Collegiate Scarf

...At least it hasn't been six months.

I will have had this blog for a year in December, and I would like to have ten posts by then. That's not a terribly lofty goal, is it? Many circumstances have to align, however, for me to post. I have to have a finished object, inspiration to photograph, and something to procrastinate. Luckily, these all are present today.

I don't have the regular information for this scarf, such as pattern or modifications, because it was designed out of trial-and-error, and while it may have been a good idea for me to record these things, I was too lazy. I will regret this at some point. It's a cable from my stitch dictionary applied to a scarf knit in the round out of Paton's Classic. I'm calling it my Collegiate Scarf because it was made for a friend going off to school in the northern US, and if it hadn't been for her, it would have worked well at my college, too. I am secretly hoping she opens her mail, hates this, and sends it back to me.

Me? Blog?

So, yes. I will admit that I've ignored this blog for about 8 months. For several of these months, not much knitting took place, due to serious lack of time, but once I was through graduation, my schedule cleared up significantly, and knitting regained its place of importance. I have not, however, lost ALL of my laziness concerning this blog, so I will just briefly update on several projects I could find nearby to photograph.

1. Mom's Birthday Clapotis - Yes, I know I'm a bit behind, and that everyone in the knitting world completed their Clapotis two years ago. I didn't, though, so I made one for my mother for her birthday. It was well-received, and I have seen her wearing it several times already.

2. Yet-To-Be-Blocked Scarf - Okay. This was a present for a friend that I seem to have forgotten to block and mail. As she is now overseas, the mailing part has become much more complicated.










3. Baby hats - I produced three baby hats in a couple days as gifts for all the people I know who are pregnant. I've gotten to the point that I would feel weird if any acquaintance of mine had a baby and did not receive a hat from me.








...and more to come. My computer is giving me trouble with images, so I will wait until it seems to be agreeing with me.

Ice and snow mean lots of knitting time.

So I've been stuck in the house for three and a half days now, due to weather. Well, other than going outside to take pictures. That lasted all of five minutes before my tolerance of the windchill was gone. I'm much happier inside under my several layers of blankets.

Obviously, this meant that I knit a lot. A friend's birthday is coming up, so I decided to make her Odessa. I didn't have enough beads in a coordinating color, so I did it without. After I finished it, though, I realized I had made her a headband for Christmas. Normally, I wouldn't worry about it much and would give her the hat anyway, but I needed another project... This picture is terrible, by the way. It really isn't shaped like a bucket.

So. Another project. I decided to go with a scarf, because everyone needs a good wool scarf, and I don't believe this particular friend has received one from me yet. I made her a vertically striped garter scarf. My original plan was to use a fun stitch pattern, but as I experimented, I realized that the yarn would look best plain... So it ended up just 11250 knit stitches. Yeah. Suffice to say that I was ready to be finished long before it was done. But I held out and read while I knit, which always makes a project go faster for me. I do definitely like the finished product. Yay snow days and scarves.

Scarves.

I love scarves. I think that no matter how long I knit and how skilled I become, scarves will still be my favorite thing to make. I'm not sure exactly what it is that I enjoy so much about making them, but whenever I want to start a new project, scarves are the first thing I consider. So, here are some of the scarves I've recently finished or been working on, including my first FO of 2007.

Which is this! I started this scarf using the Branching Out pattern. I've made Branching Out before, and normally I don't repeat patterns very frequently, but I bought this gorgeous handpainted alpaca that just seemed to WANT to be Branching Out. And who am I to defy the wonderful yarn? It's slightly shorter than I'd have liked, just because I only bought one skein of this yarn and so when it ran out, I was a little out of luck. It blocked out to a reasonable length, though. I want it to be autumn so I can wear it.

Second. I finished knitting this scarf in November, but I didn't block it until this week. I made this pattern from a mishmash of things I'd seen in various other patterns and books. I believe I got the stitch pattern from Knitting on the Edge and used the idea of knitting it the long way from Scarf Style. The blocking... didn't go so well. I may have to redo it, because I think I was too eager and unpinned it too soon. It's still a little curly. I used Debbie Bliss Merino Chunky that I got from a sale bin at my LYS. Yay sale!

And then I have two that, when I was taking pictures, were on the needles. The blue and grey one is simple stripes knit in the round for my band director. He has attempted to take my favorite thick wool scarf that looks quite similar to this on more than one occasion, so I knit him one with spare Caron Simply Soft. I decided to go ahead and use acrylic because I know that he will throw it in the washing machine, no matter what I tell him. I actually finished it last night, but I'm too lazy to take more pictures of it, so this will have to do.

And last but not least, the only one I'm still working on. I'm using the Misty Garden pattern from Scarf Style and JoAnn's Sensations yarn in a variety that I can't quite remember and doesn't seem to be on the website. I'm going to give this to someone. I just don't know who.

Various Gifts...

... that I had sitting around while spending some time with my camera. Nevermind that I didn't take the time to photograph a complete stocking when I finished it. Anyway.

First: My mom's shawl. I started with a pattern from Interweave's holiday edition. Then I decided I didn't want to follow the pattern -- a bad habit of mine. So I frogged it. And wrote my own pattern. It's not a great pattern, but it was one I could complete in the day and a half my mother was out of town. It's made of a mohair/wool/acrylic blend that has been sitting in my house for much longer than I've been knitting. I was pretty pleased to be able to use it on something for my mother.

Also, small project: stocking ornament number 16. Nice, quick, and easy. But I definitely found it a bit repetetive after stocking 10... I think I have three more to make, too, by the end of the year.

Merry Christmas!

And a happy new year. In honor of receiving lovely gifts today, I want to make it part of my New Year's resolution to always have something for someone else on the needles. By that, I mean a specific object for a specific person. I have a habit of making things and thinking "oh, I'm sure I can give this to someone" and then liking them and keeping them. The thing is I really don't need any more hats, scarves, gloves, or knitted items in general, and I love knitting for other people. This way, I will spend time thinking about all the people I care about as I make the item for them. So I will come up with some vague ideas that I can elaborate on later.

• Baby items for all the wonderful babies I know
• Graduation gifts for many of my classmates - dishcloths, pillows, blankets?
• Lacy items for my mother
• Dishrags for my grandmother -- for some reason, this is the only knitted item she is interested in receiving.
  
• Scarf for my teacher who wanted to steal the one I've been wearing this winter
• Socks forfriend who said he's always wanted a pair of hand-knit socks
• Eye-masks for people I'll be travelling with this summer (always great for plane trips)
• Leggings for friend who has been requesting them for ages. I have yet to find the correct pattern to use.
  

Any other ideas?

Holiday Headbands

Well, I've covered a significant portion of my holiday knitting, and I'm relatively sure that I'll actually get everything completed and delivered in a timely manner! This is all thanks to the fact that I've decided to give all my female friends the same easy-to-make thing.

I designed this pattern to be simple enough to make in a couple hours. If I worked steadily, it took roughly 2 hours per headband, counting sewing it up. Another advantage of doing something small like this is that I was able to work completely out of yarn from my stash, so it certainly didn't cost me much. It was really fun to see how different yarns worked in this pattern. My favorites were made of dark, solid colors in 100% wool. They showed the cable well (which this cream doesn't) and had the necessary elasticity.

I've produced 22 of these. I gave about eight away today, and they were well-received. Of course, everyone had seen me knitting them for the past few weeks -- I'm not sneaky with my gift-giving -- so there was no element of surprise, but everyone was still pleased. I'm looking forward to sending the next batch into the world tomorrow!

Well, here I am.

As I sit here with my new knitting blog, I ask myself, do I really need to start another journal that I'll struggle to keep up-to-date? That I'll use to ramble and create pointless posts that the reader would have to be out of their mind to complete?

Absolutely!