Tofutsie Anklets and Latest OTN

These anklets are knit with Tofutsie's Bamboo blend yarn. There is enough left in the ball to make another pair of these I think. There's lots of yarn and this stuff is really soft. It splits a bit so I don't think I would use it on my machines, but it's wonderful to hand knit with. I like it.

I finished the Tofutsie's anklets on the plane to Michigan and I started these. This yarn is a hank I got off of eBay from Karen's Kolorways, it's a wool/tencel blend and it's really great. I haven't washed it yet so I don't know how it washes out or if it blooms, but it's very soft and these colors are incredibly vibrant. I believe I'll be buying more of this stuff too :)

Sarah and Tim's Wedding Gift

This was knit on my Toyota KS950. I was inspired by Gladys Goodeys Aran Afghan punchcard and created the hearts in a tuck stitch. The trellis type tuck stitch panel pattern was punched from the Harmony Guide to Machine Knit Stitches. I used Lion Brand's Baby Soft Sport weight yarn, but it's really lighter than sport but a tiny bit heavier than fingering weight. It knit beautifully on my machine and I love the total weight and over all feel to the afghan. It's actually pictured on the top of a queen sized bed, so it's more a coverlet than an afghan :) I sure hope they enjoy it, I think it's really snuggly.

The Hand Knit Booties

These are the hand knit booties, I just love those little mary janes :) I haven't seen them on the baby yet, but I'm told that they look adorable. That makes me very happy.

Baby Girl Knitting

E.J.'s Boss gave birth to a baby girl a couple of weeks ago and slow procrastinator, never satisfied with what I'm knitting me, still is working on her gifts. I know, shame on me! Here is where I'm at. I also have a pair of little knit legging type pants on the machine too. I should get the crochet around the edge of the 3rd little sweater this weekend, get them laundered and delivered this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed for me :)

Oh! These were all knit on my Toyota KS950 standard gauge with crochet trims around the little Matinee Jackets. I really should knit a bonnet and some booties too. I just found my favorite baby book of patterns, go figure, I've been searching high and low for it for a couple of months now, turns out I had stashed it under my desk in a magazine holder. So now I have even more ideas to work out, I'm in knitting heaven :)

Success!!!

I received my electronic scanner box for my White 1602 fixed doublebed machine last weekend and it works!! It's awesomely wonderful and I am so excited about all the wonderful stitch patterns I'll be able to knit on this machine :) This is a scan of my very first patterned stitch swatch. It's a slip stitch pattern and I just think it's beautiful! The differences in the diamond shapes near the bottom are from tension changes on the settings, the larger wavey pattern at the top was supposed to be a different pattern, but I didn't understand what I was doing and when I changed the carriage settings, this is what I got instead. I've lots to learn!

Alexander's Hoodie

I just realized that I hadn't put any pictures up of Alexander's finished Hoodie. This was part of his Christmas present package. I also knit him a balaclava, like the one E.J. is wearing further down in this post. He is still waiting for a pair of socks in "all those colors, Grandma" and he's also requested another Hoodie, with red and blue in it :) He loves that I make him stuff.

I used the varigated yarn to knit the front and back and was going to use the solid navy for the accent, but it looked horrible! Not appropriate for an 8 year old boy anyway. Would have been cute for a baby I suppose, but this is done in Bernat Softee Chunky so it's got huge stitches.
I knit it up on my Toyota KS610 bulky machine.

Below is the balaclava I knit for E.J. It's out of the same yarn that Alex's was knit with. Now, this one I did by hand, I converted the hand knit pattern to the machine and knit Alex's on the LK140 so it had a seam up the back of it. I also ran out of yarn while knitting E.J.'s so I had to improvise and used a double strand of Lion Brand Wool-Ease sportweight. The color is different, but it almost looks like I planned it that way. Both hats were knit in Lion Brand Wool-Ease worsted weight based on the Helmet Liner pattern at http://www.tropicalyarns.com

My only suggestion would be to make the ribbed neck part about 2 inches longer for better neck coverage. E.J. folds the ribbing up and it looks like a regular knit hat when he isn't keeping the cold wind off his face. I should have knit him some of these years ago because he says it really does keep him warm, along with his scarf that is :) Stick 'Em Up!

First Finished UFO for 2008

These socks have been OTN's for over a year now. I think this Regia sock yarn was among the first skeins of sock yarn I ever bought! Anyway, the pattern was an experiment, E.J. commented that he can feel the bumps from the purl side of the fabric on the soles of his feet, I think he just has over sensitive feet. But anyway, I decided to try switching my stitches so the knit side was "under foot" and guess what? He's right, there really is a difference. My feet aren't so sensitive so the purl bumps are fine for me, but I guess this will be the new method to use for his socks. Too bad I really dislike purl knitting. Maybe I'll just make his socks inside out next time and see how that works :) Anyway, one UnFinished Object down, a gazillion more to go.

Oh, and aren't these clear clogs a kick? Just right for showing off crazy knit socks :)

Felted Boot Slippers

I knit these up on Christmas day for a true last minute gift for E.J. :) I really enjoyed knitting the pattern. The next pair will have double soles though. E.J. likes the cushiness better with a double thickness.
This is what they look like pre-felting. 15 inches long felted down to 11 inches for a perfect E.J. fit :)

Merry Christmas! Happy Yule!

We decided to go small with our tree this year. It's just the 2 of us but we still wanted to deck the halls, so it's a living potted 2 and a half foot Stone Pine tree that will get planted out back if it survives being indoors this long :) It's actually a pretty little tree and I'm glad we did it. There's just something about colored lights on a fresh pine tree that soothes the soul.

And we got alot of our decorations out of storage in California last summer so we had to put out some of our Christmas Bear and Stocking collection. This isn't all of them, but it gives you an idea. E.J. put the shelf up with the lighted garland over the window and it's perfect to display them. Now he just needs to put up a few more shelves so we can do the same around the whole living room. It feels very festive and decked out now :)

Merry Christmas!

Back to Knitting

Well, I've been neglecting my blog so I thought I had better post something, anything :) I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm still waiting for my brother to send me some pictures of the holiday my family shared at his house. I wasn't up to going anywhere, so I bought all the fixings that morning and cooked up a storm. It was wonderful. I discovered that if I add a little milk and honey cocktail to my pain medication, just a little, I can do anything LOL!!! Only a one day solution though, the hangover pretty much wiped out the urge to try that again :)

Let's see, I've disassembled (remember Short Circuit? No disassemble Johnny 5!) the hoodie I was knitting for Alex. It's just plain ugly, but I think if I make the base color the Navy and maybe add a couple of stripes of the ombre, it will be all right. I've decided that I just don't like the really thick super chunky yarns for garments. This yarn is the Bernat Softee Chunky and it's super soft and a lovely yarn, but the stitches are just too big. They aren't so pronounced in the dark color so I think I'll be able to live with it. These yarns would make good hats and scarves and afghans, but for my taste, that's about it.

We finally got our cold weather, had to start heating the house the weekend after Thanksgiving, and my hands freeze at the computer so I knit up a pair of fingerless mitts. I love this wool, it's something I picked up at a thrift store and it's very nice 100% wool. Too scratchy for a sweater though, so I'm going to see how it felts. I ended up with 10 balls of it and I think it might make a nice purse or felted clog slippers. Hmmm... my daughter's favorite color is purple :)

I'm working on my Christmas list. As usual, procrastinating till the last minute. I did get a few things done at the end of summer, but I still have a ways to go and I don't want to give anything away just in case someone in my family reads my blog. Fat Chance! I think I'm one of those out of site out of mind people. Oh well, I love me and I love what I do and so does my husband :)

I've also started a new Dred hat for E.J. He's misplaced the one I made last year, it's around this place somewhere, but I think I can knit one up easier than finding the old one.

Hooded Baby Bath Towel & Dish Cloths

I still haven't fixed my poor old camera so I can't get a good picture with the towel opened up, but these should at least give you the idea, it measures out to about 32 inches long by 27 inches wide with a 10 inch hood. It's folded up from the bottom to the neck of the teddy bear and the sides wrapped around.

There was some discussion on one of the email groups about the colors and how they hold up with use for dish rags. Here's one I pulled out of the drawer that was hand knit about 5 years ago. It gets used all the time and it's really faded out, but still has color :) I imagine that the softer colored cottons, like light pink or pale pastel type colors would bleach out to beige, I haven't used those yet. As you can see, I don't like to waste yarn, when it's functional stuff for me to use, I use up my scraps. Saves money and works prefectly fine, like my scrap bed blankets too :) See what happens when you have a problem with throwing anything away? I'm sicker than I thought LOL!!!

These are a couple of shots of my Thanksgiving/Fall dish cloths. When I saw the yarn, I thought it was awful, but I actually like it all done up. Here's the link to the pattern

http://clarissepatterns.blogspot.com/2006/12/my-favorite-dish-cloth-pattern.html

and this is the more ribbed style tuck in the Christmas colors :)

More Felted Clogs

This pair was made for E.J. He loves the wild colors, and as you can see, Stimpy really really loves all things felted :) We're going to do some re-shaping on the one, it didn't felt evenly and the 2 don't match very well. The bad thing is that I knew they were a little off and decided to see what would happen if I felted them anyway. Now I know :)

Our vacation for this summer

http://clarissecamp2007.blogspot.com/ will take you to the summary and photo's of our vacation :) It was a perfect time, even if I got a little moody because of my inability to do the things that I love like hiking down to go swimming at the natural water slides at Candy Rock, or dancing at the outdoor music festival in downtown Arnold, or walk the arts and crafts booths at the festival. I suppose I didn't make the best first impression for the new additions to the family either, but oh well. It is what it is and as long as I had my knitting, I was a really "happy camper" :)

New Kitten and New Kitten Bed

E.J. decided since we were adding to the family, he should get to pick one out too so he called me up from a clients home and asked me to come get Cocoa Bean. Yes, he's a male, born near the end of June, and we only wanted females this time around, but he's soo cute and his color is really unusual. It's a brownish smoke grey, but he's tuxedo marked. Stimpy loves him, she has someone a little smaller than her to play with, Xena has just about disowned us. She was willing to tolerate Stimpy, but now she has no patience for either of them. Xena chases the babies out of our bedroom and she rules the back half of the house, the kittens run the living room and kitchen area. I guess a second kitten was more than she could handle, but we're attached to the new kids already so she is going to have to learn how to deal with it. Silly girl, she really wants to play with them too. She'll start to, then remember that she is jealous and smak them upside the head and run down the hall. Oh well, I hope she gets over it soon.
The final pattern for the felted kitty bed. There are so many things I will be using this technique to make. I'll put up the pattern for it in a couple of weeks, I still want to refine a few things and it's kind of tricky to put what I did into words. But it's definitely easy to do and makes the bowl shape I was after. **UPDATE** I've posted the pattern. Here's the link http://clarissepatterns.blogspot.com/

The pink and red and blue was a short row experiment that looked like it would make the bowl shape, but when I washed it to felt the yarn, it laid flat and made a felted pad. It's actually kind of fun and can be used for several different things. A hot pad, a little throw rug, a chair pad, but Stimpy likes to sleep on it, so it's hers, but it's a good thing she likes to share cuz Cocoa Bean seems to have adopted it too :)

It's a Hit!

Even 2 sizes too big, it's a hit! Stimpy, the new kitten, liked it first. Xena was interested but this yarn, even though it's been washed 5 times, still has a slight musky ram odor and she wasn't sure she liked it. But I got up from my nap, and there they were. I guess Xena booted Stimpy out, but she didn't go very far away. Xena just decided the other day that I could keep Stimpy, they started playing together and this is the first time they've slept this close together.) Nothing nicer than when the kids are getting along :)

Felted Kitty Bed

I came across this website http://wendyknits.net/knit/kittybed.htm a while back and last night decided to figure out how to make the kitty bed on my bulky machine. This is what my first attempt turned out like.It's too big and poofy, but my technique idea is sound and will work which makes me very happy. Xena is intersted already and it's still wet.

It's sitting on a small 1 bushel ($1 store) laundry basket. I'm going to wash it a couple of more times. I used some old spun in the grease homespun I bought years ago (really pretty icky) and it's taking a bit to felt it up. This is after 2 full wash cycles in the washing machine. The pink furry stuff is Boa eyelash yarn.

Now, what I did was, I cast on 40 stitches, the next attempt will be using 30 stitches and I used the round baby blanket technique. After grafting it together, I cast on 10 stitches and used the SAYG method to connect the round section as I knit the side band. I skipped every other bar to close it up, but it made it a tad too gathered and poofy so I think the next one will be done in a alternate method of like: pick up every bar but skip the third bar. I'm hoping that will make it more of a straight up side than a gathered kind of almost beret looking pouch. Say! That might not be a bad tote bag/purse! Hmmm.... the gears are smoking now LOL!!!

Spring Reggae Hat

E.J. had asked me to make him a cotton dred hat for summer.
I'd been putting it off, but I finally designed a pattern and this is how it turned out.

The yarn had too much pink and purple in it for him though, so he wasn't gonna wear it. In the photo's, what looks orange is really hot pink LOL!! But the hat turned out like I wanted and it is now my prototype and I used one of my Christmas bears for my model :)
I guess he changed his mind though. He came walking through the door today and I was able to snap this shot of him wearing the hat.
He still thinks it has too much pink, but it does do what he wants, so I'll be making a new one, with more "macho" colors for him :) I'm also going to experiment with a lighter weight cotton. This one was done with Peaches and Cream and it's a tad heavier than what I want. I'll be looking for some sport weight cotton, maybe Aunt Lydia's Denim? in white and tie dyed? He'd be thrilled, as long as I don't use pink :)

Oh, it's hand knit, but I think I can adapt it for the machine and use one of the mesh type punch cards, then do the decreases and bill by hand and seam up the back. I'll be sure to post what I come up with. It's gonna be alot easier now that I have my basic design down.

One Panel Afghan from Super LK100

Lion Brand Suede One Panel Afghan/Bed Cover

This is the maiden project for my doubled up Super LK100 knitting machine. A bunch of us were able to snag the Lion Brand Suede yarn when it was .99 a skein at the .99 Stores around the states and I purposely bought another LK100 so I could put the 2 machines together (see how it was done here ) and knit up this luscious chenille yarn as a single panel afghan. In other words all in one piece instead of having to knit sections that need to be assembled because of machine length restrictions. It's laid out on a full size bed, and as you can see, it turned out to be almost a bed spread, if I'd have made it a little bit longer it would be the same size as a comforter. This was using all 160 needles on the combined machine , knit at tension 9.

A closeup of the crochet ends. I just did a single crochet around the whole blanket, this yarn doesn't curl much at all and the single crochet with a size K crochet hook did the job, but I wanted it a bit prettier so I did 3 rows of shell stitches on each end while leaving the sides plain. I like the look and feel of it. Oh, your eyes aren't buggy, there are stripes. Since this was an experiment I didn't want to use up all I had of one particular color so I alternated one skein Spice and one skein of Garnet. A weird color combination but it goes with brown leather, which is what my new sofa will be :)

This is the piece while it was still on the machine. This yarn is marvelous and super soft and cuddly. I will be making more of these. The texture of the yarn is sufficient for interest so no pattern is really necessary for a very nice item.