Can you even stand the cuteness of this??
Jennifer, thank you so much for sending me this adorable picture of Zach in his hat!
Category: Knitting
This post is only words.
I have absolutely nothing to show you this week. There are a few reasons for that.
One: I’ve shown you everything I have finished recently.
Two: Vacation! Jellybean and I went to visit Mimi and Papaw last week and my hubby and I get to celebrate our anniversary this week. I am looking forward to it and I hope I’ll get some good knitting time in between the hiking and eating. 🙂
and Three: I do have one project that I am really itching to show you. I have a large shawl that I finished back in July. It’s very special to me and it only needs a few ends woven in and a good blocking. The issue is that I don’t have any space to spread it out and block it that the cats and the kiddo don’t also have access to. I think I will try to block it in Jellybean’s room with the door closed while we’re out on our anniversary. That will probably work.
I do have several stockings in the works. I really hope I can get them all finished this week so I can show a few of them to you next week. One of them is a surprise that I can’t show until after Christmas, though.
My commission deadline is fast approaching. I will not take any more commission projects for this Christmas after November 10th in order to leave myself time to finish my personal holiday knitting. If you’ve been thinking about a stocking for this year, please let me know soon!
I will be back next Monday with *something* to show you, even if it’s just pictures of lovely fall trees!
Baby Viking hat for Jennifer
Jennifer and I worked together before I had the jellybean. Thanks to Facebook, I can keep in contact with most of my former coworkers, and that’s really cool since I don’t see them anymore.
She asked me if I would make a hat for her new little squish. A viking hat with purple and yellow. It would appear they are Minnesota Vikings fans. 🙂
This hat was quite the challenge! I am not proficient in crochet, but this afforded me the opportunity to try several new techniques, namely fpdc, bpdc, fpsc and a bobble stitch. I ripped it out and started over no less than four times, but I finally got it going and I am quite pleased with the result.
Don’t you just love my baby hat stand?? It works perfectly!
Mama’s and Daddy’s new houseshoes
I like making things. I like making things for people I love. I like keeping the toes of the people I love warm. Some of those warm toes help keep my toes warm.
I have notoriously cold toes pretty much all year round. The best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten is a heated mattress pad that gets used from September to July each year. (No kidding. I took it off the bed around the end of July and I’m just about ready to put it back on.) My husband doesn’t have this problem and he’s often my personal space heater. I have a feeling my kiddo is going to be much the same.
I made myself a pair of felted slippers early this summer so I would have them ready when it got cold again. I used some Lion Brand wool I had laying around, I don’t even know what type except that it was wool, it would felt, and I had enough of it. They were so easy to do, I asked my DH if he would like a pair, too. When he’s working from home, his desk sits in front of a window and right over a HVAC vent. It gets a little chilly there. With both of us having warm houseshoes, maybe we’ll save a tiny bit extra on the heating bill this year.
He picked out the colors – a deep, rich purple and a nice chestnut brown. The pattern is made with the yarn held double, plus a double layer sole, so when they have been felted, they are super thick and cozy.
There’s a children’s version of this same pattern. I do believe the Jellybean needs a coordinating pair of slippers.
Stocking for Ian
Carrie is a friend of mine from high school. She asked me if I could make a stocking for her son, but needed some help with ideas. When I designed the train stocking, I thought it would be fun for Ian, too.
The first stocking had a small snowflake pattern around the foot that looked really good on the pattern, but I wasn’t 100% pleased with how it turned out in knit. So I came up with a few different ideas to go around the foot. One was larger snowflakes that were offset.
I have a couple of other ideas for the foot section and I’m not sure how the final design will end up. I do plan on writing up the pattern for this stocking, but if I like several ideas, I may end up including more than one option on the final pattern.
Stockings for my family
With all these stockings I’ve been making, I guess I should show you the ones that started all this.
My husband had a great aunt who was widowed early and never remarried. She was very crafty – sewed and knitted a bunch of things. She doted on all her nieces and nephews and made them all stuffed animals for Christmas every year. There’s a whole tote of things she made for my husband and they’re all pretty darn awesome. (My favorites are the 10-lb octopus who’s armspan is about 6 feet and the hot air balloon, complete with a basket.)
She also made everyone in her extended family a stocking. As the years went on, she either loosened up her grip or started using larger needles, or possibly both, but the stockings got progressively bigger with each new family member. The joke was that she liked the new ones better so they got bigger stockings. When she passed away two years ago, she had several stockings in progress. Those were given to the intended people to finish or have finished.
This is one lady I am sad to have never known.
When Jellybean came along, I knew he needed a stocking. I knitted lots of things for him before he was born. A hat, mitten and sock set (that he outgrew in the womb,) a pair of warm wool pants (that I never put on him, for some reason,) and a jacket (that he DID get to wear a lot!) I’ve knit him several hats and another wool coat, but I hadn’t yet made him a stocking. I was too scared of color work.
There are so many designs to choose from out there. I was stuck in analysis paralysis for several months, just trying to pick out a design. I finally settled on a snowman from Annie’s woolens.
I made a few mistakes, but it was so much fun! I decided to make one each for my husband and myself. I really like the holly pattern Doug picked out for his stocking. It’s a classic.
I picked out the moose for myself. That one was so off-the-wall, I figured it suits me just fine.
I do have a confession, though. I am considering remaking the stocking for James. His was the first I made, it was quite the learning curve, there are mistakes that are very noticeable to me and I hadn’t yet designed the train stocking. I am thinking of doing another stocking in the train pattern for him. If not this year, then maybe next year.
At any rate, we all have stockings and I will be so proud to hang these up at Christmas!
Stocking for Jalynn
I gathered a lot of interest when I posted pictures of the stockings I made for my small family. One of those interested was a cousin of mine, Sandra. She wanted a stocking for her grandson, Jalynn. We talked about ideas, I showed her the patterns I already had, but made sure she knew I was flexible and willing to try others. She mentioned that he was very into trains and airplanes and the gears started turning in my brain.
I had the chance to work on an idea during a car ride to my in-laws one weekend. I spent the entire two-hour ride poking around in a spreadsheet on my tablet, changing the colors of cells. I am so pleased with how it turned out!
I’m pretty sure I’ll change the design a little more, and since I have another customer who wants a train stocking, I will have a chance to try a different idea.
Sock Repair, part 2
Well, this went better than expected.
I decided to do the repair during naptime one afternoon. My toddler has been napping well recently, for the most part, so I thought I could at least get things ready to knit before he woke up.
First, I had to pick up stitches along a row of the cuff.
Since this was a k2p2 rib, it was a tiny bit trickier than it would have been in plain stockinette. The knit stitches were easy, I just slipped my needle under the right leg of the stitch.
The purl stitches were more difficult. This was the first time I have ever attempted a repair, so I really had to think about what I was doing. I kept trying to pick up the purl stitch below the row I was working on. I had to carefully follow the yarn from the stitch beside it to get the correct stitch. I picked up the top of the purl bump, inserting the needle from top to bottom. This gets the stitch on the needle the correct direction.
I just picked up stitches all around the cuff, then counted to make sure I hadn’t missed one.
The next step was to rip out the knitting down to my needles. While I was doing this, I found another hole, which made me glad I picked the stitches so low on the cuff.
Then I had to find where I put the leftover yarn for these socks. I made a hat for my kiddo out of the yarn last year and the leftovers had moved several times. Honestly, this took the longest amount of time in the whole process. After that, I just needed to attach the new yarn, knit up the same number of rows, then bind off and weave in the ends.
Now they’re as good as new! I’m so glad because it seems that fall weather is now upon us. I’ll give these a good workout this year.
Stockings for Chelsea
A friend in my playdate group asked me if I would make stockings for her after seeing the stockings I made for my family. I hadn’t yet considered knitting for commission on a serious basis, so I was a little nervous about saying yes.
She wanted a really simple stripe design in traditional Christmas colors. I am terrible with sketching my ideas, so I just started knitting. I took her a partially knit stocking to show my idea and she loved it. That was all the confidence boost I needed to launch AbbyCrafty.
There’s a little hint of sparkle in the grey stripes in this one.
I really hope these will be treasured for years. They were so much fun to do.
She told me she’s hanging them up with her Halloween decorations! I think that’s awesome.
Sock Repair, part 1
Back in my younger and dumber days (ok, so this was last year) I washed my hand-knit socks in the washing machine and then threw them dryer with a bunch of other clothes. This had mostly worked out for me until a piece of velcro caught a sock. I tore the sock off the velcro, and in doing so, I broke the yarn.
These are really great house socks and I even wore them out a couple of times when my other hand-knit socks were dirty. They’re made with Jarbo garn Raggi, a worsted weight superwash sock yarn. They are soft, cushy and very warm. I was very sad when I broke them.
It should be pretty easy, if not a little tedious, to fix and I do have some yarn left over. Fortunately the yarn break is right at the top of the cuff. The other side of the cuff is also very fuzzed and felted.
These socks have been sitting in my nightstand drawer waiting to be fixed since I discovered the problem. Since I’ve started wearing my wool socks to bed at night (Yeah, in September!), I think it’s time to fix them.
My plan is to pick up stitches around the sock a few rows down from the tear. Then I’ll rip the cuff out down to the needles. Since I knit these toe-up, it should be as easy as just knitting back up and binding off.
Next time, we’ll see how my plan worked.