Archive for the ‘Fingerless Gloves’ Category
I don’t think I told you about my friend Braden. He runs Interrobang Photography, and took some great family portraits, as well as this headshot for when I got this article published.
Seriously… check out this headshot! Did I mention it was like 8pm and DARK outside?
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| From Misc Pics |
As a thank you for his relatively free service (I had to buy him lunch once. It was cheap), I offered him some knitted goodness. He asked for a scarf, because that’s what everyone asks for. I decided that he needs gloves more than he needs a scarf. I also decided to put something special on the gloves (which I won’t put on here, in the event that he decides to read this blog), but my execution has been less than satisfactory.
Here you see glove #1, take #2, right before it got ripped back to the ribbing.
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| From Warm Stuff |
Mourn not for it – as it will soon see its destiny as a kick ass photographer’s glove!
I *finally* finished the fingerless gloves – now known as my fingerless lovelies, because they are so pretty!
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| From Adventures in Lace |
I couldn’t be happier with them. They are warm, pretty, and I can wear them in the office when the air conditioner would otherwise make me freeze.
The older boy saw them and wants a pair (no lace in his though). The younger one will want a pair too… I better get crackin’!
So I’ve been doing a lot of writing (although not here) and a lot of working (also not here), but I’ve also been doing a fair bit of knitting.
I finished Ashur’s hat, using some scrap cashmerino wool for the top. He didn’t mind
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| From Baby Stuff |
I flew to California for a family visit, and managed to get in some good Train knitting on the Plane. I’m now almost done with the first passenger car, and I’m getting very excited about it!
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| From Train Scarf |
While I was in California, my sister-in-law asked for a hat, and after much debate about ‘good yarn’ and ‘yarn stores’, I agreed to *try* JoAnn Fabrics (I’m a bit of a yarn-store snob). I found out that Lion Brand Yarn makes Cashmerino! After the store, I cast on as soon as we were in the car, and 4 hours later, Natalie had a hat.
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| From Hats |
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| From Hats |
I also finished a bonnet and pair of booties for a friend of a friend who had a baby girl.
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| From Baby Stuff |
I’m still working on my fingerless gloves. Every time I think I’m close and try them on, I realize that they are NOT done.
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| From Adventures in Lace |
However, sometimes, I need some simple knitting, and my shrug-bolero-thingie just wasn’t long enough… so I ripped out the cast-on edge and I’m gonna at least finish another skein of yarn before I decide what to do with it.
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| From Fun with Sweaters |
For someone who *hates* Chicago Winter as much as I do, you’d think that I’d be elated that Summer is here… and I am, don’t get me wrong. But I can’t knit in this heat! After walking for 5-20 minutes in Chicago heat-midity, it takes my hands a good 10 minutes to get dehumidified enough to be able to handle yarn with any sort of realistic tension. I’ve discovered that THIN yarn works the best for Summer Knitting. (I’ve finished Ed’s socks, but have no modeled photos yet, so you’ll just have to wait until he can put WOOL socks on….)
I’ve been making great progress on the fingerless “office” mitts. I need them in the office for when someone decides that an office needs to be anywhere between 10 and 40 degrees cooler inside than it is outside. Ridiculous! You come in all ‘damp’ from walking in the outside heat-midity, then are flash-frozen as soon as you near your desk. Simply absurd. I have a space heater for the SUMMER! Think of all the dead dinosaurs that could be saved by using LESS energy to cool a building. SAVE the Dead Dinosaurs! (or knit fingerless mitts…)
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| From Adventures in Lace |
I feel like this looks like a dress right now… but it’s too big for barbie, and too small for anyone that I know… so fingerless mitts they shall be!
I’m making fast progress on them, so I’ve started thinking about what other Summer Knits I could do. I went through my stash today and started pairing things up:
A hat for the baby Ashur. This is the last of his yarn from his ‘going home outfit’, so I figured he needs a new hat
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| From Misc Pics |
A pair of socks for me. (I’m not looking forward to them because it feels like a long-term investment, but they will be AWESOME when they are done)
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| From Misc Pics |
Another pair of socks for the only grown person on the planet who would wear what I have in mind for this yarn
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| From Misc Pics |
A hat like my butterfly hat, but with fishies instead (this feels like an autumn project… but it’s been on my mind for a while)
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| From Misc Pics |
*Something* with these. This is the leftover yarn from my Autumn Cowl and some other leftovers from last year’s Christmas Adventure.
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| From Misc Pics |
I decided to use up the rest of my cotton (from my first attempt at a sweater a year and a half ago) and make a zig-zag washcloth. I am now DONE with cotton. It makes my hand hurt. I’m sticking to animal fibre from here on out.
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| From 2011 FOs |
My blogversary was yesterday.
There was cake.
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| From Misc Pics |
(for those of you who are not ‘up’ on yarn-jargon, when yarn is wound on a yarn-ball winder, the resulting ‘ball’ is actually called a cake. You may laugh now – either at my joke, or the ridiculous naming convention of knitters… because both are pretty darn funny!)
I celebrated my blogversary, not by blogging, but by working on… (drumroll please….)
a SWEATER!
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| From Fun with Sweaters |
Well, a shrug, really… well, the pattern says it’s a Bolero – which is really kind of a shrug… which is about a half of a sweater…
It’s going to be for wearing with dresses, because I can’t find a single sweater/shrug/bolero/thingie that I like with my dresses… so I must make it.
It is Malabrigo (of course)… and true to Malabrigo’s form – the yarn WILL NOT turn itself into a nice ball. First, it took a good 45 minutes to get wound into a ball by hand, then two and a half attempts on the yarn ball winder (the half-one was pretty awesome… the cake thought it turned into a bird, and flew into the window, scaring the jeebus out of Tux!) Then finally, after the last yarn-ball cake turned into a jellyfish, an old-school hand-wound ball. The hand-wound seems to be doing okay for now, so we’ll see if it lasts. I have 4 more hanks that will presumably go into this sweater/shrug/bolero/thingie, so we’ll see how much of the Malabrigo-ball-cake-suffering continues.
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| From Misc Pics |
This is a particularly tame picture of the yarn-suffering this weekend endured. The rest were too unwieldy to stop and take a picture. If I had taken my eyes off for a second, Malabrigo would have taken it as a challenge to see how much MORE tangled it could have gotten in the .002 seconds that my eyes were turned.
Also, I started Ed’s second pair of socks. I call them Tweedy Socks, because they are made with Tweed yarn. Yes, I am a dork. He loves me anyway. Probably because he gets socks.
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| From Socks |
I also finished the first part of the four-part series – my “desk gloves”. Fingerless gloves to wear in the office when the air conditioning gets so cold that my fingers stop working. I have the first ‘cuff’. Soon, I will have the second ‘cuff’ (after I actually cast it on and start working on it), then both ‘cuffs’ will have stitches picked up all around, and will be worked two-at-a-time until I have two desk gloves (it sounds like only a three-part series, but trust me, it’s four… maybe even 5 or 6… because there’s lace involved at the end).
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| From Adventures in Lace |
So anyway… happy blogversary to me! I accept gifts… either knitpicks gift cards or yarn. :-)
It has hit me. I’m not sure there’s a cure. I feel the need to START projects. The Harlot calls it Startitis. It is a very serious affliction.
It all started last weekend when I finished both the Cowl and Ed’s socks, and as a result had nothing on the needles. I decided to start a pair of Evil Stepmother socks for myself for an ‘at home’ project, and a Market Bag out of Shibui Knits for my ‘on the go’ project.
The socks are awesome. I’m very excited about them, but the yarn is SO SMALL! I think it may be the tiniest, skinniest yarn I’ve ever worked with. I have the toes done, and I’m about to enter the endless stockinette before I get to the gussets. I’m not sure my hands can handle gripping such tiny needles for extended periods of time.
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| From Socks |
The market bag has sort of lost my interest. I LOVE the yarn, but I feel like using it for a market bag is wasting it. I think it’s going to take a time out until I can figure out what I really want to do with that yarn.
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| From Oddities |
Sometime this week, Joey stole my hat. The one I made for him last March is now too small, so I think he needs another one (that is not mine). The other night, I ‘flashed my stash’ for him so that he could go through it and figure out which yarn he wanted me to use. He picked out the very same yarn that he decided on when we went to the yarn store (many moons ago). Check out the SAME SKEIN, top and bottom…
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| From Misc Pics |
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| From Misc Pics |
I turned that into my ‘on the go’ project and this is where I am with it:
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| From Hats |
The only problem with ‘flashing your stash’ is that you realize exactly how much yarn you have – which I think is one of the causes of Startitis, the need for Stashbusting, because this is what I want to do now (in no particular order):
Start a hat for a guy at work that keeps asking for one with this yarn:
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| From Misc Pics |
Make some socks for a dear friend of ours (the one who officiated our marriage) with this yarn:
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| From Misc Pics |
Make the fingerless mitts that I was going to make with this yarn:
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| From Misc Pics |
Start a ‘fake isle’ hat with these two skeins:
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| From Misc Pics |
I have one of these!
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| From Mom’s Sleevies |
Do you know what that means?? It means that THIS IS DONE!!!
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| From Mom’s Sleevies |
Please pay no attention to the fact that one is rufflier than another.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Those ruffles are identical… IDENTICAL I TELL YOU!!!!
So remember the bandage glove that I made? It really was bad enough to knock the wind out of my ‘dinner night gloves’ sails… but then I got the fabric samples from Mom in the mail… and Inspiration smacked me like a ruler to the wrists
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| From Misc Pics |
The purple almost perfectly matched the Malabrigo that I used to make KK’s hat and cowl set (not in these pictures, apparently, but in real life – they are CLOSE!). According to Ravelry, I had about 80 yards of the Malabrigo left. Practical experience told me that 80 yards was not going to be enough to make anything worth wearing, so I improvised with the ‘bandage yarn’ since I can’t return a used skein.
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| From 2011 FOs |
I’m actually pretty happy with it. I’ll have to see how it looks next to the dress, but for now, I am satisfied.
I have exactly this much of the Malabrigo yarn left:
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| From Misc Pics |
I’ve also been working on Mom’s Sleevies – it’s my ‘not at home knitting’ project
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| From Mom’s Sleevies |
… and Ed’s socks are coming along (they were put on pause for a week since I had to steal the needles to make my Dinner Night Gloves – Ed is happy that they are back on their proper needles and making progress again)
Ashur’s sweater apparently has buttons. As soon as I get those in the mail, I will finish up the sleeves and make this a full FO!
