and easy and well-received, it seemed like a great present for the dad who has too much of everything and doesn't particularly want anything.

I used a different pattern, Peekaboo Mitts, and cast on a few more stitches to make them a more comfortable fit for man-hands. Of course, me being me, what should have taken just a day or two ended up taking a week because I encountered something I didn't know how to do, messed it up, redid it, tried other experiments, considered them failures, and (I think this is one of my stupidest knitting mistakes so far) decided to rip out and redo the thumb on one mitt, did so, realized I had gone after the wrong mitt, groaned, knit it back up, ripped out the thumb on the other mitt, then realized I had been right the first time. In short: I am still an idiot when knitting.

But! My dad has a handmade Christmas present and I'm happy about it. And someday I'll remember my troubles with a perfectly simple little knitting pattern and laugh. I hope.

Horai

My mom had a milestone birthday this year, so I wanted to make her an extra-nice present. She mentioned that she would like a shawl or drapey scarf, and after looking over a bunch of Ravelry links I sent her, she picked out a few favorite patterns, including Horai. Since she especially liked the smokey gray color in the pattern pictures, I decided to make it using Knit Picks Aloft in a similar color.

I'll admit that knitting this was a bit of an ordeal. Using mohair for the first time made me a little nervous, but that turned out to be the least of my problems. Although the pattern wasn't difficult, it was hard to see the stitches as I was working, so more than once I was knitting along happily only to discover that a dozen rows back, I had accidentally picked up too many stitches when making a "flower" stitch. Aloft is pretty forgiving of frogging, I found, so it's probably a good yarn for a first mohair project.

The main difficulties I had, though, were two problems I've had with my knitting since the beginning: my insanely tight tension, and my tendency to make extremely poor needle choices. This shawl really needed to be worked loosely, not only to get the nice airy, lacy effect, but also because the motif involved a lot of working multiple stitches at a time. It would have been far less physically challenging if I could control my gauge better. And that problem was compounded by my buying silly needles and then stubbornly continuing on with them. Obviously I should have bought at least one size larger than what the pattern called for (I didn't) and they should have been long enough that I could hold them firmly while working through the fiddly bits of this pattern (they weren't - they were 16" fixed circulars, which gave me about two inches of needle to actually hold on to).

And, for some reason, my Horai turned out wider and shorter than the pattern indicated, even though I thought I was following it exactly.

Still, I'm not unhappy with how the shawl turned out. The pattern is beautiful and it really works nicely in the mohair, and I was glad to give it to my mom as a birthday present. I do wish, though, that I had been a little less stupid about its construction, because I could have made it a lot easier on myself.