Sesame Seed Designs » FOs 2005

snow and knitting go together

Casey — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 19:48:00 +0000

I have pictures of what I’ve been up to since my last post. Knitting, knitting and more knitting.
I knitted some bath puffs out of cotton chenille for my girlfriends and was in such a hurry to send them off that I forgot to take a picture. They turned out really cute and just when I finished them, my yarn order finally arrived on Friday so I’ve been knitting my dad’s scarf like crazy. Every spare moment I was knitting and I finally finished it last night. When I got up this morning my first thought was that I didn’t have to knit that scarf today and I was thrilled! I have so many other Christmasy things I want to get done and now I can because the scarf is no longer consuming me. Part of the reason I was able to finish so quickly (really in 3 days because I didn’t knit Monday because I went and saw U2 on their final show of the tour!!!) was that it snowed on Sunday! I got sent home 3 hours early from work and went in 2 hours late on Monday because it was icy so I had more time to knit. Portland doesn’t usually get snow so the city kind of freaks out. My dog had never seen snow and he went nuts! He ran around like a crazy possessed dog and scooped up lots of snow in his mouth. Here’s a picture of us in my snowy backyard. So my dad’s scarf is knitted out of Knit Picks Andean Treasure. It’s 100% baby alpaca in the color Granite and it’s so soft! I love it. If it weren’t such a boring, masculine color, I would be tempted to keep it for myself. I don’t think any of my pictures captured the true color. It’s a pretty medium shade of brown mixed with a little grey. I think my dad will like it. I knit three braided cable patterns with a seed stitch border. My original plan was to knit a complex celtic braid since my dad is Irish and loves all things Celtic but that was before the yarn took so long to arrive. Since I was running out of time to knit, I realized I needed a simpler pattern that wouldn’t take so much brain work to knit. So this is what I settled on. Before I blocked it, the seed stitch edges curled in.But after blocking, it looks great. I woke up this morning and it was actually dry. I was hoping that it wouldn’t take forever to dry as I only have a few days to get it in the mail but all it took was one night. I love this yarn!
I made Mike model it to see how long it turned out. Notice his cute grey hat knitted by me a few years ago. It’s the only hat he wears. I’m such a good knitty wife. Did you notice his arm in the picture above? That’s his flame sweater he’s wearing! Here’s one last picture of my dad’s scarf. This shows the back, too. This pattern makes me think of the forest and I think the back looks like tree bark, althoughit’s kind of hard to see in this picture. I hope all of you have a great Christmas and a happy new year! I don’t know if I’ll post again until the new year as I’m going to California to hand out some lovely knitted gifts to the family!

Another finished gift!

Casey — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:59:00 +0000

I am on a roll. Christmas is almost here and my presents are almost all done! Well, except for the scarf I haven’t started yet because the yarn is taking forever to get here. My most recent finished project is a scarf for Margitha, my stepmom. This is the scarf that started out as gloves and then briefly was the ruffles scarf from Scarf Style but now it’s a lace pattern with beads. The beads are little pale pink leaves. I finished sewing them on earlier this week and I just wrapped it all up today.
The yarn I used was Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino. I used exactly 2 skeins and the finished size after blocking is just over 6″ wide and 4′ 5″ long. I don’t remember what size needles I used. I took it off the needles a while ago. 6’s maybe?
I didn’t use any particular pattern. It’s just a simple lace pattern. The two panels on the sides are slightly narrower than the middle panels to give it a little variation. I hope Margitha likes it!

Several people have commented on my little stocking Christmas ornament that has the star of David on it. It’s for my friend David who is Christian but since his name is David, he likes the star of David a lot.

I am a Christmas elf

Casey — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 03:02:00 +0000

Really, I am. All I need now are little slippers with the toes curled up. I have been a busy Christmas knitter and it’s been fun. I started knitting tiny sweaters and stockings for Christmas ornaments and I think I’m addicted. After all my bigger projects, it’s really great to knit something that I can finish in an hour. They’re really fun to decorate and personalize, too. The books Weekend Knitting and Last-Minute Knitted Gifts both have mini sweater patterns but since I don’t have either of those books, I just made up my own. If anyone is interested in knowing how I made them, let me know. Here are what I’ve made so far.

I’m going to use them as decorations on my Christmas packages and I think my family will be impressed. This way, everyone will get something knitted. It is going to be a knitted Christmas for my family. Here are my mother-in-law’s socks all wrapped up and pretty.

I also made a label for my mom’s gyrid top. (This is the last picture you’ll see of this top. Well . . . unless I get a picture of my mom wearing it) I used iron-on transfer paper and ironed it onto a ribbon. It turned out really professional looking, if I do say so myself. I even tried it on and I couldn’t feel it at all. No scratchy label for my mama.

Flames are done and the tree is up

Casey — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:58:00 +0000

We got our Christmas tree on Monday! It was muddy and cold but I loved getting the tree. This is our first Christmas in our own home and that is really exciting. We have big windows in the front of our house and the tree is going in front of them so we had to find a tree that looked good from all sides. This year, there is no wall to put the “ugly side” against. We found a really good tree and Mike cut it down. After all his hard work, I thought he deserved nothing less than a nice, warm sweater. Before I show you the sweater, though, here’s a cute dog shot. This is Bradley supervising the placement of the tree on the roof rack. Here is it! I thought I would never finish, but I did and Mike loves it (as he should). The tree only has lights on it because I was getting tired but I wanted to finish the sweater so we didn’t decorate the tree. Hopefully it’ll get some ornaments on it tonight. I don’t think Mike will usually wear a nice collared shirt under this sweater (they don’t quite go together) but I made him try it on over his work clothes. Here are the specs:

Pattern: Jesse’s Flames from Stitch ‘N Bitch Nation
Yarn: Lions Brand Wool-ease. Not my favorite yarn but the sweater is soft and arm and Mike likes it. What more do I need?
Changes I made: A lot. My guage was really different than the pattern. Luckily I like math so it all worked out. I made it a little longer because Mike wanted it that way and left out the red stripes around the cuffs and neckband because, again, Mike wanted it that way. He really wanted the yellow edging around the flames that the sweater had but when I started duplicate stitching it on, we both agreed that it looked really sloppy. It wasnt my fault (really!), it’s just that the yellow didn’t cover the black very well so it didn’t look crisp and nice at all. Looking closely at the picture in the book, you can tell it looks kind of sloppy there, too. That’s not a good sign. Mike was disappointed about not having the yellow but I think he’s over it now. If you’re thinking of making this, I recommend knitting the yellow in intarsia even though it’s only one stitch wide. You’ll appreciate it when it’s done.
What I learned: How to do intarsia! And that it’s not hard! Although I think that more colors would challenge my coordination. I also have come to the conclusion that neckbands suck. I have never knitted one right the first time and this was no exception. Maybe someday I’ll get one right on the first try. I also learned that knitting something as complicated as a sweater for a man is really interesting. I loved knitting for Mike but the next thing he’s getting is a smaller project.

My socks are done!

Casey — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:53:00 +0000

Ta da! Here is my very first pair of knitted socks! I was happy to have finished the 1st one but a complete pair is much more exciting. I wore them for a few minutes last night but then put them away because they’re a Christmas present. I will miss them but (hopefully) they will be loved my my mother in law. It’s exciting to finish projects. Now the only thing I’m knitting is a sweater for myself. Mike’s flame sweater needs blocking and then it’ll be done. I might just have to start something new.

Here’s the info on my socks:

Pattern: Dublin Bay Socks- a free pattern found online. I have a link to it on my sidebar.

Yarn: Lorna’s Laces shepherd sock. The colorway is called watercolor. This was my first time using this yarn and it feels really nice! It’s 4-ply, though, and can be splitty.

Knit for: Diane, my mother-in-law since she often buys me cute socks.

Changes I made: I decreased a few extra stitches so the foot was 4 stitches smaller then the pattern called for. I tried them on when I’d knit the “correct” number and they felt loose around my foot. They feel perfect now so I only hope Diane’s feet are the same as mine!

What I learned: How to knit a sock! It was easier than I imagined and much quicker than I thought knitting on size 1 needles would be. I need to make another pair, this time for me.

Gyrid is all finished!!

Casey — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:49:00 +0000

I finally finished my gyrid top! Here it is! I didn;t mean to not show my face in the pictures but I was using the self-timer and that one happened to be the best picture of the shirt but I didn’t have it lined up right to get my face.
The finishing was the hardest part because a lot went wrong! Nothing I couldn’t fix, though. I seamed the sides and knitted the neckline a few nights ago and then tried it on, expecting it to be fabulous and was very disappointed to see that it bunched a lot around the bottom of the waist. It was pretty bad. That was the biggest problem and it was totally my fault too. I discovered after I had knitted a fair amount of the front that there was an error in the pattern and instead of knitting for 3 inches before starting the waist shaping, I should have only knitted 1 1/4 inches. I didn’t want to start over, naturally, so I assumed it wouldn’t really matter only to discover that it really did matter. So, when I thought I was done I had to go back and rip out the first 15 rows on each piece, and reknit the bottom edge. The result is that it’s about an inch shorter than it was originally but it’s okay. I also had to knit the neckline 3 times because it was too bunchy and scratchy and then it was bound off too tightly and didn’t stretch enough but I finally got it right!

Here are the details:

Pattern: Gyrid from Elsebeth Lavold’s book ‘The Viking Knits Collection’
Yarn: Silky wool (actually the same yarn the pattern was written for- that hardly ever happens!)
Knit for: My lovely mother
Changes I made: I made the armholes 1 inch shorter that the pattern was written and added 1″ to the body to keep it the same length. I also knit the bottom edge and neckline with size 5 needles instead of size 4. I picked up way more stitches around the neckline than the pattern called for because it was too bunchy with the ‘correct’ number of stitches. Finally, I added a cable detail on the back because it was too boring for my taste. The cable pattern was from the same pattern book.
Lessons learned: Look for errata BEFORE starting a project! That was a hard lesson. Because of my error I unraveled from the cast-on edge for the 1st time. I learned that it’s much more tedious but less difficult than I had thought it would be.

That’s all, folks! I hope my mom appreciates it come Christmas!