bonding with knitters

I was waiting for my table at Chili's in Santa Maria and a lady who was also waiting was knitting a cabled burgundy sweater. I told her I was going to goof her up by mumbling 'purl, purl' at random moments. She laughed and then we discussed knitting on trains or while waiting in line at amusement parks.
That reminds me of a book I saw called Knitter's Night Out. It made me long for a group of people to knit with once a week.

Bunny hand puppet

I've been designing a knitted bunny hand puppet.

Yarn Bargain of the Day

I've paid about $5 or $6 a skein for this Lion brand yarn at yarn shops. Imagine my surprise when I found it at the .99 store for .50 a skein. And I needed some to finish a shrug I'm making so I bought 6. I suspect the yarn came from Walmart since many of them have closed their arts and crafts depts. I've also heard of it showing up at Big Lots so keep your eyes peeled.

More Knitting

I just listed three more items in my etsy shop and two of them were knitted. http://www.pigglewiggins.etsy.com

The red scarf I finished this morning. The purple hat I made for a class display at Michael's and the manager refused to display it because it was a 'family oriented store' despite the fact that the main display by the registers at that very moment was for Pirates of the Carribean. So I quit shortly thereafter and the poor hat has been sitting in a bag ever since.

New Knitters

Yesterday I taught two of my friends to knit. At the other end of the table men where working away on bows and making a lot of noise so it was hard to concentrate but they both got the 2 basic stitches down.

My first mittens

This is the first pair of mittens I knitted. The pink camo ones were the 2nd pair.

Pink Camo Mittens

Things were getting so overwhelming that I made myself sit down and write 3 pages in my journal to clear out my brain. Then I took a walk in the sunshine after hearing sunshine on our retinas produces seratonin, which cheers us up. A little sunshine every day, especially in winter, and no more cabin fever. While on my walk I finished a pair of mittens and listed them on Etsy. http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=8990779

I'm so happy to have one more project in the 'done' pile.

Envelope Hat

Envelope hats are literally a knitted rectangle folded in half then stitched up the side.

New Hat At the Beach

I titled my newest hat "At the Beach" because the colors reminded me of sand, surf and sky.

Scood

I learned a new word today. A SCOOD is when your hat and scarf are attached...it's a scarf and a hood. I can't wait to create one. Fun fun fun!

Get a free hat

If you live in San Luis Obispo County, CA you may be able to get a free hat hand knitted by me in one of my original designs. Read the details here: http://hubpages.com/_l6f64eotqm13/hub/Knitted-Hat-Project

Knitting Hats

I just finished one of the hats I designed. It's in my Etsy Shop here http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=7244058 so people can order it in a color combination that suits them. I have 2 more original designs on my needles right now. One is blue with orange diamonds and the other has five different colors and a great texture.

I also finished my green and orange monkey hat and should be listing that soon. I redesigned it to make the monkeys smaller for the next hat attempt. I wish I could knit them as fast as I could design them on paper.

Designing Original Hats

Last night I couldn't sleep so I sat up, turned the light back on, and spotted the knitting graph paper sitting there. So I started doodling some new hat designs. I came up with four or five. My favorite was a design with two monkeys. I think I will add a third monkey and knit a had with that design in dark green and orange. I doodled until I finally got sleepy.



This morning I started doing the ribbing on the new hat. I'm still working on a previous hat in royal blue and orange that I should have finished first. The creative process is rarely linear though. I had the worst time with the blue hat and had to frog about six rows. I finally got the pattern back on course, but I was tired of looking at it for the night. Maybe today I'll give it another go. If my headache goes away. I found it's hard to knit when I don't feel well. I get too frustrated.

I finished my purple and light blue hat with the chain pattern except for weaving in the ends. It came out nice, but the pattern shifted in one spot and I was too far into it to rip things apart, so I'll have to live with the mistake. It will still keep my head warm; I just won't be able to sell it or give it as a gift. Sigh.

New Hat Designs

I have hat fever lately. I just finished one original design with a chain motif and now I'm doing one I called "Dotted Diamonds". The new one is royal blue with orange diamonds. I just wish I could knit faster because I have so many designs bumping around in my head and I'd like to see each one come to fruition.

Progress Report on Multidirectional Knitting

I've decided to use this to trim a jacket lapel. It has about 10 squares now. So I'm about halfway done.

Box O' Yarn

Determined to clean out my old storage unit, we put 3 of my boxes in the truck last time we had it open a week ago. So, today I finally took the boxes out of the truck. Happily one of them was all yarn. Plus about 6 dolls I had knitted sans arms and never finished. Luckily I recognized what they were. I also found about 10 steel crochet hooks, some sewing tools, and 2 bigger aluminum crochet hooks. I'm happy to put all these things into use. Waste not, want not.
The other box had several needlecraft projects in it including some Christmas tree ornaments in cross stitch and a Christmas stocking.

I also found my index book of all the commercial stamps I bought. It was very nostalgic looking through all those.

The last box says 'costuming' and I didn't get to go through it today. Tomorrow is another day. It's already 1 AM.

Multidirectional Scarf Cont.

The pattern has been a bit hard to figure out. It could have used a few more details. When you get to the end of the 2nd triangle (the pink one in the photo), finish on an even numbered row. Don't knit back. Switch colors, and start the short rows all over again.

When I was halfway done with the pink I realized I'd dropped a stitch at the beginning of the pink section. I had no luck trying to retrieve it, so I had to frog it and start the pink section all over again. Now I'm on to the third color.

Also, I used size 2 needles because they are what I had on hand. But it would have been much easier on size 6 or 7 needles.

Multidirectional Scarf

My friend MEC is making a scarf like this. I'm sorely tempted to try it as well, even if I can't sell it, since it's not my own design. But still, the technique might be useful for other things, like a vest or a tote bag.

http://lluest.blogspot.com/2006/12/m-for-multidirectional-diagonal-scarf.html

Striped scarves

I finished the knitting part of my Super Skinny Spaghetti Scarf and started another one in shades of green and blue with black to give it a stained glass effect. I still have to weave in half the ends on the first one, but I find that tedious, so I work on it during TV commercials or when I'm tired.

Hexagon and Stitch Markers

Here are two firsts for me. I stayed up until 2:30 AM the other night knitting a hexagon. I'm so thrilled I did it. And then I started another one the next day and made these stitch markers to help me keep my place better.

I've been trying to learn how to make a hexagon so I can knit hats for over 20 years. I must have 4 books on the subject. So I finally found directions on line that I could understand, and now I'm in hexagon heaven.
I've also never made stitch markers before. So happy to have made my first set. Now I won't have to buy any ever again.