Umiko

Evidence:
Above: Knitted squares, joined with crochet. Finished in 2008, finally got a decent photo. I love this blanket, it's very warm. Materials: Lion Brand Homespun and Gedifra Fashion Trend Astrakan.




Above: WIP Willie Warmer. Materials: TLC Cotton Plus




Above: Razor Cami. Materials: Araucania Ranco Solid




Above: Freehand Stash Bag (crocheted) Materials: Patons Classic Wool and leftovers of Plymouth Boku




Above: Square for Planet Blanket project (crochet). Materials: Red Heart cotton




Above: Noro Spiral Beret. Materials: Noro Silk Garden Chunky.




Above: Best Friend Cowl. Materials: Noro Bonbori and 5 assorted buttons.




Above: Bokulicious Mitered Square Knitting Tote. Materials: Plymouth Boku

Everything except the first picture of my blanket are things that I've completed recently or am in the process of completing. You can see the details and original pattern sources (when available) on my Ravelry Projects Page.

Things are going great and also blah. Lucas is eating again! That's the great news. I don't dare weigh him, in case that puts a damper on his re-newfound curiosity and interest in food that I'm so excited about. I've been slamming out one project after another, which is good.

What's not so hot is that my husband is going away for awhile. He'll be spending about three and a half months out of state from now until the end of January. I'm trying to be strong and not get too depressed, but I hate to be alone and I'm going to miss him. The timing couldn't be worse - the holidays, the winter blues... the "who's going to take out the trash?" issues... Just blah. So, I knit so I don't go nuts. At least it's constructive, from my existent stash and it's not ruining my health. :) Half full, right?

Fabric project bags. I used fabric from my stash and ribbon/lace/bias tape I scored in a big grab bag for a couple dollars at a thrift shop last year.

Yarn: Noro Bonbori

I finished this awhile ago and just now got the chance to have my husband snap a few photos in natural light!

Knitted in Araucania Ranco Multi. It's a modified version of this. That's all I have to post about it right, we have a lot to do today so I have to jet! :)

I haven't figured out a suitable name for this finished object, or if it even needs one...

I knitted this up from my own pattern. After I figured out my measurements, my gauge and the stretchiness of the knitted fabric the pattern went fairly quickly. I did end up re-doing several parts more than once to get it just right. Noro Taiyo knits up really fast and I love the colorways.

Even though all the seams are seamed and the ends woven in, there are still a few minor things I'll change the next time that I knit this. But then again, I'm never 100% satisfied with anything I make - knitted, crafted, cooked or otherwise.

All in all, I love this shirt. I'm going to wear it frequently. I worked on it off and on for about a month, first knitting it into the Tank Girl pattern from Knitty (twice, both times too big) and then deciding to forgo any kind of written pattern and to wing it. I'm better at winging something than tweaking it. Luckily, I documented everything I did, so I hope to have a pattern written up soon. Kristy already has a healthy amount of Taiyo in her stash and volunteered to give the pattern a test run.

In this pattern I incorporated stockinette stitch, ribbing, garter stitch, picking up stitches, mattress stitch seams, three-needle binding off, bust and waist shaping and a bust panel to literally pull everything together and add modesty and interest to the front of what is just a really basic tank top. Wow, I hope I don't speak in run-on sentences like that!

Some things I loved about working with the Taiyo - its softness first and foremost. It's composed of 40% cotton, 30% silk, 15% nylon and 15% wool. It's nice and springy. It knits up quickly because it's aran weight - though, for me it feels like a light bulky weight. I read through the comments about this yarn on Ravelry and heard a lot of people complaining (mostly from old batches) about the yarn pulling apart and breaking. I didn't have a single break. Even knitting very tight kfb increases and some vigorous seam tugging, the yarn stayed strong.

I would have liked working with the yarn more if it wasn't so full of plant matter and thorns. I know that Noro is infamous for this and it's to be expected, I just felt like this yarn had really quite a lot. Even while wearing it I was still picking out pieces of neon green twigs that I'd missed. Another thing that Noro is infamous for - knots. I had two in three balls. Not bad, but still...

I feel like all I've done the last week is feed and tend to Lucas. He's going through a growth spurt and eating/fussing more than usual. The only upside to that is that he's going to bed between 7 and 8 p.m. Can't complain about that! I recently had a check-up for him and he weighed in at fourteen and half pounds and he's 24.5 inches long! My little boy is growing... it's hard to believe he'll be four months old on Friday. Before we know it he'll be on his feet and causing a ruckus around here.

You know what else has been growing? A few things. First: my Emerald Cardi is coming along nicely. I've been trying to knit at every opportune moment - there have been a few more of those moments since Lucas's bedtime has been earlier.




Second, my stash! After my husband went to work the 2 p.m. - 10 p.m. shift I wasn't looking forward to chilling at home with my fussy son, so I called my best knitting friend and luckily she was as excited about shopping for yarn as I was - probably even more so after I fed her delicious chocolate my Dad sent me from Germany! 30 minutes later we were in Williamsburg, a historical town I have yet to visit before today.

After I fondled the entire shop's collection of yarn like a newly wed on her honeymoon, Lucas "helped" me pick out a couple of beauties while sporting the first sweater I made for him while I was pregnant. I've coveted those gorgeous and pricey skeins of Noro for quite some time and today I said yes. Not only that, but I used my sister-in-law's Christmas present as an excuse to buy a decadent hank of cashmere. The ladies at Knitting Sisters in Williamsburg were nice enough to wind my cashmere into a ball for me, too. Talk about great service! I don't mind winding my bulky yarn into thumb balls, but the thin cashmere would have been a trying experience. Pictures!




A little fuzzy, but it's the best I can do after dark.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the Noro... I bought it under the pretext that I would make it into a hat for myself, but I think Noro doesn't need a reason. That's the ill yarn-hoarder in me speaking...

The title is German, it means red-eggplant, which is exactly how the colors look in real life. Tonight after my son went to bed and my husband was zoning out in front of the tube I finished my sweater, wove in the ends and fixed my messed up waist shaping. I am soooo happy with the end result because it didn't result in disaster, it fits me and I love it! Unfortunately it's after midnight and I'm the only one awake so I used the self-timer on the camera. I started the sweater in August, so it took me about three months to finish. I'll get some better action shots when there's sunlight and another pair of hands.

I started knitting size L to accommodate my bust and decreased after the armpits - at least that's what I should have done. In reality I decreased too quickly at the waist and just sewed it/took it in after it was complete. I added a cowl neck because I hate boat neck tops, they don't do anything for my scoliosis-induced crooked shoulders and in the size L the boat neck was more like an off-the-shoulder top on me. There were other alterations to the pattern, but nothing dramatic worth mentioning.

I'm so happy this is finally done! Now I need to gauge swatch for my next sweater. Knitting group is tomorrow and I'm thinking about either starting the new sweater or starting on long-overdue Christmas presents... At heart I am a very selfish knitter.

My days go by so fast it makes my head spin. I probably don't accomplish that much, but I try to concentrate on major things. Take care of my body, my family, and my house. Socialize. Knit. You get the picture.

The other day I did several loads of laundry, felted bowls in between loads and went for a two hour walk with a friend and my son down by the sea wall. We got some very cute photos of his two-month birthday. For awhile I was making lame excuses for not working out. Stupid excuses like not having proper footwear. The last pair of sports shoes that I bought was way back in 7th grade when I wanted to join the track team. I owned them for 11 years. I quit the track team before the first meet. Running sucks. I finally threw my Adidas away when we were moving from Germany to Virginia and I realized that I was hanging onto .. well, trash. Plus, my plastic tote with shoes was absolutely bursting at the seams and the whole scenario was ridiculous.

Reminiscing about footwear : here's a photo of the first pair of socks I ever knit. Back in 2005 I was stuck in Marmaris, Turkey with nothing to do after the tourist season had ended. I had vague plans of possibly staying there on a permanent basis, even if that meant taking the ferry to Greece every six months to renew my tourist visa. (And I swear (crossing my fingers) I was not the girl hiding out with the Russian chick in the bathroom when the Turkish cops came looking for illegal workers.) I was working as a tattoo artist for a friend of a friend of my ex-boss. After months of working up to 14 hours a day, mostly tattooing and sometimes selling jewelry, I was bored out of my mind in the coldest winter Turkey had seen in 50 years. All hopes of living it up in a warm climate for the winter went out the window.

On the weekends I taught my boss's ten-year-old daughter, Sezan, English. I adopted a kitten and I taught myself how to knit socks on DPNs. I simultaneously had two websites open - some picture tutorial to guide me through the steps and a free generic sock pattern. Somehow I managed to wrestle 5 needles and a ball of yarn into two, equally sized and very slippery socks while huddled in front of a space heater. Two months later while recovering from surgery, I knit another pair of pink and orange striped socks. Those were the only pairs of socks I ever finished. I have two loners hiding out, one still on 0-sized needles because I lost my pattern notes and another gigantic I-broke-up-with-him-before-his-socks-were-done sock. One of these days I might get over my new sock-knitting phobia and start again.

Try as a might, I could not find wool locally in Marmaris, the yarn stores only carried acrylic. I still have most of a ball of the green/brown yarn left. I'll probably never use it, it's more a souvenir of a time past. I think it's kind of ugly now, anyways. Maybe I'll knit a charity hat and attach a story to the yarn. Or maybe I'll store it until the moths consume it. (Insert shrug here.) When I flew home to Germany two days after Christmas I left behind a pile of clothing so I could fit more yarn in my luggage. Me? A yarn-stasher in the making? No....

Well, as I mentioned earlier I have been knitting. I got bored with my raglan mid-sleeve and have been sneaking in smaller projects...

Firstly, I found this really pretty striped cotton yarn. I crocheted four flowers and loved the colors so much I went back to Michael's and stocked up for future projects. Eventually I'll get around to getting a decent photo of my niece's sweater, I added one of the flowers as an embellishment. Anyways, when I was browsing through some dishcloth patterns on Ravelry, I saw the Ballband pattern and knew it would be a pretty match with the yarn I had. I also made one in reverse colors - white as the foreground and the striped as the background. I figure they'll make a nice gift with some handmade soap if I'm in a pinch. It was such a relief to make something out of smooth cotton after wrestling with the raglan boucle. It felt so good on my hands. One smooth stitch at a time...


Secondly, after borrowing a couple of knitting books about felted items, I decided to take the plunge. Nesting Bowls. Otherwise known as my new temporary knitting obsession. Better than crack! This is the first time I've made anything out of pure wool (Patons Classic Wool) and the first time I've felted anything on purpose. The nesting bowls were very easy to make. I knit the majority of them while ignoring what my hands were doing and probably watching LA Ink or trying to get my baby son to smile at me. I felted the first one by itself in a pillow case closed with a hair tie. It felted faster than the other two bowls which I felted together. The blue-ish yarn didn't felt as well as the other two, particularly on the bottom, but I'm not too concerned. The point of a bowl is to put something in it anyways, right?

Now I'm thinking about combining the two - using the washcloth pattern on the bowl...

Don't you love the feeling of finishing something? I just added this as my first project on Ravelry. I found the pattern in the Knitty archives here.

It's been finished for a little over a week and I'm very happy with how it turned out. It's knit out of four triangle-ish panels and stitches are picked up on either side for the strap. The strap is the only thing I would change on this version of the bag and I may still take out 8 inches. Originally I intended it to be a project bag, but the bag has snuck its way into everyday purse life. More than a pound and it becomes a hip bag, not something I intended it to be. It works best crossed over my chest.

I knew from the beginning that this bag would need a liner and luckily I still had some leftover 'Koto' fabric from my skirt and pillow sewing. I also used some light green remnant fabric to sew a zippered pouch and three small pockets inside to hold my scissors, measuring tape, phone and needles. Sewing the liner was a headache, I ripped it out at least 3 times until I was happy with it. Knit fabric has a tendency to move around a lot and realign itself in a place where it's not supposed to be...

I enjoyed knitting this because it was pretty much mindless and had just enough increasing and decreasing to keep it interesting. I did one panel a day, knit the strap on another day and finished the liner in a morning.

After making this bag I've since knit or crocheted two more of my own design, but they're not finished yet.

I mentioned in my first post that I would be sharing some of my recent knitting projects. I haven't gotten around to taking photos of them yet and due to some serious stormage, there hasn't been proper natural lighting. If you were reading between the lines you'd also read: I woke up too late and by the time I thought about taking photos it was too late! :)

So... to make up for that (and also to avoid this becoming a purely personal blog about ... kind of boring daily occurances) here is a project that I completed for Christmas two years ago.

I followed this pattern on Craftster using some very soft and bulky acrylic and added some crocheted detailing in black. I didn't like the thin strap with the button, so I knit a stockinette strap with a skull that I drew out on graph paper and sewed on both sides. The recipient of these slippers was delighted, she's nuts about skulls!

I've since made many, many pairs of these. They don't take long to make and use up very little yarn. Additionally, you can add puff paint to the bottom for more traction.