Binary Hat FO! Cheers!

Finally. Finished.
Finished! Trumpets! I present le Hat!



Pattern: modified Binary Hat by redshirtknitting
Needles: size 8 (Boye interchangeable needles
Yarn: Blue Sky Worsted Hand Dyes Colors 2016 (brown) and 2002 (green)
Modifications: CO 96 +2 stitches to knit flat and then seam, different word, decreased differently - started decreasing on row 35 with k10, k2tog (56 rows total)

Now I can finally put this thing aside and both my brother and sister now have a hat! Yay! I have accomplished something for each. They both have a Christmas present now! Thank the heavens! This hat should have been simple, but so was not. Gauge issues (even though I swatched - grrrr.), stripe issues, length issues and decrease issues all plagued me thoroughout. It might had been easier if I had ever made a plain hat before. I ended up whipping out the Droplet Hat pattern to see how the decreases needed to be done. I liked how that hat decreased, plus it fit well on my model man's head. Good thing is, now I have made a plain hat, and future ones will be easier. (because now I have gone through everything that could possibly go wrong in a hat all in one swoop. - and if you know of other things, don't tell me. I don't want to know anything else will go wrong. ever.)

Ended up starting the decreases on 35th row. Did K1 *K10, K2tog* to last st. K1; next row, P1; next row, K1 *K9, K2tog* to last st. K1; and so on until I had 16 stitches left on the needles. Then I broke the thread, ran it through the 16 stitches, pulling tight and sewed up the seam using mattress stitch.

Decreases are much better now.

Glorious Hat! My brother better like it. (I think he will.) He better.

FO Droplet Hat

Yarn: Blue Sky Worsted color 0299 (cranberry)

Pattern: Droplet Hat from Knitting Nature

Mods: added an extra row of bobbles in the brim to make the hat slightly longer, kept the twisted

The first couple pictures show off the color pretty well - reddish hues are so hard to photograph!

Mods: second row of bobbles, ktbl in whole brim area, knitted in the round

I wanted a longer hat that would cover my ears so I added a second row of bobbles in the brim area - (thanks to lynnewio here on ravelry for the inspiration) just repeated the bobble row + the three rows once more.
Also did k-tbl in the knit stitches throughout the bottom band area. (even above the bobbles)
oh - and I changed this hat to knit in the round. I just thought that this hat didn’t need a seam, but this is just my personal preference.

Other notes:
This was my first hat ever knitted.
I used a little more than one skein of yarn. (I think the extra row of bobbles is the reason - and I had a knot in the middle of the skein I chose to use so that also contributed a bit.)

FO Fetching

These Fetching Mitts from Knitty.com knit up very fast.
I used the extra ball from leftovers from backyard leaves scarf. (which oddly enough, happened to be the same yarn and color from the Knitty pattern!)
I did make one modification - I added another cable row in the top part of the mitt. Just thought that it mirrored the bottom better.
Let's see, first cables, first picked up stitches (to make the thumbs). Neither gave me any troubles (but I also have my Vogue Big Book of Knitting to use as a reference - so I have good reference materials to help me out.)
Love them. I can drive in them and my hands won't slip on the wheel. They are suprisingly warm.

Fetching. Still needs blocking, but
that will have to wait until I can part
with them for a few days!

Blocked!

So, just wanted to show off the blocked Backyard Leaves scarf from scarf style. (Love this book! There are soo many things that I want to knit out of it.)
This was my first foray into blocking and boy howdy, did it make a difference! So much better now.

Hello. I am a scarf. I lie nice and flat now
that I have been blocked!


Another angle. Look at the pretty leaves!

When I was first knitting this - almost a year ago - I brought it to Florida and was showing it to my Grandma. (Who used to knit and ran a KNIT SHOP! I wish I could do that now....) My Grandma kept pulling the scarf wider and saying that it was so skinny and maybe I could add on to the sides. I could add on here or even use a different color. But my scarf was too skinny. Harumph. She did keep commenting on how nicely it was knitted and how even my stitches were, but she was stuck on the fact that my scarf NEEDED more width. (but it has this cool edge Grandma! It will be fine eventually! I don't want to add on to the sides! No really. Not. adding. to. scarf.) This time, after blocking, she thought that it was great and just kept on saying how nice it was and the design was so pretty. (and complicated! and look at all of those leaves!) Awww. Thanks Grandma!

So yay for blocking! Blocking helps. Go block your stuff!

And just for comparison - the unblocked version.

I am unblocked.
Determined to be too skinny by
professional Grandma knitter.

FO Pumpkins

I love these pumpkins! They are too cute. And....you get to felt! I am sooo addicted to felting things! Okay, sure the pattern requires seaming (gasp) and lots of it. Maybe you could knit these in the round and no one would be the wiser, but hey - it's going to be felted! You don't have to make the seams all pretty. Just leave a long tail and whipstitch those panels together. Easy peasy. The end result is so worth it. I went a little pumpkin crazy and made lots of these. I gave three away and I still have some that I need to felt. Now get ready - cute pictures follow! (and many more on my flickr site - here's the link to my pumpkin set)

Pattern: Pumpkins from Knitty.com
Yarn: Orange, Lion Brand Wool Color 133 (which is named pumpkin, appropriately)
Brown, Lion Brand Wool Color 125 (named Cocoa)

The bigger pumpkins are the small sixe in the pattern. The smaller pumpkin I made by only increasing to 11 stitches, then decreasing. I also left off the last five rows. (So I decreased to seven stitches and then bound off.)

Cute!


One of the bigger pumpkins.


Tiny palm-sized pumpkin!

Boring - but helpful - notes:
I felted these for two short cycles on my washing machine. (about 15 minutes) I marked all of the seams with cotton twine before felting by tying a loop at the top of each seam. I let them spin dry in the washer. Go spin cycle, go! Barely stuffed with plactic bags and tied cotton twine to make the grooves.

Sewing on the cap:
This project has such detailed instructions then leaves you to figure out the final finishing all on your own! So, here's how I handled it. I put a little bit of fiberfill inside. Then, I used brown thread and sewed through all of the grooves around and pulled tight. I attached a curly vine if I wanted one in a groove. To attach the top I sewed through the top of the panel, then right by the stem in the cap, then back to the middle of the next panel, then to the cap....and so on, all the way around. Voila! Pumpkin! (If this is not so clear, please let me know and I can try to explain better - maybe with photos or something.)

These are soo adorable. I gave two to my sister when she moved and she wouldn't even stuff them in a bag! She left them sitting out on top of all of her stuff during her drive! I gave another to my Grandma (who used to knit). She said that it was soo cute and better than a real one! (She also kept showing it to my Grandpa: "Look at my pumpkin, isn't it cute?") My brother even thought they were cool. Sooo cute. Cuteness rating - high. Very high. (Rated by all who see them.) If you have the slightest inkling to make these - do!

magic y'all, magic! - and my invite arrived!

So, I have been invited! Finally! and if you're asking to what....well, where have you been? I've finally received my invite to Ravelry! I am very excited. I have spent numerous hours looking and adding (and more looking and more adding). The Ravelry site is so awesome.
Reasons why it is awesome:
(a) I wanted to make a hat and found a pattern, but couldn't find a picture of said hat on a head. It has cables and I had no idea what it would look like on. And said hat is for a boy and it couldn't look too frilly. There are 50 pictures of this hat on Ravelry! and google search turned up one pic on a head! Awesome!
(b) Wanted to make hat for my sister for Christmas, but I have no idea what. Found one! (and I thought I would have to design something when I have never made a hat before.) Now I know she will have a cool hat. (and I am making one for myself too. can't wait!)
(c) Resources, resources. Forums, pictures of FOs, ideas, stash organization, people's notes.

So, to sum up: Awesome! I've only been playing for a day, but man, if you haven't yet, get on that waiting list! I'm kristiknits on Ravelry. Go check it out. http://www.ravelry.com/

Now for my UFO story....
My second knit item ever that I started was Backyard Leaves from Scarf Style. (great book, by the way. I want to make most of what is in there.) Second item and I'm doing a chart. I started it in New Zealand and finished one half of the scarf. Set it aside because I started driving into work and didn't have all that knit time on the subway. Fast forward several months.....
Get scarf out and realize I don't have enough yarn to finish another half! eep! Could have been that I didn't buy enough (but I bought an extra ball for my first project, so I think I would have bought an extra) or (probably) I lost a ball. Oh noes!

Hello, I am half of a scarf. Don't you want to finish me?

So, I set out on a quest for another ball. Call, call, call. Drive, drive, drive. No one seems to have any in the color I need. (don't even care about dye lot anymore, I just want enough to finish!)

I'm telling my problem to these nice ladies at Cast-on Cottage (Hello! Y'all are awesome!) and they take pity on me and my dilemma. They are pulling alternate yarns to add on to the ends, calling other stores and have a sheet out to order a whole bag of the color I need just so I can have another ball. (awesome, right?)

One lady, Susan, suggests to use a shawl pin. Genius! Half a scarf pinned stays cozy round my neck, I still have the leaves in front, and *POOF* UFO to FO. Magic!

Here is my pin (which I will be able to use with other future FOs)

Cute shawl/scarf pin. Kitty and yarn.

So, my scarf still needs to be blocked, but it is finished! And I can wear it! Yay for magic!

Close up of the leaves. Pretty!