Easiest Ankle Warmers

Hey guys!

I'm just popping in to share a super quick pattern with you all. It's almost too simple and silly to be called a pattern. it's more of just loose guidelines... But first, a quick story:

Anyway, yesterday I picked up my That Girl cardigan after letting it sit untouched since September. I decided to make it long sleeve, did some calculations, checked my gauge, measured things, wrote things down. I was being a very responsible knitter. I knit the sleeve one way and then decided to go for a different look. I ripped back, recalculated and started again doing special decreases of my own design. But things didn't look quite right. I wondered, "Why does the sleeve look so wide?"

I counted the stitches and discovered that there were 64 stitches on the needles and not the 54 that I wanted. What tripped me up?.... Subtraction.

I had told myself over and over in my head that 76 minus 12 is 54. boo hoo.

So that project is currently hiding in a heap under the bed waiting for a day when I feel more confident in my basic math skills.

But I despite my lack of brain power (I blame the cold) I did want to make something yesterday and feel productive. I picked up a pair of huge size 17 needles and a ball of Lon Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick in Oatmeal. You may have noticed I use this yarn a lot. I just like it. It's big and affordable and you can put it in the washing machine. Good things.

I started knitting and within 3 episodes of Seinfeld I had these:

Here's how they are made:

Cast on 16 stitches on size 17 needles with a super bulky yarn (or you can hold four strands of worsted weight together).

Knit garter stitch until the piece is 12 inches long.

Bind off.

Sew the cast-on edge to the bind-off edge.

Weave in the ends and you're done! You made something in less than 2 hours!

And I have to say that I did feel a lot better after I finished knitting these. Like, okay, I don't know how to subtract 12 from 76... but at least I can make something to keep my ankles warm.

Sick Day

Hello.
I'm home sick today. Here are the things I'm thinking about doing:

I started knitting this sweater soooo long ago. I'd love to get it finished in time to get some wear out of it. The problem is that I think I made some adjustments to the pattern and I'm not sure if I wrote them down anywhere.... Also, I just can't seem to decide if I want it to be short sleeve (as the pattern is written) or long sleeve. Long sleeve will take longer but I think I would wear it more.

I also should get started on this pile of vintage dresses to be mended. Some of them are mine and some are for the secret project. And now that I think of it there are actually more dresses in need of mending in the craft room... yikes.

The third one from the bottom is a gorgeous dress from the 60's that I was wearing last night and I sneezed so hard that a little section of the zipper ripped out. haha.

I'm also reading Love in the Time of Cholera for the third time and listening to First Aid Kit's album The Big Black & the Blue for the hundredth time and absolutely loving both.

It's snowing like crazy here. On a clear day you'd see the Empire State Building in the distance. Not today.

Hope you're cozy and well.

Nature and Kneesocks

I just came across the work of Tereza Vlckova via all the mountains. I love it. I didn't realize how badly I'm yearning for springtime and cotton dresses until I saw these photos.

Blizzard

Time Lapse NYC Snow Blizzard from K Taro Hashimura on Vimeo.

I'm loving this video of the blizzard we had in New York a couple weeks ago. It wasn't a super crazy blizzard but the video is still really beautiful time-lapse.

I'm going to Connecticut tomorrow to do some stuff for the big project I'm working on. So exciting! I'm hoping to get some knitting done in the car so maybe I'll have something interesting to show you tomorrow night.

Have a rad weekend!

Linen Learning

The other day my friend Irina and I were doing some clothes shopping for a big project we are working on. It's a project I'm excited to tell you about soon... Anyway, one of the dresses I found that day was made of this beautiful woven linen in rich jewel tones. I grabbed it and carried it over to Irina and whispered*, "Look. I found one that's 100% linen!"

She replied, "What's linen?"

And I paused for a second and then said, "Well, it's made of flax and it's uhh... like, really nice..."

Yeah, not super eloquent. I was so happy to stumble on this video today on reMade USA's blog.

BE LINEN MOVIE from Benoit MILLOT on Vimeo.

It's a bit long but absolutely mesmerizing and gorgeous. I love learning more about fibers and textiles; learning how things are made.

*I don't know why I was whispering. Sometimes I whisper when I'm excited and nerding out. Especially if I'm excited and nerding out about knitting or fabrics. yeah.

First Timer

Remember that swatch I showed you? It's for a new project that I'm feeling excited about. My very first stranded colorwork project! Is it intarsia? Umm, I'll have to check the definition. Anyway, the project is a pair of gloves from the winter 2010 edition of Spin-Off magazine called, simply, Norwegian-Inspired Gloves by Erda Kappeler. I couldn't find it on Ravelry to give you a link but I might scan in a photo from the magazine just to show you what I'm working towards. Here's where I'm at so far:

I'm changing a couple of things: The pattern is for gloves but I'm going to try to change them into mittens. I just think handknit gloves in anything heavier than sock yarn look really bulky. Like big monster fingers. And secondly, I'm changing one of the charts. The original pattern has a chart on the back of the hand for (what I think is) a rooster and I'm doing a deer chart instead. I might do a different animal on the other hand. We'll see.

SNOW!

Yesterday it started snowing. Hard.

First I decided to swatch for some new mittens using some scraps of worsted weight yarn. Some is Cascade 220 and some is some random thrift store wool. It looked like this:

The project I'm planning for is knit in the round. To get a more accurate swatch I knit across then loosely brought the yarn back to the right hand side of the right side of the knitting... Uhh. Does that make any sense? It's a way of swatching in which you are knitting a flat stockinette swatch but you only do knit stitches (no purls) as if you were knitting in the round. The back of the swatch ends up looking like this:

After knitting on that swatch for a little while I went out with Logan to walk around in the snow storm. We went out around midnight. I was snowing fairly hard but it wasn't too cold out and the night was beautiful. I realized as I was walking that I was wearing 6 hand-knit items... Really! My socks, cardigan, hat, mittens, shawl, and scarf were all hand knit by me. Logan was wearing a scarf from me as well.... Wow, a lot of hand knit stuff. When I finally came in from the cold I looked like this:

Haha, icicle eyebrows are funny.

Olek Again, Again

I feel like I just wrote about Olek's work really recently... Well, here she is again:

OLEK AND THE CHARGING BULL ON WALL STREET from olek on Vimeo.

Back

Hi.

Still here. It's been taking me a while to get back to reality after a big break from work and a great trip back home.

And you know what else? I realized the other night, while discussing the holidays with a friend, that I knit about ten gift this year. I feel really good about that. But you know what I feel slightly less good about? I didn't take a photo of a single one! Seriously, not one. And that's a big part of why there's been silence here on the blog. Oh well...

I think I'm going to start another Brambles Beret today. The one I made in the fall (or was it the summer?) went to my sweet friend Berit. No photo, of course.

Also, while I was in Minneapolis I saw the photos of Alec Soth at the Walker Museum. Have you heard of him. I really like his work but one photo in particular has been stuck in my mind. Maybe you'll like it to:

photo by Alec Soth