Category: Knitting

The Best Laid Plans

Leave a comment

I know better than to say I’m going to get something done quickly. Or I should, by now, anyway. No more than an hour after I posted about needing to finish the gift I was knitting, it looked like this:

No, I didn’t turn it into a hedgehog instead. I frogged it. For those unfamiliar with the term, I ripped it out. All of it. Well, all except the head. That I went back to and closed up at the bottom with a ridge of purl bumps for attaching it to the “body” later.

The original body was nice and square at the top, but the bottom half got very elongated and not so pretty. So I tried again, this time aiming to knit the body as two separate squares with the “tummy patches” created by a color-work circle in the middle. That didn’t work out so well, either. Finally, I came up with crocheting the center circle and knitting the outer edge around.

Ok, first I tried to crochet the whole thing from the center, but turning the circle into a square without adding giant holes at the corner didn’t seem like it was going to happen. I made the front and back, color-reversed squares separately and then sewed them together with a blanket stitch and whip stitched the head in place:

After the party, of course. But, being a party for a 1-year-old, presents didn’t get opened until the next day so I snuck it in the bag right before it was opened.

Plugging Along

Leave a comment

I’ve been fairly project-monogamous, if you will, lately. Mostly because I have until Monday (not Sunday, as I thankfully found out yesterday) to turn this:

into something a bit more like this:

(random lovie picture from Amazon)

Okay, I don’t really have to take it from ball form. It’s quite a bit past this stage:

But that is the last time I took a photo. Still, I have to finish the body, then crochet the edging, then add the black detail patches to the face. So, a lot to get done. It doesn’t help that I managed to injure my finger with the size 1.5 needles.

https://twitter.com/caseykay08/status/372503996314836993

Which leads to a little impromptu review of the Knitpicks Options fixed circular needles. These things are great. The tips are (obviously) very sharp, so you can get through those tiny stitches that are made on size 0-3 needles. Plus, the cable is very flexible and the joins are smooth so there is never any fighting with the needle when you are trying to move stitches around.

Okay, enough talking about it. I’ve got to go finish the lovie so it can have a bath, a dry, and a possible de-linting, before Monday’s party.

Light and Breezy

Leave a comment

I love layering. So much so that I have a drawer’s worth of plain colored t-shirts and tank tops that exist solely to be worn underneath other shirts or vests. I mean, I could wear them by themselves, but that would be boring.

One thing my dresser has been missing for a while in the layering department is what I like to call a “mesh shirt.” I’m sure it has another name, but I am too lazy to actually look it up. I had one for a long time that was pastel tie-dye, but it had a few holes that were bigger than they should be because they got snagged or torn in the wash.

Browsing for projects (because I never have enough projects lined up, right?) I came across the Breezy T pattern by Brenda Bourg on the Red Heart website. It was so perfect I even matched the color of the sample.

It turned out extremely well. This was my first attempt at crocheting a garment. Many hats before, and a couple of arm bands, but never a shirt. That kind of thing I tend to reserve for knitting. Because (for those who don’t know) knitted fabric tends to have more drape and be more suited for clothing than stiffer, crocheted fabric.

Because of the mesh structure, though, this shirt is quite nice and soft. The one thing I changed from the pattern was the sleeve edging. What was written does not seem like the edging in the sample picture, plus it was way too wavy. Instead I used a simple edging that would give me a similar shape to the picture (details here if you want to know, along with all details for the project).

This may become my favorite layering piece of the summer if the temperatures stay where they are. Turn a tank top into a work-appropriate look without making me feel like I’m boiling in my skin when we are outside.