The UFO pile is dismissed

Right, so here is the UFO pile as it stands now. Five projects completed, three projects ripped, three in progress, two on hold and one hibernating.

Completed projects:

• Boyfriend jacket
• Railway socks
• Yellow doily
• Purple shrug
• Endpaper mitts

Ripped projects:

• Man's cabled vest
• Drops bolero
• Secret of the stole

Works in progress:

• Frost flowers and leaves shawl
• Latvian mittens
• Lace dress

Projects on hold:

• Mermaid
• Brick scarf thingymajig

Hibernating project:

• Majestic braids afghan

So, all in all, I think I made some good completion and I was also forced to make some decisions about projects that had lain untouched for too long...hence the ripping. The mermaid is on hold because my only long 3mm circular is tied up in the frost flowers. The brick scarf thingy is on hold because I'm using the orange yarn from that for the lace dress and I'm still not sure if I have enough yarn for the dress, so I might have to rip out part of the scarf. My motivation level to finish all of that sewing in the majestic braids is just so low...don't know when I'll get around to finishing that one.

But apart from all of that, I feel nice and free to browse lots of nice projects and take an inventory of the very plentiful stash and see what's coming next! Ah, how long before the next UFO pile is on parade...??...

Star Bubby Blanket

I said it would probably be finished this week, and here it is - the star-shaped baby blanket, all done!

Pattern: 'Star-shaped Afghan', free from the Diva Crochets! site

Yarn: yep, more Macedonian stuff...this one's called 'Menada' and it's 100% fake stuff. What it actually consists of is a mystery. But the yardage is 142m=50gr. I used 2 balls of the brown, 3 balls of the caramel and 4 balls of the cream colour.

Hook: 5.5mm

Finished measurements: 42cm from centre to short indent, 79cm from centre to point

What a great little pattern. So easy, so quick, so cute! And the good thing is, I still have a couple of months before the recipient will be born! Plenty of time to do another little project for...um...it...well, maybe 'her'. :-)

Weekend in the Snow

The man and I spent a long weekend in Levi, hence the blogless weekend. It was a weekend of firsts for me. Thursday night, I saw the Northern Lights! They formed a big arc across the whole sky, pale green in colour, and they moved so quickly, spinning and fluttering as they went. Can't wait to see more of them, when there are more colours.

Friday was the one of those really picturesque winter days, when the sky is clear, the sun is low and the snow is sparkling. The two pictures with the sun were taken at 1pm. And yep, that's how high the sun was! But it was really beautiful walking around in the snow and on the frozen lake.

Saturday saw Steffi on skis! Nervousness abounded for my first time on the slope, but the man proved to be a very nice teacher and I got the hang of it straight away and after a couple of hours I could do turns and stuff. I looked like a total doofus, but that's what you get when you put a desert girl into the arctic!

So, a very nice weekend. There was some crafty stuff going on, mainly the frost flowers and leaves. It's now big enough to require an 80cm circular. I feel like I've done so much work on it, but last night when I looked on the spreadsheet for this pattern, it told me that I've done a grand total of 7% of it. Oh man! So much more to go...but now that it's on the bigger circular, I can see the leaves emerging and it has spurred me on. Only 125 000 stitches to go!

Wobbly scarf

A new scarf! It's the 'stacked wedges' scarf from Lynne Barr's Knitting New Scarves, which I blogged about a while ago.


Started it a couple of days ago and it seems to be going fairly quickly and incident-free so far. It's an elegantly simple pattern with an interesting result. The picture in the book used a plain yarn and it showed up the short rows clearly, but with this multi-faceted yarn it kind of hides those details, which might be a bit of shame but then again it might not matter at all!

Here's a link to a gallery of all of the patterns in the book, so you can start writing your list of new scarves to make!

Mixed Bag

So, nothing huge to report at the moment, but how about a few little progress reports?

After the painstaking start, the frost flowers and leaves is up and running again. Hit a little bump in the road with the silly 'move stitch marker one to the left' quatsch, but sorted that out finally. Now we're on a roll and things are looking up, although you can see from the picture that I'm not taking anything for granted and lifelines will definitely abound for the rest of this project!

Then the star blanket. The third colour has just started today, and I expect to finish it by next week. Why do I get the feeling that this is not the last star-shaped blanket I will be making???

And a new cast on, some latvian mittens, long-awaited. [sorryaboutthecrummyfoto] I couldn't quite get my head around doing such huge and intricate cuffs as the book details, so I wimped out and went for plain ribbing. These mittens are from Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mittens (if you have the book, the chart is number 96) and using my can't-knit-without-it drops alpaca, on 2mm needles. The points on these needles are really sharp and I find that I'm splitting the yarn often, but am getting used to them. Much prefer metal needles this small because bamboo ones bend too much and I feel like they might snap at any moment.

Winter Wonderland

Well, winter is here. Today it's -10deg...[shiver]. We have snow, snow, and for those who like snow, we have snow.


The first few days of real snow were absolutely terrible, because it was around zero degrees at that time and the snow was turning to ice. Needless to say, ice is bloody slippery. I had such a miserable time slipping all over the place, hurting my wrist and bum and feeling so unsure of how to walk. My daily commute normally takes about 25 minutes, but it was taking up to an hour to make the journey because I was walking like a 90-year-old woman with two broken hips and a bad set of glasses. But, the story isn't all bad; now I have a new pair of boots with better grip and great insulation, and it's colder here now so the snow is more like powder and hence is not as slippery. Now my commute is down to about 35 minutes and the feeling of dread that used to accompany any remote thought of walking outside is subsiding.

And it's really pretty! All the white everywhere looks stunning. But unfortunately there isn't much time to see it, because the sun isn't coming up so much now. Case in point: these pictures were taken at about 3pm (and I edited them to make them lighter).

Only four months of winter left to go. :-)

A star is born!

I have to say that I think I've been doing really well at finishing projects recently - all of the xmas presents, plus the daunting UFO pile...so I've given myself a break and allowed myself to do something that wasn't on the original menu.

This is from the Diva Crochets! blog, a free pattern for this star-shaped blanket. It's super-quick, super-simple and is now my talking-on-the-fone/watching some stories project. It's a present for a friend of mine who is having a baby in a couple of months. I'm also considering making her this baby jacket in orange and very light brown.

In other news, I ripped the orange vest that was on the UFO pile...it was just a bad choice of yarn for the pattern, not elastic and likely to break. Doesn't count as finishing a project, but it's one less on the list at least.

The Demise of the Drops Bolero

The story so far:

Early 2007 (perhaps March), Steffi visits a LYS which is having a closing-down sale and picks up five balls of cotton-linen blend for a bargain and promptly casts on drops pattern 98-38, a sleeveless bolero-y thingy which looks very nice in the picture (like very many drops designs do.

After completeing the back piece easily, Steffi moves on to the side panels.


And above we have the progess to date.

However, while Steffi is working away at the first side panel, she finds that the pattern is vague when it comes to measurements.

"when piece measures xxx cm, do such and such"

The problem is that the said piece is curved. Beats me whether I'm supposed to measure from the inside, from the middle or from the outside, and how my tape measure will cope with the task.

Add to that more generalities and vagueness for the remainder of the pattern, and Steffi's increasing annoyance at drops patterns and their oftentimes sloppy translations, and Steffi rips the whole thing out in a calm and considered fashion.

And here we are now:


Five balls of the aforementioned yarn, ready and waiting to be redone. What next? None other than my first "Knitting New Scarves" pattern! It's just begging to be crafted into the 'New Wave' pattern, which, as the name hints, is a wavy creation that uses some nifty techniques. I hope these techniques will also come in handy when I finally get around to learning how to knit two socks at the same time - on the same set of needles.

I can't remember ever doing so much of a project and then abandoning it altogether, but I feel good about it. No guilt, no shame, no regrets, just new yarn and soon, a new scarf.

Yellow Doily

Another project off the ol' UFO pile: the yellow doily!

This really took only a few hours to finish up, after sitting around for months and months with no progress whatsoever. It wasn't very hard at all; the hardest part was fiddling around doing single crochets into chain stitches for a whole round (at the beginning of the crescents). And the yellow is nice and bright and cheerful, just like me the morning after a night on the town! :-)

Pattern: Doily No. 7797, free from Celt's Vintage Crochet

Measurements: 36cm diameter

Yarn: Cotton crochet thread, about 35-40 grams

Hook: hmmm...I ended up using a 1.25mm hook, but I might not have started with that number...could have started with a 1.00mm...but what's a quarter of a millimetre between friends?

No mods for this one, all pretty straight-forward.

I think that the Celt's Vintage Crochet site is really worth looking at. I find myself going back to it often for classic, elegant designs.

Coming up tomorrow - why I ripped the Drops bolero, and what I plan on doing with the frogged yarn!

And btw, I finally managed to get onto Ravelry (hence the blog-post-less weekend) and I lurrve it! What a fabulous resource. My Rav name is 'elsteffo'. See you there :-)

Snowflake Socks

Alright! The snowflake socks are done!


(thanks to my model who was gracious enough to endure my pedantic foto-taking)

I'm so pleased with them, after the not-so-successful start.

Pattern: Snowflake socks from Interweave Knits Autumn 2007 issue
Yarn: Drops Alpaca, 100% Alpaca, 50gr=180metres, colours #2110 (cream) and #2920 (purple), less than one ball of each colour needed.
Needles: 3mm dpns
Notes: I didn't like the ankle cuff in this pattern, so I changed it to match the cast on I used for the Endpaper Mitts and worked in rib for the first two rows before changing colours. Also, I omitted a pattern repeat on the foot section to make them shorter, which means in total there are five snowflake pattern repeats.

The toe part of this sock is quite long. I think the ankle cuff could be done on smaller needles (1/4mm or 1/2mm smaller) and then use bigger needles on the pattern sections. The same could be done with the heel part - half a mm smaller needles.

These are gorgeous socks and I know I'm going to make another pair sometime, but the question is - what colour next???

Easy Peasy Lime Squeezy Scarf

Introducing the Easy Peasy Lime Squeezy Scarf! The sweet little thing is enjoying some playtime on the swing...but there's nobody there to push!


This pattern really is super-simple and is perfect for beginners, but it's a little more interesting than just plain garter stitch or 1x1 rib. I created it as a transportable-and-don't-need-to-concentrate piece. It can be easily altered in both width and length to fit any neck. Another good thing is that it's reversible, so it looks the same on both sides.

Yarn:

• Innovation 'Fan-Wolle' self-striping yarn
• 75% superwash wool, 25% polyamid
• 100gr=420m
• colour #1126 (pale and forest green)
• approximately 150gr required

Needles: 3mm (I used 22cm long bamboo straights)
Measurements: 11cm x 200cm after blocking
Tension: ah stuff it - just go for it!


Pattern

Cast on 42 stitches (or any multiple of three)
Row 1: *K2, P1; repeat from * to end
Repeat row 1 until piece measures 200cm long (or desired length)
Cast off in rib pattern.

To block, lay flat and spray lightly with water and leave to dry.

Yay!

Endpaper Mitts

I'm a happy chappy, after finishing these little beauties!


Pattern: Endpaper Mitts by Eunny Jang, free on her old blog.
Yarn: Drops Alpaca, 100% Alpaca, 50gr=180m, colours #517 (grey) and #506 (charcoal), less than one 50gr ball of each colour required
Needles: 2mm for ribbing, 3.25mm for colourwork area
Measurements: 31cm long, 17cm circumference (at smallest point, before thumb increases begin)
Notes: Oh what wonderful mitts! I loved this pattern, absolutely loved it. It was fabulous for training my stranded technique (one yarn in each hand) and now I feel comfortable with working two colours at a time. I used a great k1p1 cast on, found on video here (scroll down, it's the last one) and I especially liked the way the first couple of ribbing rows create a thicker, firmer edge that still stretches.

These mitts are for a man, so I made the largest size stated (and hence the dreary colour scheme), but I really should have cast on a few more stitches for the beginning cuff, because while they're a good size for me, most men have bigger forearms than my little wimpy pair. Hopefully they're not too tight on the recipient.

The kitchener cast-off is an absolute bitch, man it takes so long and it's so hard to get the tension right, but in the end, it looks so much better than my usual trad cast off.

All in all, I love these so much. The pattern is great, not easy, not too hard and I wil definitely be making more of these in the future. Perhaps pink and white...or orange and yellow...

No chickens counted yet

Well, I suppose it serves me right for tinkling with a pattern without testing it beforehand...this is how far I got with the snowflake socks before I realised that this one was definitely too small. It didn't even fit the itsy-bitsy Japanese girl in my language class!

So, it has been ripped and started again, this time on bigger needles. Surprisingly enough, I'm only mildly pissed off with myself for this. This sock was definitely far from perfect in more ways than just the size, so this time I can make it much better and the finished socks will end up being a better gift.

Live and learn.