Quick projects to keep me warm

We moved to Pittsburgh last year, which finally motivated me to collect some serious cold-winter gear. Last year I got a warm and wonderful down jacket, and this year I have brand-new snow boots. And of course, I can never have enough knitted things.

This is Present, a free cowl pattern by Mademoiselle C. It was very quick to knit, and was a nice way to use up the leftovers from a project that I can't talk about yet. The yarn is Malabrigo Worsted in the Polar Morn colorway. As I was knitting the other secret project, I was already planning to buy more of this yarn for myself, because it's so soft and squishy and the color is beautiful. The other project took a little less yardage than I expected, so I used up every last bit making myself this cowl. Small cowls like this are nice to wear inside, when you could use a little warmth on your neck but don't need to wrap up in a shawl or scarf.

I wear a beret now. Berets are cool.

Although my neck is never cold these days, my head is not as fortunate. I don't really consider myself much of a wearer or maker of hats, but that is changing as I'm starting to look for more things to knit, and more things to keep me warm. This pattern is Alana Dakos's Autumn Vines Beret, knit in Neighborhood Fiber Co. Studio Sport that I picked up at fibre space earlier this year. I am a bit bemused by this hat. Up until I finished it and put it on my head, I couldn't really picture myself either making or wearing a beret. I like the yarn pretty well, but it's surprisingly variegated, a little too much so for this pattern. The size of the hat is okay, I guess, except that the cast-on edge grew a lot when I blocked it - maybe I'm just an inexperienced beret wearer, but it feels looser than it should. But hey, it doesn't fall off or look stupid, and it's a pretty color, and it's warm. I think I like it?

La dame de fer

Named after the Eiffel Tower, not Margaret Thatcher.

This is Jessie Dodington's Dinner in the Eiffel Tower shawl, knit in madelinetosh tosh DK. The colorway is Whiskey Barrel, and I used it in this pattern because the dark brown-blue color reminds me of the way the Eiffel Tower looks early in the morning. (I am a Foreign Service brat who spent a few years looking at the pre-sunrise Eiffel Tower on my bus rides to school.) It's a nice pattern - nothing too difficult or too tedious, but a good blend of simple stitches and slightly complicated lace.

The LYS where I work recently stopped carrying madelinetosh, so this yarn came from the hoard I amassed after we made that decision. Part of the reason we discontinued our tosh selection was quality issues, and I have to say that this yarn was not as nice as the older tosh DK that I used in my Calligraphy shawl. It felt rougher as I was knitting (after washing, it's not as bad), and there were a number of pretty large slubs that I would have cut out, if I had been making this project to give away. I still love tosh's colors, but I'm not too sad that we'll be bringing in something new instead.

Little bellydancer

This project holds the record for longest span of time from the date I started it to the date I finally finished it: started in March 2009, and finished on November 11 of this year, four and a half years later!

This is the Amazon amigurumi pattern from Creepy Cute Crochet by Cristen Haden, aka NeedleNoodles. You may recall that I started a couple other amigurumi at the same time, and very gradually got around to finishing first the ninja, and then the monkey in 2011. This poor girl, though, continued to languish. I think the main issue was that while she was hibernating, I decided I didn't really want an Amazon any more, but I wasn't sure what else to do. Then, finally, inspiration! And a while later, motivation! And now she is living happily on my amigurumi shelf as a tiny bellydancer!

Because my cat really needed another blanket

She did, though. I left my granny square afghan on the floor in a moment of laziness, and Juniper claimed it and proceeded to spend most of her time lying on it or under it. While I continue to be flattered that she likes my crocheting so much, I didn't really want my blanket to stay permanently on the floor, so I made her a floor-blanket of her own.

Trying out her new blanket immediately after I finished it

I was in the mood to get rid of some stash, so I triple-stranded some Knit Picks Brava in black and white and that purple acrylic that continues to haunt me. The blanket is just rows of double crochet, alternating the colors until I was nearly out of yarn, then I did two rows of double crochet around the border. To give the blanket a rolled edge, I then did a thing that came to me out of the blue and is very hard to explain, but basically, I folded and "seamed" the edge to itself by slip-stitching it through the base of the first row of double crochet.

The blanket is nice and thick, as Juniper likes it. It makes a good place to sleep in front of the radiator, although her preferred use is to burrow under it. In fact, if she's in the right mood, I can stick her under the blanket and she'll just stay there for hours. Seeing her snuggle on or under her blanket is as much of a "thank you" I'll ever get from a cat, but it's enough.

Un-vanilla socks

I've been knitting socks for over a year now, so it's time to expand my horizons. Since I don't see myself giving up my sock habit any time soon, I want to develop a more intuitive sense of what I like in terms of construction and methods. There are so many options that I'm sure I have yet to discover my Perfect Sock.

Until now, I've used magic loop, and almost always worked cuff-down, so for my first adventure, I decided to try DPNs and a toe-up sock. That turned out to be a bit too much adventure when I discovered that the way I purl clashed painfully with my inept way of holding my needles, so I scaled back to a toe-up sock on magic loop.

I used Carle' Dehning's recipe for vanilla toe-up socks with an afterthought heel - another technique I hadn't tried yet. For the toe, I used Lynne Ashton's rounded toe recipe, since I think the "normal" toe-up toe looks a little too chunky.

I knit these in Loops & Threads Luxury Sock, with the toes, heels, and cuffs in Knit Picks Stroll. Both of these were leftovers from my iPod cozy and my iPad cozy, and although I was just trying to use stuff up, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I like the finished socks. I've heard that people sometimes have trouble with Loops & Threads' color consistency, but since I squeezed two socks out of a 50-gram ball, they match fine. The fit of the sock is good, too, including the heel. Rather than working in a gusset, the recipe just adds a few stitches to the heel area, which seems to work fine for my foot.

Now that I have a toe and a heel that I'm happy with, I think I'm ready for my next pair of self-striping toe-up socks!

How to be an excellent recipient of handknit socks, in four steps

1. When you stay with your friend for the weekend, admire her collection of handknit socks, and mention several times how nice it must be to wear them.
2. Enthusiastically visit the LYS where your friend works, even though you yourself have tried knitting and given it up as a bad idea.
3. Accept your friend's offer of a pair of socks, and when you pick out some yarn for them, choose one of her secret favorite colorways.
4. Receive the completed socks a couple months later with many expressions of thanks, and a very sweet post on Facebook.

These are the socks I made for my friend, who executed the above steps perfectly. Like many knitters, I'm happy to make gifts, but socks are reserved for a special few - immediate family, significant others, and very worthy friends.

The pattern I used is Katniss Socks by Rose Hiver, which is free on Ravelry. I know that the braided cable barely shows up in my photo because of the colorway (Citrus Mix, on Cascade Heritage), but I couldn't resist. In person, I think it gives a nice tactile quality to otherwise simple socks, and makes them a little more special. Also, although my friend is not, to my knowledge, a Hunger Games fan, I enjoyed using a fiery-looking yarn in a pattern named after Katniss. So of course, I named them Socks On Fire.

Alpine Flora socks

I finished these socks more than a month ago, and I haven't posted anything about them yet. I feel a little guilty about that, because there's nothing wrong with them. They're perfectly good socks - no major trauma or triumphs were involved in making them, which might be why I haven't felt inspired to write about them.

But I should, because this is a nice pattern and nice yarn, and they work so well together. The pattern is Level Up, by Heather Kinne, and my only objection is that twisted-stitch cables in fingering weight are very fiddly, but I knew that going in. The yarn is from Soft Like Kittens - it's the Alpine Flora colorway, on her Noodle Sock base. I love Annette's sense of color, which this yarn shows off nicely. The colors blend so subtly together that I can't really tell where one stops and the next begins, but taken as a whole I can definitely see them all. I like the nearly-striped effect I got on these socks, and how well the stitch pattern shows up on this yarn. I'm looking forward to working with more from Soft Like Kittens.

I'll also put in a plug for Annette's podcast, Gentle Ribbing, which is how I found out about her hand-dyed yarn. She is always working on something interesting, and usually has some smart ways to modify and personalize the patterns she knits and crochets. Plus, she crocheted this tea cozy. Enough said.