Friday, December 26, 2008

Cardi + baby hat

wooo Merry Christmas!

New project:
Mrs. Darcy Cardigan from Ramblings of a Knitting Obsessive: www.indieknits.wordpress.com/patterns-2/patterns
I really love her blog! Here is a picture of what I have done so far:

The back, right side, and some of the left side. If I get lazy and/or run out of yarn, it might become a vest. We'll see.
I'm knitting it in Lion Brand Wool Ease in Cranberry, mostly because the yarn was cheap. One day I'll make a real wool sweater, one day...

Also, for my niece, Renate (who is due any day now), I whipped this little guy up. Tomato Baby Beanie.

from: http://acechick.typepad.com/knitchicks_patterns/2006/01/strawberry_bean.html

Here it is flattened. It looks like it's made with the same color as the cardigan, but it's just some red yarn I found in my mom's stash closet. The colors are really wonky in all of my pictures recently. I need to mess around with my camera and try and figure that out.

It's also occurred to me that no one really reads this blog. I'll have to send the link out and remedy that. Not that there's much to see, so far. But I have big plans! 

Monday, December 8, 2008

New yarn!

Oh gosh. The last two weeks were big knitting weeks for me!
Over Thanksgiving break I knitted two hand warming devices, both of my own pattern-- I just picked up the needles and started going. 
Here they are:
Fingerless gloves, knit cuff-up. With Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool that I dyed with kool-aid.


Here is the second pair.. The mitten flap and the thumb flap fold down to be fingerless mitts. For some reason blogger is not at all interested in letting me upload a picture of the flaps folded down.


For my birthday present, my mom took me to Stitches and Scones, a yarn store about an hour away, and bought me yarn. Lots and lots of yarn. Here it is.
In the background: koigu that I have already started socks with.
The rest: The first two are Plymouth Yarn Co sock yarn. Another skein of koigu. (that stuff is expensive!) Then Alchemy Synchronicity. (Also very expensive- that little hank was $24!). The light pink is Manos del Uraguay silk/wool blend. It is beautiful and feels wonderful. The store had so much wonderful Manos del Uraguay yarn and I would've bought it all if I could- it is a great cause also. The red is Berroco ultra aplaca light. The dark green is Malabrigo wool. The two blues are Blue Sky organic cotton. I have never worked with cotton and I really love the feel of it.

The colors are so rich! I think yarn looks so pretty in hanks. It's too bad it's so impractical.


I guess that this yarn is pretty routine for some knitters, but I have been knitting with Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby acrylic for the duration of my knitting career, so this was pure ecstasy.

Awkward fiber addict in ecstasy. The colors are funked up in this picture, the others are truer.

One last thing: my first pair of baby booties for my niece, Renate Marie!


Made out of left-over yarn from a pair of socks for myself, pattern from The Sock Pixie Magic Slippers pattern.  (sockpixie.blogspot.com)

Knit on, grrrrl!
Chrissy

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Nonknitting Things



It's been way too long since I've seen The Royal Tenenbaums.  It's been at least two or three months. I neeeeeed it!


Johnathan Rice. Jenny Lewis. Terrifying red puppet. Total adoration on my part.

That's all, I guess. Coming soon: my new convertible mittens, knitted up on a Lazy Saturday, and some fingerless gloves, knitted up yesterday. And a laptop case that I sewed today.


Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Mica and I got together and gathered up our knitting projects, failed or otherwise, to document and laugh at them. Here they are, along with some miscellaneous ones.


Ma siphoned some flowers from the zillions that Dad received after his surgery and sent them back to school with me. They're bright and happy and wonderful.



I'm also gnome-sitting. You can't see it, but he has a gaping hole in his side. Poor gnome.

Okay, onto knitting-related things.

And by knitting, first I mean crocheting. I made this little guy during finals week of last year, watching America's Next Top Model, taking a break from my Women's Lit final. Thus, he is influenced by both Tyra Banks and Virginia Woolf. See the resemblance?


These were my first attempt at Knucks from Knitty. (http://knitty.com/ISSUEsummer06/PATTknucks.html). It was my first time using double pointed needles and my first time knitting in the round ever. They are ridiculous. Judge them all you want.
Mica is sad about them:

Also, I did not understand the concept of SSK, so I just did k2togs for all of them. I feel like this might contribute to their hideous size. That and my similar lack of knowledge about gauge and needle size and the like.


Hideous arm warmers. These were knit flat and crocheted up the sides-- they're just bad in many ways. :hides in bottom of knitting basket:


Sockies. Lace pattern from Knitty's Coupling socks (http://www.knitty.com/issuesummer07/PATTcoupling.html). Knit toe-up with a short row heel.


Mica's glaucomic owl! I don't remember where she got the pattern. He lives on the railing of my bed's loft now, watching me sleep with his creepy glaucoma eyes. Moral of this story: keep your floats loose when doing fair isle.


Mica's hat, from Knitty's Astrodome. (http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall05/PATTastrodome.html)

Yarn-dying on the stove top results:

I was going for red and green and white, like a peppermint, but I went a little purple heavy and ended up with this.

The second result. I like this one a bit better.

COMING SOON:
(aka, things we are working on)
-Cleaves sweater, from Knitty
-Daisy stitch arm warmers from Purl Bee
-Hideous lion armwarmers
-more dyeing (not dying) fun.

Christine (+ Mica!)
k2tog.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

fail.

So, I FAIL at starting this blog.  I just haven't had a chance to take photos of the knitting that I want to blog about- and knit blogs without pictures are generally lame.
I'm also a columnist for my school's admissions blog, so that along with school has been keeping me vair busy.  

But regardless, here are some things I plan to blog about in the future:

Chrissy's Great Christmas Knitting Project
The Wide World of Socks
A sock pattern or two
An armwarmer pattern
A hand-dying/variegating yarn-making tutorial
AND MUCH MUCH MORE.

More soon!

Chrissy