shorties

I made shorties for my monster.

I used the picky pants pattern by little turtle knits. I probably wouldn't use it again. Kinda annoyed to have paid $14 usd for it.
Here's the first attempt...

Whatever you do, don't do option 3 for the shaping... it said "this is the best option, in my opinion) for Buddha bellied kids. You know, the ones where the diaper invariably rides down under the belly in front? For the Buddha option, you’ll work both the backside increases and extended short rows in order to get the perfect fit." I read that and thought, wow, that's totally Finn! NOT. holy crap it was freaking huge. I also didn't like the gusset. Second version, I used the one described here

Second try

front


back (domo has eyes, but the black yarn kinda blends in with the dark brown... hard to capture on camera.)

I'm not unhappy with the second version. But I forgot to account for the short row shaping when I did domo's face, and I think his mouth is disproportionate to his teeth, and that I should have done the whole thing up higher on the bum. Oh well. The embroidery took almost as long as the knitting!

Issues: Should I size down the needles for seed stitch? The legs have this kind of flare to them... Haven't blocked or lanolized them yet, so maybe that'll help.
Also, with the short rows, it's fine on the knit side, but on the purl side there's a little loop left over. Does that make sense? I didn't take a pic, and with the duplicate stitch, you can't see it anymore. But it bugged me.


it was hard to get a good shot, he kept running around.

knitting for non-knitters

*sigh*

I had narrowed it down to one of 3 different scarves. lace. my first. for my mom. for mother's day. knitty's argosy, knitty's branching out, and misty garden from scarf style. and I couldn't decide. so I looked up on flickr, and showed my mom, and asked her what she thought of each. she said, "yuck" "ohhh yuck" "omg even worse" "were you thinking of knitting that?!?!" "for yourself" "oh no, not for me!!" "i hate those kind of scarves".

god.

well, at least I know it now before yarn shopping and putting it on the needles and all.

domo-kun... peekaboo

It's March. So the obvious answer about what to knit would be ......mittens?

Actually, I started knitting mittens back in November. See the pile? This doesn't include all the ones I frogged. *_*


But I've finally got a pair of functional mittens!

Yarn: Paton's classic merino
Pattern: Magknit's Peekaboo Mittens
Needles: 3.5mm and 3mm
Modifications: used mock cable rib for the cuff. and used duplicate stitch for domo-kun's face; did the charting myself. I also made the bottom flap of the finger holes a bit longer so that it overlapped and the hole didn't let all the cold air in.

So, from basic brown mittens


to something a little different


:D

x-posted to punk_knitters

new knitty

i've never seen the allure of sock knitting. seriously. why go through all that trouble when you can get the store bought version. and people only see a glimpse of your ankle anyways.

okay, but until today. and then i saw bmp! like, seriously?? space invader socks?? that'd be so fucking cool. i may become a sock knitter after all.

i like carolyn too. i dont know, it's just a striped cardigan. but it looks cute. i love lime green, but it looks really really bad on me. So I'm thinking maybe boysenberry with blue vista as the cc. i worry that i'll die of boredom, all that stockinette. i know it was sooooo frustrating to do the back panel of the punk rock backpack which i still haven't finished.
here's the colours page. i rarely use the recommended wool. and with shipping costing $9, it's unlikely i'll start. i sure hope beehive's got something similar.

torque is cute too. but a sweater is a pretty big undertaking at my speed of knitting. i'd want a bulky yarn. maybe slightly variagated.

ok not just socks, but what's up with all these arm warmer patterns?? it's my fingers that get cold, not my wrists. finn hates mittens though. i might tackle a pair of dashing for him. i'd probably need to do it in lace-weight if i wanted to do more than one cable repeat though.

punk rock screw-up

It was supposed to be the front panel of SnB's Punk Rock Backpack. But I finished it--in August--and noticed it seemed really tiny. Like, useless tiny. I guess I screwed up horribly on the gauge. And, as my first intarsia panel (and 3rd knitted object ever) I couldn't frog it. So it got stuffed back into the closet. A few months later, I knitted the back panel. And just recently I did the sides/bottom/handle (1-piece).

I did stranding for totoro's ears (also a first), and it came out all puckered. I felted the bag, and it just compounded the problem. In retrospect, I really wish I had frogged the top part. The nose looked fine when I tossed it into the washer, and lopsided when it came out of the dryer. Don't know what happened there.

The front didn't felt as well as the back. And the handle is a lot longer than I expected. It shrank *maybe* 2 cm! I guess because I used garter stitch? It shrank in width instead. The opposite of stockinette??

The lining. OMG. Excuse me while I toss the sewing machine over my balcony. Actually, it's really heavy, maybe you can help me lift it, too? I sewed, and ripped out seams, and re-sewed. And oops, re-ripped out more seams, and more sewing, and ew, what a PITA. I don't think I'll be attempting any more projects which include sewing. My rudimentary skills will be limited to re-attaching stray buttons from now on, tyvm.

Oh, and I picked out thread to match the bag. But I forgot I'd need to sew all the lining together too. So all my sloppy sewing is in super-obvious turquoise thread.


Ok, enough whining. On to the interesting stuff.
Yarn: Paton's Classic Merino. The blue yarn I dyed with kool-aid. 3 packs of Blue Moon Berry, and 3 packs of Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade.
Pattern: based loosely on the SnB Punk Rock Backpack. I did up the totoro chart myself. (which looked great on paper, but seems ill-proportioned as a knitted object. If I were to do it again, I'd probably add a few more rows (10 maybe?) around row 20.) clicky~
Needles: 4mm.


pre-felting


and post-felting


and the inside


x-posted to punk_knitters