March 28, 2007

dashing number 2


I really enjoyed my first pair of Dashing so I decided to make another pair. This time I used Lion Brand Cashmere Blend. It turned out much softer and cleaner-looking.

dashing2


Pretty? I love the color. Sadly, it doesn't work very well with my skin tone. =( Here are a few more pictures of Dashing.

lora3
my friend lora modeling dashing at work



dashing3


I have a few more finished objects to show you and one or two WIPs. I'll save those for another day. =)

Knit hard!

March 22, 2007

just a quickie


since my last post i've finished a few more objects. i havn't taken pictures of them, but, i hopefully will get the chance tomorrow.

i've made another pair of Dashing but this time in Lion Brand Cashmere Blend. hmm, cashmere blend? sounds familiar. =)

one of the fastest things i've ever made is Calorimetry. i used Malabrigo in the Tortuga colorway. i looked up "tortuga" and i found it means "tortoise". my Malabrigo is varying shades of a purple-grey color. other skeins of Tortuga had greens in them which makes sense... so, i guess my skein was faulty. =( it looks good though, and it was a SUPER FAST knit. i still need to find a button for the attachment.

i started another moss rib stitch scarf in Malabrigo in the Solymar colorway. so far the color has been pooling weird, but, i'll keep going and hope it looks better.

i've really been at a loss for things to knit. i figured since i've done Dashing twice i might as well try Fetching so i went to my LYS looking for some Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. they had none so i browsed a bit more and finally decided that i would try to knit my first pair of socks. so, bought some superwash wool and i'll be getting started on that project tonight.

hopefully i'll be able to post pictures of my FOs and WIPs soon.

knit hard!

March 15, 2007

yarny


Sorry about the lack of updates!

Knitting has been slowing down a little over here. I've decided to stop knitting scarves since the weather is getting warmer. Scarves were such a huge part of my knitting repertoire that now I have nothing to knit.

In my last post I had finished the ski hat with ear flaps. The fit was a little weird and the knitted fabric ended up being really thin so I decided to try again. This time I double stranded the yarn and added a few size changes.


new prototype!


The flaps and the bottom inch and a half are ribbed. I double stranded Malabrigo (in Autumn Forest) and Rowan Yarns Silk Wool (leftover yarn from Odessa).
The middle section was Malabrigo and Wool Pak Yarnz (in Brownstone).
The top was just double stranded Malabrigo.
With all the changes the hat is now much thicker and much more fitted. I'm still not too happy with the ear flaps. No matter how much I adjust them to look more rounded instead of pointed the ribbing just pulls in and messes up the shape.

Because I had no idea what to knit I decided to try a pattern on-line for fingerless gloves. Knitty.com came out with their Spring 2007 issue and it had Dashing, a more male-friendly counterpart for their Fetching pattern.
I'm in love with Malabrigo and so I decided to use it for Dashing. The colorway I chose (Vaa) is a bit dark, and it's quite varigated so I paired it up with Catalina (a silk and wool blend). The Catalina was a solid lighter blue so I figured it would help balance the Malabrigo and help the cables visually pop out.


dashing!


Dashing turned out pretty well. I had spent a whole night swatching Malabrigo + other yarns and when I finally got to the Catalina I got lazy and decided to just go for it with a size 8 needle. The fit turned out alright but it ended up being about 2~ inches longer than the pattern stated (I even left a few rows out!).
It knit up fairly quickly and it doesn't take much yarn (only about half a skein of Malabrigo!).


modeled by my friend kevin


Isn't Kevin a great model? ^_^
He recently bought a Nintendo DS Lite. It's like the more current version of the Game Boy. He bought a case for it and was a bit disappointed because the case was very thin--not protective at all. So, he asked me to knit one for him.
I looked on-line for a pattern but the only nice one I found required some sort of Turkish Cast On using 2 24 inch circular needles in a size 8. I didn't have two... I didn't even have one... so I decided to create a pattern myself.


DS!


It's a pretty basic pattern. I just knit two separate rectangles and left them on the needles. I used the 3 needle bind-off to connect the bottoms and then I just seamed up the edges. The yarn is Carron Simply Soft. It's a REALLY soft acrylic but acrylic and I don't really get along. It just seemed to want to stick to my wooden needles. o_O But, I finished and I'm happy with the results.

@nikki: My first Odessa I used Rowan Yarns Cashsoft (142 yards) and it took less than one ball. The second Odessa I increased the pattern a bit (to fit my big head) and used Rowan Yarns Silk Wool which only has 96 yards and I ended up needing about 7 more yards from a second ball to finish.

That's my update for now! Hopefully I'll find more things to knit soon.