Knitting Talk | Mama Loves Knitting

I did it! I finished my sweater – in one year – but it is finished none-the-less. I will probably wear it every single day for a year now. It is cozy and warm. It isn’t without a flaw here and there, like the entire hood is completely inside out, but with the addition of a pom-pom it looks perfectly adorable, in my opinion, and then no do-overs required.

Before I forget there is a link I’ve been meaning to share. Picking up stitches can be tricky and each time I have to do it I realize I’ve completely forgotten how to do it, this video perfectly lays it out (for me). The photos above are when I was working on picking up stitches for my sleeves. I had to do it again when I was working on my hood and finishing up the collar. I am not going to lie to you, I’m pretty into the finished product.

So I did end up finishing the hood later with a pom-pom and I love it so much more, but I love the elf effect it has on me.

I couldn’t comfortably stand in the yard while Shane took some pictures of me, I’m far to shy for that, so I grabbed my chicken to keep me company. Meet Octopus Pie – named after Gussy’s pronunciation of Optimus Prime as a tyke.

So the hood, I flipped it so you could see the side that is (I think) actually supposed to be the visible part. I honestly like the way it looks though. Others may not be into the “character” (that is what I’ll be calling it from here on out).

The pattern for this sweater I found on Ravelry and it is called the Weekend Hoodie. You can see my progress if you look back at this post and this post. And I don’t honestly think there is much else to say. I’m beaming – and now for a few more photos…and I’m out (wearing my sweater of course).

Happy Knits!

This morning our local paper featured a yarn bombing project that I was fortunate enough to partake in yesterday. If you’d like to see the article to hear more about Keep Missoula Warm you can check it here.

This fascination I have with tagging something in town was finally met but not on the secretive level that I’d hoped for…so that is my next goal. I have the perfect piece to share – now I just need an occasion. It will come to me soon enough I’m sure. I took a handful of photos of the handiwork yesterday so I’ll post those as soon as I weed through my pictures. I barely squeezed this post out before I turned into a pumpkin. Nighty Night.

It all came to me one afternoon. I was wondering what on earth to do with my yarn scraps, they aren’t all just scraps – I’ll use them again. I used some bits to tie a quilt just this past week. I use all kinds of bits for projects I’ve got going in other realms of my world.

I love glass, I love canning, I love yarn and if you put it all together in a pretty window sill you get the perfect element of storage/eye candy.

I might be a dork, but it is the little things that make my heart sing.

Plus someday I want to make some scrappy leg warmers, and I will make use of this pretty canned yarn.

Baby William really digs his new blanket.

The hat on the other hand…well that is another story. He looks really peaceful in these photos. This was another project I started this past summer for my baby nephew. I told my sister I could finish it up before I left the Midwest on our summer vacation.

I didn’t end up finishing while we were still there, but it was really shortly after and it gave me something fun to knit when I had some down time while we played at the lake. On the pontoon boat one foggy morn I made a bit of progress.

When I wasn’t too busy adoring these lovebugs.

Tired Bugs

They were a little bit tired this foggy morn.

The hat was similar to most of my other ribbed hats. I used some Amy Butler yarn (didn’t know she made yarn until our trip to Crafty Planet). It was simple to knit with. I think I used size 5 or 6 circular needles. I decided to just wing the color changes between the blue and brown color. The yarn is a mix of organic wool and organic cotton, so perfect for a brand spankin’ new little baby head.

I got the idea to do a double pom pom up top from a hat that my kids had when they were a bit smaller.

Not a knit hat but a fleece number we got as a gift that I loved. I think I liked the idea of a challenge too, needed to vary my predictable hat just a smidge. I guess my sweater gave me some confidence. I used one of my handy stitch holders while I finished one side and then went back and did all of my decreasing for the other point. I am glad I was putting pom poms on there because I did have some little bits that needed covering. I’m generally quite the perfectionist but when you get right down to it, it just needs to keep the baby head warm.

Don’t you love my creepy model?

The Back

There was a bit of a gap in the middle (between the pom poms) so I ended up sewing that center up just a titch as well, with some yarn of course and it came together just fine. After all of the loose ends were tucked in you couldn’t even tell I’d done anything. I think I also realized how I can make it better the next time I attempt a double pom pom on a ribbed hat.

And Baby William, once again, I cannot wait to snuggle you. Hopefully before you are a month old, if all goes as I wish for it to.

I’ve been away from you, but definitely not away from my knitting. I’ve got a handful of projects for new babes coming into the world and for sweet babes already in the world. I have my sweater in a good place, just awaiting the assistance of the Knitting Jedi to finish up the hood. She is this woman that is probably in her 60s and she’s been knitting since she was 3 years old. I’m pretty sure she might know every single thing there is to know about knitting. My sweater has sleeves now though…I could conceivably wear it without the hood…but I kind of had my heart set on a hood.

Soon soon – the air is chilling – it is harder and harder to get out of my nice warm bed every morning. Pretty soon I’ll be all snuggled up in a nice warm sweater of my own creation.

I had a fun and very full summer. Each of the places I visit, in addition to checking out the local toy store, I’ve now found I need to find the local yarn shop. I made it back to the midwest for a visit and my sister and I had a couple of days sans our kiddos while Grandma and Grandpa spent some quality time with them. We found a couple of magical yarn shops that I hadn’t ever been to.

The first was Crafty Planet in Minneapolis. We decided since we had time we’d find the yarn I would use to make her baby a blanket and hat. Both will be featured in future posts. The blanket yarns are upon her shrinking lap (courtesy of Spud & Chloe). They had several yarns to choose from so it was pretty fun to look without distractions, they also had some pretty great fabric so we spent a LOT of time at Crafty Planet.

Then we got hungry and there was a tiny little restaurant that happened to be right around the corner. We actually did a GPS search for restaurants (pulled over on the side of the street) and we decided on our destination and we were about 20 feet from the parking lot. Probably didn’t really need the GPS to help us get there, actually, who am I kidding?, we did. This was my delicious lunch at Chimborazo.

Now back to the yarn. The next stop was pretty much my dream come true. The only bad part about this entire place was the temperature and that was simply because it was 100+ degrees outside in the muggy muggy midwest. Borealis was the shop we sought out in St. Paul, MN. This was outside the front door and I think it ought to be their home page photo…just sayin’.

I’m pretty into the idea of tagging things these days. My tags will unfortunately never be this awesome.

Now for the yummy inside of the store. I will mention this place is HUGE, it has 3 separate yarn rooms – an entire room for just sock yarn. If sock yarn is your ‘thing’ you will probably want to put it on your list of places to visit before you run out of yarn. Which poses the question does any knitter/crocheter ever run out of yarn? I recently told Jan that I hope I live long enough to use up all of my fabric and my yarn. She told me I would just buy more, so that was probably impossible.

There is something about cubes full of yarn that makes my heart sing. I’m so happy they didn’t care that I was taking photos.

Don’t you just want to stick your entire arm right in the middle of this rainbow?

Just do it!

Pretty excited to knock this out for Father’s Day for my very own Ukulele Guy. And, maybe I can even surprise him with a little ditty. You see he got me a uke a while back and I haven’t taken the time to learn to play it, or maybe I haven’t taken the time to have him teach me. I am the proud owner of the exact same ukulele pictured on Knitty’s Pattern though. I’m going to click on some of those links and learn those chords tonight. And then pull some yarn out of my stash and knit this up, and attempt to felt the first thing I’ve ever felted. I’m not anticipating it to look anything like the beautiful examples pictured with the pattern, but I’ll do my darnedest.

I’ve been away from this sweet blog for awhile, not on purpose, but vacation(s), kids, life, etc have pulled me away. I’ve been knitting though…that is one thing I’ve stuck to. I’m still plugging away working on my sweater, it now has one complete sleeve. The sleeve ended up being, not quite as perfect as I would have hoped for, luckily I still have another attempt with sleeve two. Then I will only have a hood to do, which sounds daunting, but I WILL GET THAT DAMN THING DONE! And I will save the photos until the end, mostly for your sake.

I’m also working on a baby blanket for someone special.

This is a tiny taste of it right up next to a pretty kickin’ Mad Lib my 6 year old created for our airplane entertainment enroute to Mexico. If you aren’t into the anatomy and bodily functions a 6 year old finds hilarious – maybe this Mad Lib isn’t for you.

And, I’m working on a hat for a special little birthday girl in my life, shhh don’t tell her. I think I’ll use it to top a jar of pickles, her favorite food (at least at my house). Those are the next special things coming down the pipe.

Happy Almost Summer!

I just came across this gem a week or so ago. I think they need our help – there aren’t many days left and they are not very near that goal they’ve set.

I’d still really love to find some time to “knitta” something about town. Can I use that as a verb? I’m now leaning toward my mailbox, just for starters. I’ll see where the summer takes me. I plan no (at least little) work and all play, but I have a 4 and 6 year old that probably don’t think knitting is much fun to play.

This seriously might be my new favorite image ever – I wish I could see it in person. The image is courtesy of this rad blog with a ton of other fun images (ideas) so check it out if you need some yarn bombing motivators.

If you are wanting to donate money to an amazing independent film visit the Yarn Graffiti Documentary donation page. Every little bit helps!

I came across some info, maybe in Craft Magazine, a while back about Urban Knitting – basically knitting and “tagging” urban fixtures eg. light posts, signposts, door handles, chain links, fire hydrants etc. The reason I’m motivated to post about this is as I was driving down Brooks Street in Missoula, MT yesterday I spied a couple of adorned light posts. I wasn’t able to shoot a photo, as I was driving down the street, but I plan to go back and snap a couple of shots of what I saw. This wiki page has an awesome explanation and info on a group called knitta that started doing this in Houston, TX (wiki page is where my photo came from). It looks to me, from the tiny bit of research I did, that this started way back in 2005 – back in the day – heh. The motivation was unfinished projects, I’m pretty sure all of you knitters have a handful of those. Anyway I plan to yarn bomb something in my town, yo. And I think you should too. If you do happen to do so and email me a photo and leave a comment I will choose one lucky winner to receive a hank/skein of yarn. I’m giving away a skein of one of my favorites, a light green (color number A031) Sheep Number Two. The catch…I need at least 10 photos to conduct my giveaway so start knitting or crocheting whatever you fancy. Contest ends March 31st and the giveaway will take place on April Fool’s Day – as long as I have 10 photos…and I’ll share the photos (along with links to your blogs) in a post on/near the 1st.

Ooh, and this blog post has some amazing photos of a tree, or several.

Get your creative juices flowing and cozy up some urban fixtures where you live. I can’t wait to see what you all have to share.

I’m starting another sweater, I tore out the sweater for my sweet husband – that will be a project for later…

I started my sweater a few days ago and pulled the entire thing out last night. I decided on a hoodie of sorts. I didn’t want to deal with a zipper though, so I’m knitting a pullover hoodie. The pattern I picked I found on Ravelry. The sweater is called the Weekend Hoodie, unfortunately not a free pattern, but one that looked pretty much spot on. I love having a hood on my sweaters, it is a definite bonus on windy/chilly spring days. I decided to start with a sweater for myself, maybe that is selfish, but I haven’t made a single thing for myself yet so I suppose it is high time!

I ran into problems right from the get-go, you’d think after all of the knitting in the round I do, I would have it figured out, but I definitely didn’t! The second row was the reason for pulling my entire sweater apart. When I say entire sweater – I was on row 12 ish…so not really that far, but when you cast on 220 stitches it feels like a LOT. I started over after figuring this out….

Flat Knitting:

garter: knit every row
stockinette: knit 1 row, purl 1 row
reverse stockinette: purl 1 row, knit 1 row

Round Knitting:

garter: knit 1 round, purl 1 round – this is where I went wrong. I was just knitting, knitting, knitting…not making a very appealing bottom to my sweater.
stockinette: knit knit knit every row
reverse stockinette: purl purl purl

I mean, it makes perfect sense when you think really hard about it, problem is I wasn’t thinking very hard about it.

Before I sign off I should tell you about my delicious yarn choice. I keep going back and forth between whether or not I like it enough to wear that sweater as much as I ought to once it is complete. I think today I’m pretty into it. It is a Cascade Yarn – Lana Bambu. It is 79% Wool and 21% Viscose from Bamboo.

I’m taking a sweater class to complete this project. I cast on 220 stitches on my brand spankin’ new Addi needles (size 6) and I’ve moved onto the Addi lace needles (sharper points) in size 7 and I’m going for it. The pattern is knit rows 1-3, p3, k1 on row 4 and start over knitting again. I think the pattern will be pretty fun when it gets taller, I’ll keep you posted.

Oh and I’m going to make a video of how to switch to a new ball of yarn as soon as I need to do so. If you missed the ball winder and swift video and you feel like throwing up, you should check it out.

Happy Knitting!

Happy morn of 2011 – I’m still working on some of the same projects into our brand spankin’ new year. That baby blanket isn’t quite complete – but that baby isn’t either – still waiting on her arrival. Grandpa Jeff loved his new Packers Christmas hat & from the photos it looks like I could have made it a bit bigger/longer. Looks like you need to plan a trip to Lambeau.

We had/have a houseful of family and friends and all that love I keep talking about. We had a wonderful Christmas and we’ve had a pretty relaxing week…playing with our new treasures and knitting. My boys scored with Santa – man that guy is gracious, not to mention a whole mess of gifts from other family members and full stockings! Shane got me that amazing game I’d discovered about a month ago and although everyone poo pooed the idea of playing it on Christmas day we had everyone in the vicinity entertained after we powered the Wii up. The whole room full of Aunties, Uncles, Grandpas and Grandmas were passing Wii remotes between one another, sometimes arguing about whose turn it was.

Every character in the game is made from yarn (grossly adorable) and all of the scenery is made from pieces of fabric that you can go behind, between and pull buttons to gather. It is seriously RIGHT up my video game alley!

[phpzon asin=”B003ZCH7DI” country=”US” trackingid=”mamalovesknitting-20″ templatename=”asin-tabs”]

Even though you all might be tired of my hats…I’ve got another ribbed hat I’ve been working on…and I think it might be my favorite. I started it only a few nights ago, and have made progress amongst our company. In fact the knitting seems to be contagious around here. Grandma Melinda (my mother in law) has been knitting since Christmas night, my sister in law (waiting for the newest babe) has been crocheting, and on Christmas night I had the privilege to teach my sister in law Sarah how to cast on and do the knit stitch.

Back to that hat – I also drew my little sister’s (Melissa’s) name for Christmas and she put in an order for a hat to match these mittens. (That I did not knit – but I wish I could say that I had.)

In the past I’ve used size 8 16″ circular needles to knit my famous ribbed hat. With this particular hat I cast on 88 and k2, p2 the entire way around until I reached the decreasing zone.

I decided this time I’d like to switch up the top a bit, and make it a little bit more fun. I’m definitely going to do a pom pom again (because I love rainbows more than most things on earth) and I think a rainbow pom pom will be incredible eye candy. I hope my sister doesn’t think she looks like Rainbow freakin’ Bright when this arrives in her mailbox. As the decrease began I kept my work on my circular needles and k2, p2, k2, p2tog the whole way around.

I put a place markers when the first round was complete and then I transitioned to double pointed size 8 needles while I k2tog, p2, k2tog, p1 (the second time around). The third time around I just knit the knits and purled the purls. The next round I k1, p1, k1, and p2tog (the two purls that weren’t already purled together). The next time around I k2tog, p2tog. Then I knit the knits and purled the purls over and over again until I thought the hat was looking elf-tastic.

I finished it off by just k2tog until I only had a few stitches remaining and then I pulled the remaining yarn through. I hid all of the yarn I’d tied together from changing colors so many times. I always just use a crochet hook to weave it all in. No sign of the transitions and I love the way it turned out.

I used my favorite yarn since I already had such a selection of colors. I only had to add three more colors to the mix to complete this project and now I want to make 10 more of these. The yarn is from Joseph’s Coat and it is called Shepard’s Wool. It is not superwash wool, but it is so incredibly soft and warm. * Hand wash only Mrs. gift recipient. * Since I ended up adding several inches to the top before closing it off, I got a little bit nervous about the appearance of the top of the hat. Not to be crass but it looked a bit like a striped wool condom attached to a beanie. Nobody wants to walk around with a phallic looking woolen good atop their noggin. Cindy Lou Who might be cool with it I guess, or any of the Whos for that matter. The pom pom addition really sealed the deal for me! I made the pom pom with a houseful of friends last night and a glass of wine nearby.

So we happily ring in another beautiful year, and I’m grateful for the 2 degree weather today. I can knit all day, play games in our cozy house, and watch Return of the Jedi without an ounce of guilt creeping in. Happy Peaceful New Year to all! Ooh and I can’t wait to show off my next project! I’ll give you a little hint – it has a tail!

Category: Knitting Talk

At Long Last….

Yarn Bombing in Missoula

Yarn Scraps

Double Pom Pom Hat

Hi Knitting Blog

Uke it Up! Catching Up!

Yarn Graffiti Documentary

Yarn Graffiti – Giveaway

New Sweater – Knit in the Round

New Year Knits