winter stuff for me and wee





bunny ears hat from Itty-Bitty Hats in Jamie Harmon handspun angora
wee bold banded mittens from Adorable Knits for Tots in white Knitpicks Swish
funky monkey newsboy cap from Monkeysuits for me in Sunshine Yarns Atlantis sock yarn

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A round of applause, please. I have finally finished my blue gloves, my first knitted gloves ever! I was so excited about these gloves last winter. I finished the first glove in a day, slowed down a bit on glove number two and then eventually put it down for good with three fingers done back in December. When I was digging through my knitting stuff to find something to bring to knitting group last week, I spotted these at the bottom of the pile and figured it was about time I finished them up.

another fine picture by my son, S

The yarn was some vintage Sunshine Yarns worsted and the pattern is the basic glove pattern from Ann Budd's indispensable Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. I love them! Which is really too bad, cause that means I'm gonna have to make more gloves. And we saw how quickly that went the first time. Get ready for the sound of one hand clapping....

This is a silly hat.

Flower Toggle Hat from Lucinda Guy's Handknits for Kids

It looks super sweet in the pattern picture in the book, but in real life that flower on top is a little strange. Sometimes it looks like a flower to me. Sometimes like a periscope. Or a cyclops eye. Or sometimes like some sort of weird underworld creature, all mouth and tongues.

No, no, don't be silly, it's a flower. It's a flower. The hat itself is certainly pretty enough. The textured garter stitch/rib pattern is lovely and the Debbie Bliss pure cashmere is so soft in delicate shades of purple and pink. I like it. I do.

what are you looking at?
can I have some more cookies, please?

Attempt number four for the Flower Toggle hat from Lucinda Guy's Handknits for Kids. After three other attempts at getting the size right (the pattern has the sizes WAAAY too small), I think we've finally got it right (80 stitches for my almost 2 yr old). Luckily, the Debbie Bliss pure cashmere is holding up to the repeated ripping and reknitting. And each time I say 'this is the last time!', sure that I'll give up if it doesn't work, I start knitting and find the pattern so charming and sweet that I remember why I wanted to make it in the first place. There's no denying it: that Lucinda Guy makes cool stuff.

This purple top is the Flower Toggle hat from Lucinda Guy's Handknits for Kids. I'm teaching another beginning knitting class, where we make hats, so it's ANOTHER hat for wee one! I had just seen Lille-ursus finish one of these hats and was inspired. I've had this wonderful book since wee one's baby shower - it's about time I made something from it for her! And there just happened to be this Debbie Bliss Pure Cashmere in our sale bin. Yuuummm. (And on super-sale, it doesn't even matter that there's really only like 35 yards on the skimpy, lying little hank!)

The pattern is lovely, the pink is the exact shade of wee one's coat and I know she looks good in purple. Unfortunately, it's too small. Grrrr. The pattern calls for a laughably small number of stitches for size 2-3 yrs. I knit about two rows of that and knew instantly that it was more like a newborn size. I added several more stitches and knit the above in class this week, but it's still not large enough. I should have looked it up on Ravelry first, then I would have known that I'd need at least 30 more stitches than the pattern called for! Double grrrr.

Well, it's a good lesson for my beginners to learn: everybody rips, everybody reknits. Even the teacher.

Presenting princess wee one. She loves this hat, happily letting me put it on her for photos and wearing it through the rest of the Dora show she was watching.

Let me tell you, there are quite a few beads on that Tilli Tomas Flurries yarn! I used all but a couple of yards of two skeins and pushed every one of those beads to the front of the work, so the hat would be as sparkly as possible. For the crown section of the hat, I used this free online pattern and the body of the hat was Ann Budd's basic hat pattern from Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. It couldn't have been easier to knit and it really does look like beautiful snow crystals covering her head. She's a snow princess!

Wee one's Tilli Tomas Flurries hat has become a crown. After knitting up a little swatch, I thought the yarn was so special that the hat had to be something special as well. With all the sparkly beads in the yarn, I decided it would make a delightful princess crown. I found a free crown hat pattern through Ravelry that I loved the look of. The crown points are easily constructed and the join between the crown brim and the hat body is nice and smooth. I'll be leaving out all the textured stitchwork on the main part of the hat since my yarn has plenty going on already with the beads.

I tried the brim on wee one this morning and she gave me a pretty little smile when I slipped it on her head. She likes the sparkles.

Like the ones in her new sparkly slippers from Johanna!

We're in the midst of our first major snowstorm of the season right now. The kids were let out of school early, the emergency shopping has been done and now the snow is falling fast. The boys are so excited to get out and play in it! For now, we wait and watch.

Inside, I have my own snow to look forward to...

Tilli Tomas's Flurries yarn! It's the most beautiful soft pink merino with glass beads - I couldn't resist it at my lys. (There's even a sweet baby hat pattern for it!) While it snows outside, I'll be knitting this into a new hat for wee one.

Let it snow!

After finishing glove number one in a day, I've slowed down the pace a bit. Glove number two (now being knit directly from the unfinished clapotis!) only needs three more fingers. I don't think I could have made it through ten fingers at a "real" glove gauge, but with this worsted weight yarn, it's been just fine. I'm surprised to find how much I'm enjoying it. And I'm definitely looking forward to wearing new gloves this weekend.

While I was making hands, I got the boys to use their hands to make Christmas cards. (It's pretty late for Christmas cards, but we haven't managed to get ANY cards out for years, so I'm counting this as a huge success!)

I found a fun make-your-own-cards kit from made by hands, complete with blank cards, hundreds of punch out shapes and glue stick. The boys had a blast! They were very creative, making all sorts of snow scenes and Christmas trees. I made the little footprints card for wee one, since pop-outs and glue are a little too difficult for her. But she won't be left out of the fun - she and I will be making a few more cards with a sticker card kit from mudpuppy.com later today.

After spending way too much time in the yarn store trying to find a suitable yarn to carry along with my blue variegated to soften up my Clapotis-in-progress, one of my students said, I really see that yarn more in mittens. I have to admit, she was right.

I came home, grabbed Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns, pulled out the other end of the skein and knit up a glove. I've never knit a glove before. (I'd always considered making 10 fingers some sort of knitter's version of the Sisyphus story.) But it turns out I actually needed a new pair of gloves and this yarn really did want to become a pair.

The moral of this story (and something I should have learned years ago): sometimes you just have to listen before you start knitting.

It's 2005 all over again! I'm knitting a Clapotis in some practically vintage yarn from Sunshine Yarns. I'm teaching an advanced beginners class at my LYS where we're making Clapotis wraps. It's such an awesome pattern to learn a little bit about shaping and pattern reading. And nothing can compare to the thrill of dropping those stitches!

I had two skeins of this beautifully blue circa 2005 Sunshine Yarns worsted and thought it would be just enough to make a scarf sized version of the wrap. After knitting this far, however, I'm not sure that the wool is soft enough to be a scarf. So, I'm on the hunt for something fine and fluffy to carry along with it to soften it up. I'll let you know tomorrow what I come up with!

but a stranded hat is delightful
and since you wanted to know
i'll let it show, let it show, let it show

Today, wee one's getting even more dressed up, way up on top, with her "i heart" hat.

This one was really fun to make (and has got me thinking seriously about some of the cutie patootie fair-isle patterns in Nursery Rhyme Knits, a book I couldn't resist buying when I spied it a few years back, but never really thought I'd make something from. Maybe next year...). The pattern is from one of the sets in Small Sweaters, and the yarns are all leftovers and scraps from other projects - mostly Rowan pure wool, Cascade 220 superwash and Rowan cashsoft. Despite my having changed the gauge and the scrap nature of the project, I think the pattern and the colors came out pretty darn good. My favorite thing is the purple pompom on top. That is by far the best pompom I've ever made! I worked so hard on it. (Proud of me, Dani?) The pink matches wee one's winter coat perfectly and the band has a facing inside, so it's extra warm too!

I heart fair-isle. I heart making hats for my daughter. I heart knitting.

Wee one is also ready for the season with her new Santa hat! I picked up the pattern and the yarn at Morehouse Merino when I was at Rhinebeck last year. (So sad that they closed their "Sheep's Clothing" store there - definitely a factor in my last-minute decision not to go this year.) I spotted the kit in my stash a couple of weeks ago and promised myself I would get it done by December 1st, so wee one could have a whole month to wear it. Like all the Morehouse patterns, the hat was very simple to knit and yet totally adorable. The yarn is deliciously soft and snuggly too.

Now I've just got to work on getting her to say "ho, ho, ho!"

This Thanksgiving I'm thankful that I can knit with pink yarn til my heart's content! Currently, I'm knitting up pink and pastel leftovers into what I'm calling the "i heart fair-isle" hat. I was teaching a fair-isle (or more correctly, color stranding) class at my lys and needed a little colorwork project to work on while my students swatched checkerboard and Norwegian stars and what not. I looked through all my pattern books and came upon an old fave, Small Sweaters: Colorful Knits for Kids. I remember thinking to myself, when I got this book about six years ago, that I would make this sweater if I ever had a girl. Oops, better get on that! (I also remembered loving this classic kid-in-a-handknit picture from the book!) For now, however, I needed a hat pattern - not too complicated, something I could maybe resize for a larger gauge to accommodate the short class time and the yarns I had on hand. I found this set, with a sweater, tights (yikes, imagine knitting a whole pair of color-stranded tights!) and, hooray, a hat.

With the large hearts being a neat multiple of 12 and the rows of small hearts filling out the top, I could easily adjust this pattern for width and length at my very different gauge. It knit up quickly in an evening (plus a little extra time for the usual gaffes like knitting the first 7 rows of pattern with the background and foreground colors reversed - doh!). Only a couple more rows of hearts left to do and my daughter will have another new hat and I will have another new obsession: adding fair-isle projects to the when-I-have-a-girl knit list!

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving filled with delicious treats and inspired knits.

Who's there?

Orange.

Orange who?

Orange slouch.

It's my orange version of Knit & Tonic's Le Slouch hat! The Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran is soft and drapey at this gauge, giving this beret a lot more slouch than my last one. This hat is so cool, it makes me want to read French philosophy again.

And it's so orange, it makes me want to tell knock knock jokes.

Jamie Harmon Angora. Le Slouch pattern by Knit & Tonic.

One happy hatter.

I haven't been knitting very much recently. Working on those Halloween costumes got me into the habit of sitting down most nights to sew. So I took last week's road trip down to NYC as an opportunity to leave my sewing behind and knit something - heck, a couple of somethings! I knit the pink slouch hat quickly and then thought briefly about working on my Rebecca sweater, but it was way too big and unwieldy to work on in the car. So I started another slouch hat:

I find myself these days always grabbing the same hat when I go out on chilly days, my blue beret. All the others are either too warm or too snug or too itchy.... let's face it, they're just not my blue beret. My goal this weekend was to get two new favorite berets started, so I have at least some hat choices when going out this fall. The pink angora hat is going to be a dream to wear! And this orange slouch hat (also from Knit & Tonic's Le Slouch pattern and knit in Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran) will match the lining of my winter coat.

I may not be knitting that much, but I'm slowly slouching my way to warm-headedness. And I'm pretty sure that there'll be a slouch in wee one's future too!

You might have seen me tweet about doing some car knitting on the road down to NYC. Here's my first project of the trip:

The pink angora hat that I started knitting with my beginning knitting class last week has gone through some serious changes. Right as we began the trip, I decided that it was too big. Out of laziness, I started knitting a new hat from the other end of the skein and what a difference! I love how the colors striped! The old hat was starting with the light pink and after almost 2 inches I hadn't seen any of that fab red yet. Now, the wide pink band is right in the center of the hat, separating the darker bands. Cool! I also changed patterns. I had been sort of winging the numbers, but since it was already coming out too big and I'd be redoing it in the car, I thought I'd go ahead and follow someone else's pattern, Knit and Tonic's Le Slouch pattern, to be specific. A beret-style hat really looks best on me, so it was a no-brainer to use Wendy's awesome pattern. I kept it in stockinette though to let the colors really shine through.

After about an hour on the road, the boys asked how they were supposed to read or do their puzzle books now that it was dark. The sun sure sets early these days! Thank goodness I can knit in the dark. The kiddos slept while my hat got bigger and bigger and the skein got smaller and smaller. I've stopped right at the crown so I can show the beginners how to use dpn's and close up the top of their hats. Maybe I can even wear my hat home from class like my students!

Knitting in the round is all I seem to be doing these days!

Now that I've got my yarn, I'm slowly knitting around on the neck of my Rebecca sweater. And I've still got to close up the head of new dolly (I keep forgetting to search for those safety eyes!).

I've also started a new hat for me. I'm teaching a beginner knitting class where we make hats, so...

The yarn is some fabulous Jamie Harmon angora I got at Rhinebeck one year. I lerf it! I'm trying to make a sort of beret-style hat. We'll see what it looks like when we finish our hats next week.

Until then, I'll just keep knittin' around.

Wee one, sporting her new one-glove Michael Jackson look.

This is one of her mittens I made for her last year (pattern from Adorable Knits for Tots). Once the chain broke that held the two mittens together and in her jacket, she started playing with the one mitten that was left. She'll bring it to us, make her little chirpy, pleading voice and stick her hand out. We slip on the mitten and she is so happy!

Yesterday Grace called my attention to Teeny Project Runway over at Mason-Dixon Knitting. If you haven't taken a look at all the hilarious knits over there, you gotta check it out (Grace's entry was Hedwig the owl in his regal knitted cape). Anyhoo, I just finished up a new knit for wee one and, as usual, she was a very good model in our photo session. But since she's always walking and since she's always after the camera (she broke the last camera after a project photo session in October), I have to stand about 10 feet away from her and take pictures as she walks towards me and the camera. Therefore, all of our baby L pictures nowadays look like a runway show. So this morning I present you with a wee runway show.

First up, wee one in her latest itty bitty hat, the rosebud wreath (well, more like bouquet) hat.

I knit it in Berroco Touche and the flowers were knit by my knitting buddies in scraps of Rowan handknit dk. She's so good about wearing all these itty bitty hats! And a little something extra for the camera please...

Next a stunning sweater dress that was a store sample at my lys.

I loved this blossom sweater from Knitting at Knoon the first time I saw it and have recommended the pattern to many customers. It's simple but girly, hip and retro and it's knit in Dream yarn (it was a really nice angora blend from I forget who, but it's now discontinued, which is why the store sold the sample - UPDATE: found it! it's Dream from Marks & Kattens). The sweater is actually a size 3, but with the sleeves rolled up about 5 inches, it makes a sweet little dress. And now a turn...

And lastly, the swimsuit competition. Wee one loves the water! She gets so excited when she sees her little bathtub come out for bath time. So I signed her up for a baby swim class where we can splash about in the pool together. I had to find her wee swimsuit first though (which is tough in the middle of February, let me tell you!). When I brought the bathing suit home, she saw it and wanted to put it on right away. She wore it the rest of the day over her clothes.

Look at her pose!

Hey, I'm a day behind! How did that happen? Guess we'll just have to post twice today. Our first stop will be a brief interlude in what has become hat week to show you wee one's mittens, finally with ends woven in and an attached crochet chain so they don't go missing.

The pattern is my fave baby mitten pattern: bold banded mitts from Adorable Knits for Tots and the yarn is Knitpicks Swish leftover from wee one's pinwheel sweater.

Wee discovered them yesterday. She crawled over to where her car seat and going-out stuff sits and found them. Hey Mikey, she likes them!

See ya later today as the hat train keeps on chugging along....

This Monkeysuits Funky Monkey newsboy cap by Sharon Turner is so cool! I saw Sharon's daughter wearing the original pattern at Rhinebeck and immediately knew that I wanted to make one of these for me. It also seemed like a perfect way to use some of my favorite hand-dyed sock yarn, since the pattern calls for sock yarn held double. This beautiful teal-blue-white colorway is called "Atlantis", making my funky monkey hat a funky sea-monkey hat! Remember those silly sea-monkey packets you could buy that never worked? Well, true to it's namesake, my funky sea-monkey hat was also a dud the first time out due to my not making an adequate gauge swatch (doh!), but this time it came out great! The pattern is excellent. I was amazed at how easy it was to do that brim. I was always afraid of doing a newsboy cap because I thought that part would be too tricky, but Sharon has come up with a very clever way to create it that looks awesome!

Speaking of tricks, I've got one more hat still on the needles, so I'm going for a "hat trick" this week. Can I complete three hats in one week?!

(Oh and yes, that is still the crappy old camera that has been bringing you crappy blog photos since wee one broke the good camera last month. We'll probably have to wait until after Santa brings a new camera for the return of really decent pictures. Ugh!)

The boys, the baby and I trekked out to Black Sheep Knitting yesterday to meet the amazingly creative and talented, Susan B. Anderson of Itty-Bitty Hats and Itty Bitty Nursery. She was soooo nice.

I was not at all surprised to find that she was just as sweet as the adorable little knits in her books. She brought along a whole trunk show of her knits and, let me tell you, all those itty bitties were even cuter in person! Can you see the teensy knitted teacups and that wonderfully stripey elefant. Chubby bunny was also there. I looooove him!

And the giant over-sized chenille peas and carrots were even funnier in real life. I don't know what you'd do with them, but when you see them in person, they are so outrageously huge and stuffed like something Claes Oldenburg would knit, that they're suddenly so cool, you want to make them. They're a riot!

Finally, the one thing I was most interested in seeing in person, besides Susan of course, was that incredible mouse mobile. Wee one touched some of the mice tentatively, but the boys really liked it. They came by and kind of mauled it after I took this picture.

To celebrate the occasion, I made wee one the bunny ears hat from Itty-Bitty Hats. Because of my bad math skills (I recalculated incorrectly after choosing a larger-gauge yarn and ended up at first with a hat that would fit my head!), I didn't get it done in time for wee one to wear to meet Susan (she wore her daisy hat instead), but it's all done today!

Such a fun pattern! I really appreciate how all of the hats in Susan's book are very simply constructed, so they're easy (if you don't goof your times tables like me) to resize for different gauges and larger sizes. I wanted to make this bunny hat out of some of the handspun angora I got from Jamie Harmon at Rhinebeck one year. I made myself a hat with her handspun and it's so cozy, wee one likes to take it off my head and snuggle with it. She especially likes the funny pompom on the top. Which is why I knew she'd love this bunny hat, because on the back it has a little pompom cottontail! (You don't see this in any of the book pictures, but it is in the instructions.)

Thanks to Susan from moms of now-even-cuter babies everywhere for sharing all your wonderful itty bitty patterns with us! I can't wait to see what you have in store for us to knit next!!

Nothing tragic, just annoying enough to warrant an emoticon's worth of sadness.

First, I had to rip back my funky Monkeysuits newsboy cap all the way to the first two inches. I was alllllmost done but when I tried it on, it seemed less big and slouchy than I'd hoped, so back it went to add more increases.

Because my (fabulous "atlantis") yarn was thinner than the yarn used in the pattern and I'm tripling it instead of doubling it, I'm a little off-gauge. It came out fine following the pattern as written and definitely had the right look, but I want it to just be that bit more funky. Frowny face.

And there's one more little knitting-related frowny face to share today. The info on Susan B. Anderson's book signing at Black Sheep Knitting in Needham was incorrect on her website. Correction: Susan B. Anderson will be at Black Sheep Knitting in Needham on Monday from 1pm to 3pm. Since it's a school holiday, that leaves us knitting moms with schlepping the kids along. Frowny face. Make that three more frowny faces. At least until we get to the ice cream shop next door!

I slept, I knit, I feel like I'm finally getting back on track!

To restart my knitting engines, I decided to start a quick, fun project for me. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Sharon Turner of Monkeysuits while doing the book signing at Rhinebeck and she was giving away a new Monkeysuits pattern to folks who knit a bit on some hats she'd started for Afghans for Afghans. Her daughter was also there modeling the delightful new pattern, Funky Monkey. The hat was just too darn cool, so I knit a bit and got me the pattern! It's actually knit with sock yarn held double. How brilliant! Brilliant because I love, love, love all of Dani's new colorways and dyes over at sunshine yarns, but I'm such a small needle wimp that I've had to be sensible and cut back on my sock yarn purchases. Now I had a reason to get one of her new stunning yarns and knit it up... on big needles!!

This is "Atlantis" (psst... I heard there'll be some more of this and similar colorways on sale in her store soon!). Isn't it fabulous?! Wait, it's even better knit up in the hat.

I'm holding three strands together to get the gauge (there's still plenty of yarn) and it brings out even more of that fabulous blue. I want to swim in this yarn!! And the pattern is written for smaller sizes too, so you know what that means....a matching hat for wee one!

Remember those little (too little!) green and white striped baby mittens I was making for wee one? Last time we checked in on baby's cold hands, I had one little mitten still to rip out and one big mitten all done. Well, finally I've got a finished a pair, but they're all white now.

I love the green stripes and will finish the striped pair, but I felt like the white would go well with everything so I made a plain pair first. I did feel a little stupid after a week when I had one big stripey mitt, one small stripey mitt, and one plain white mitt, and no pair at all. Luckily, it was warm last week! It's not warm anymore, so we'll be having a trial run some morning very soon.

Yes, wee one is a chubby girl. She's got the cheeks and the big baby legs and big hands to go with 'em. So the mittens I knit for her one night last week while she was sleeping ended up being ridiculously small.

I went back to the book and knit the next size up. You know, it's only been a week, but I had totally forgotten how soft and squooshy this Knitpicks Swish is. It's sort of made it a pleasure to go back and reknit these mittens.

But before I get ahead of myself, I still have to try this new one on her before I knit its mate. Fingers crossed that it fits! Big fingers.

It occurred to me as wee one and I were walking the boys to school one morning and the chill was turning her little hands pink that I could knit her some mittens. I should knit her some mittens. It's a little bit embarrassing that she doesn't have any mittens.

I quickly pulled out some leftover Kitpicks Swish and Zoe Mellor's Adorable Knits for Tots and whipped up these stripey little hand warmers. The green will go well with all her wee pink jackets and sweaters. I really like this pattern because the mittens are knit flat (I'm all lazy like that) and the smallest size is knit without a thumb because you can't get babies' thumbs into those thumb holes anyway. Plus, they knit up super fast - I cast on last night after all the kiddos were in bed and all I've got left to do today is seam up the sides and weave in the ends!

So naturally it's going to be 80 degrees today.