So proud of myself for having the range :D
(being able to / unable to close neatly the underarm of a sweater)
i work top down, usually out of the knitters handy book of top down sweaters, and i always have to pick up more stitches under the arm, so as not to have gaps. works out ok tho, because the sleeves are a bit too slim by the book.
I've been trying to distract myself from the horrors of modern life by knitting unnecessarily complex cable swatches. They are partly inspired by printer's ornaments and other typographic elements.
it's been quiet 'round here for all the usual reasons ((side-eyes societal collapse)) but also because I'm making a graphic novel and attending school full-time and making enough soup every Monday to feed 20 hungry art school students and also doing a lot of this🧶
My mum made and gifted me this incredible hand-knitted poncho with FISH ON IT!!!!!! The little waves and the bubbles I can’t handle it… She spent easily 100+ hours on it and before this had only made a few scarves, absolutely incredible and I’m excited to wear it everywhere I go now 💚🐠💛
i dropped by my favourite secondhand bookstore and found what is possibly the most incredible knitting book iver ever seen. that teaches you how to knit little gardens and sew them into a massive quilt 3d. the photos i took are atrocious and do NOT do this book justice
thats a PRIORY GARDEN WITH MONKS
IT EVEN TEACHES YOU HOW TO MAKE ALL THE TOOLS ABD BASKETS AND POTS AND PLANTS
LOOK AT THE SOME OF THE FOLIAGE
i have never been more upset to not have $30 ready to buy this. its incredible. i have to find it online somewhere. i knew the moment i saw this i had to share it with EVERYONE
Lil booties! Pattern from Novita ❤️
as im getting more into knitting, i'm left wondering -- how the heck do folks keep their needles organized?? i have yarn and notions storage already, and im able to stash some of my needles away, but as im acquiring more needles for more projects i am running out of places! do y'all have storage suggestions for needles and things?
First, be aware: you will lose this battle. The needles will escape wherever you put them, and end up in places you never thought they'd be (the couch, the bed, under furniture, and so on). They will refuse to be contained. 😂
They're not as bad as stitch markers though.
For a more practical answer, though, I have to confess, I've never known knitting life without a needle case of some kind. I inherited my mother's needles and needle case, and used that for years until it finally fell apart. And it's so, so useful. Sure, not all the needles make it back into the needle case. Many needles live in the project bags with their projects, (or have lives as escapees until I find and sequester them again!), but having a central-yet-portable storage option for all my needles (and crochet hooks), has been a Godsend! After my mother's old needle case finally was non-reparable, I splurged on a needle roll to hold all my needles. If you have enough needles, it's totally worth it, I think. I got mine from a wonderful shop on Etsy that has since closed down, but you should be able to find someone who makes or sells them without too much trouble. Mine is fabric, but you can get them in different sizes - I got a super tall one to handle my 14 inch long wooden straight needles!
these days i mostly use circulars, and some short dpns. i gave away nearly all the long straight needles, because for me they are just awkward. so most of the ones i am really going to use, can fit into quart ziplock bags. i have one for each size, labelled with the (american)size number, and the millimeter size. these stand up in order in the little cupboard next to my comfy chair where i do most of my at home knitting.
i did also make one of those rollup things out of fabric for straight needles, but there aren't that many in it since i purged the slick aluminum ones. it's not really that hard to make, and doing it yourself lets you customize for the needles you actually have.
Look at these socks I made!
JESUS CHRIST
This applies to so many things! Your first two inches of knitting/crocheting look like fuck-all. Your pile of fabric pieces look like fuck-all. Your first two paragraphs look like fuck-all. Your first nursing class looks like-fuck all. Keep doing the thing until you finish the thing!
This is not a hotdog 🌭 🧶 It's 2 of my favorite winter accessories.
They're both worked in a combination of stockinette stitch and ribbing. And you can see in two color examples that the stockinette is a single strand. When you transition to the ribbing section, a second strand of yarn is added and the needle size goes up. There's so much potential for different color combinations.
The Hat is pretty straightforward. The brim is essentially a hem. It's warm enough to wear folded down or if you need extra warmth you can fold it up and have triple thick protection against the wind. It's just a nice, basic hat, and it's interesting and fun to make.
The scarf is actually much more interesting. As we get further into gift knitting season, there's less and less time to make things. The scarf is only half the length of a traditional size with a loop on one end. To wear it, pull the end through the loop to make a knot. It saves you a little bit of money on yarn and a whole lot of knitting time.
When you're not wearing them, roll the hat up inside the scarfand flip the loop inside out. They'll stay together and compact in your bag.
The PDF download is available on my website and on Ravelry and until Nov, 7, take 20% off all patterns, pins, books and stickers when you use the code "FoxyBday"
New sweater is coming along great!
Very happy with the colours.
pattern is based on Andrea Cull’s DNA Pullover, and the double helix cable pattern was charted by @ub-sessed, which can be found here
Several weeks ago one of my coworkers called me over into her cubicle and gave me a very unexpected gift. Her mother passed away recently, and she'd been packing stuff up at her condo to give to relatives and sell, so the home could be sold. The mother was an avid knitter and crocheter, and when my coworker came upon her stash of equipment, she told me, she "immediately thought of me as someone who might get some use out of it."
So, I have inherited a varied collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, cable needles, sewing needles, and, best of all, now-out-of-print pattern books, mostly for blankets, because that was what this lady loved to make most. Plus, I also have a bunch of gauge swatches she made, pinned to little bits of card covered in perfect schoolteacher handwriting setting out the patterns they were made to test.
And also...
My coworker brought another bag, full of yarn and...knitted blanket squares. Her mother's last started project, before she got too sick to continue. And she asked if there was anything I could do with it.
It turned out, there are twelve completed squares, and I quickly located the pattern book they are from amid those given to me. It's a book of 60 patterns, meant to be put together however the maker wishes into blankets of 20 squares. I figured out which of the numbered patterns were already made, and selected eight more that I thought might go well with them.
So now! I am working on completing! My coworker's mother's last knitting project!
And I really am feeling very good about doing it.
Whoa this blew up a lil' bit huh! I've been so happy reading the notes and seeing other people's similar stories and such. And I've received some very sweet messages about this too. Thank you so much! <3 Crafting is such a bonding experience--across families, with those who've passed, just in general a very communal thing. I'm happy if my post brought some nice feelings to people's days, too.
I come bearing a small update! I have completed three of the eight squares I picked to make and just started a fourth. Here’s what the project looks like so far:
(Why yes I did stand on my bed to take this photo.)
The squares are in big need of blocking to get 'em to a uniform size, of course, but this is what we’ve got! Mine are the one at top right and the middle two in the second row.
My coworker told me her mother especially liked to make blankets featuring a popcorn/bobble stitch, but I didn’t find any squares like that among those she’d made for this project, so that’s why I chose to make the one to the left of the book. <3 Otherwise, it seems like she picked a mix of squares with cables and not, with graphic motifs versus repeating textures, so I chose mine to reflect that and have decided on a layout that I hope shows off the variety.
Apparently Mom's usual blankets were knitted all in one piece; coworker said she’d never seen her make a square sampler like this. Meanwhile samplers are MY favorite kind to make, so I’ve been having a lot of fun.
Oh! And I wanted to share this, because a few people in the notes have done so: If you're a crafter and want to help out finishing people's projects, or you have a project you'd like to see finished but can't work on yourself, try checking out Loose Ends! It's a volunteer program where you can submit projects that need finishing or sign up to be a finisher. They match volunteers with submitted projects based on location and other factors. It looks really fun and, like I said up there, a great way to connect with people through crafting.
‘Nother small update, I showed my coworker some progress photos and she immediately zeroed in on that one square with the popcorn stitches. She said she recognized that one because her mom had once made an entire blanket like that (as in, not in separate squares, she repeated that pattern across a whole blanket’s width).
I told her why I chose that square, like I told you guys up there, and she said she was so glad she gave her mom’s stuff to me because I’m “making sure her work is finished beautifully.” Ahhh, my heart, it grows.
(Also! I’m on the last of my eight squares! And then I have to put them together, which is less fun than making them, but I’ll do my best!)
@noirandchocolate is this tue booklet?
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/leisure-arts-leaflet-932-60-easy-to-knit-pattern-stitches-combine-to-create-sampler-afghans
YES!! And cool, it looks like it CAN still be bought! That’s good news, thanks so much for finding it in case anybody else wants to check it out!
Aaaaaand I have a big update tonight! All the squares are DONE!!
You can compare the final layout to what is posted up there to find my squares. :D
I had to fix the crochet borders on several of Coworker’s Mom’s because they didn’t have a uniform 48 stitches per side as called for in the pattern book, but now that’s taken care of, I can start…
ASSEMBLING.
IT IS COMPLETED.
For more photos and a little more info, I’ve made a new post here!
i'm officially a little over halfway done with the first mitten!! im loving the colors i chose -- pics will be posted when i get back home & can take them lol
for my first time doing stranded color work & my first time using dpns, this project is going shockingly well!! some of my colorwork is just the slightest bit tight, and the space where i change needles is a little loose, so i'm fairly confident it'll block out fairly even in the end.
the pattern is Lunar Mittens by Holly C Watson, which is free on ravelry!! the only modifications i made were to the cuffs -- i cast on 72 stitches instead of 84 & did alternating stripes (7 rows for each stripe) and added one extra row of the dark color to the very start of the body, which i used to increase to 84 stitches.
body of the first mitten done! now i just need to to the thumb!
further alterations: the decreases on the front half were done in green rather than white bc i preferred how it looked, and i bound off one round after the final moon bc the mitten was already quite long.
HE’S GAY AND FRIENDLY!
From: ‘Home-made Toys’ The Australian Women’s Weekly, 1960s approx.
For you @appenzellerlouis
• This knitted elephant with his bright red saddle-cloth will bring long-lasting joy to a kiddie. Easy to make too. Just follow directions to success.
Materials required: 3 skeins Sun-Glo shrinkproof or Sunbeam super 3-ply fingering wool, shade No. 347 (grey); 1 skein shade No. 2138 (red), and a small quantity of yellow and white wol; 1 pair No. 11 needles; 1 crochet hook; 2 black shoe buttons.
(This is cooler than I remember it being.)
Hey! I’m documenting some old samples for a massive online trunk sale, and there’s really nothing like retaking old photos to force you to see that a lot of things have really gotten better—I think my tech and my lighting have both improved. Since I’m linking to old patterns without having the time to update them, I’m putting some of the older ones on a 20% off sale through October 30th, 2024, and that runs about the same as a new pattern promo—no code required; if you’re not seeing this you might be surprised by the discount; the 20% comes off the listed price automatically.
