Bulky Flip Top Mittens and Fishtrap Aran Beanie

Pattern: Bulky Flip Top Mittens
Source: Life in Cleveland Blog
Yarn: Cascade Eco Wool in Medium Brown, .25 skeins (119.5 yds)
Needles: US 6 and 7 dpns
Started: June 22, 2009
Finished: June 26, 2009
Modifications: Used k1 - p1 ribbing instead of seed stitch for the cuff. This yarn was also smaller than the recommended bulky weight, so this pair is really only good for some little lady hands.
This is the second time that I've made this pattern, and I just LOVE it! The instructions on how to make them into a flip-top set were taken from another source, I believe, but the designer here at least made it easy for me to understand. Doing a sort of after-thought opening makes it really easy to do the whole body of the mitten and then open it up after.
Pattern: Fishtrap Aran Hat
Source: Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitter's Almanac
Yarn: Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in Evergreen, 2 skeins (220 yds )
Needles: US 7 dpns
Started: June 26, 2009
Finished: June 28, 2009
Modifications: none
Present number one for the boy's list for Christmas. I'm doing Yankee swap among the half dozen boys and half dozen girls in my family for all of my gifts this year. Hopefully that means that Christmas presents for 15 people will cost me less than $100. Oh, and hopefully it will be more successful than three years ago when I also made gifts for everyone... but they all kind of sucked. The only one I know of that went over well were the stuffed rabbit and bear for my little cousins.

Farmer's Market Bag

Pattern: Farmer's Market Bag
Source: Folk Bags, Interweave Press
Yarn: Madil Yarns Eden in Frost Blue, 5 skeins (545 yds total)
Needles: 24" US 6 circular, 24" US 11 circular, US 11 straight needles
Started: May 11, 2009
Finished: June 29, 2009
Modifications: I used a bamboo yarn instead of the recommended linen, figuring that it was also a pretty strong plant fiber and would allow the same properties as the Euroflax.


See the earlier post on this bag for more details, but it was pretty straightforward - so much so that I put it down for five weeks and almost forgot about it! But I really don't like to have more than two or three works-in-progress going on at the same time. I also don't like to keep a huge stash if I can avoid it. Maybe later in life when I have the room to keep more than one or two banker's boxes worth of stuff... maybe then. But not in a tiny one bedroom apartment with a knitting-averse boyfriend.

Looking forward to going to the market this weekend with my cool new bag!

Fountain Pen Shawl #2 (in progress)

Pattern: Fountain Pen Shawl
Source: Interweave Knits Spring 2009
Yarn: J. Knits Lace-a-licious in Nebraska, 1 skein (1200 yds)
Needles: 24" US 3 circular
Started: June 5, 2009
Finished: May 22, 2009
Modifications: Possibly 8-9 repeats instead of the recommended 10. I'd like the size to be somewhere between the pink scarf and a full shawl.


Now, I'm not one to wax patriotic, but there is a BIG soft spot in my heart for the big flat heartland of the northern Midwest. Road trip = corn fields! The name of this colorway is Nebraska - it's so "amber waves of grain", and so Midwest-y. Not only did I buy this while on a weekend trip to visit friends in St. Louis, so the corn fields aesthetic fits in with my driving scenery, but it gives me an excuse to buy a (otherwise horrifying) mustard-colored yarn. Props to the ladies at Knitty Couture for helping me with my usually incapacitating color choice.

This skein originally started as a Swallowtail shawl, but the light weight of the yarn compared to the 2-ply I worked with last made me nervous about the shape. Besides, Fountain Pen is really fantastic and doing it again will be a helpful excersize in the importance of yarn choice in a project. Especially in a lace project. Pictures to follow - I'm currently 3 repeats in.

Knitting Lull

Not much knitting on the home front, here.

A new job working overnights is really cramping my style. That and the effort to get out a little more, like socially. It happens. I'll be back on track soon!

Fountain Pen Shawl

Pattern: Fountain Pen Shawl
Source: Interweave Knits Spring 2009
Yarn: Malabrigo Lace in Pink Frost, 1 skein (470 yds)
Needles: 24" US 6 circular
Started: May 4, 2009
Finished: May 22, 2009
Modifications: I did only 7 repeats instead of the 10 recommended in the pattern, so that the shawl would be smaller and more scarf-like. Also, I'm cheap and was a little concerned about my first lacey lace project.



This is the thinnest yarn I have ever worked with! It was a great project, and since it used just one 50g skein, was super portable. However, it was still not really a few-minutes-at-a-time project. You have to be able to focus for at least a couple of rows. As the width of the shawl increases, a few rows at a time becomes quite a challenge.

I bought the yarn in Naples, FL on vacation and had someone else pick the color for me. If I hadn't, this would be the same avocado/celery/lettuce/olive greens as all of the rest of my accessories. The charts for this pattern really made me appreciate charts in general. I'm definitely more of a visual person, but I don't see how anyone would shun a chart in favor of written instructions! You can see how the rows make sense together - "these 6 k2ts all line up vertically/diagonally, now I know that there will be a slant here for a while."


Plus, I think it looks super-stylish and goes with everything. Maybe I'm wrong, but no one can stop me! I sense more lace projects in the future. Gotta finished up a WIP or two first, though.

Farmer's Market Bag (in progress)

New, springy projects are in the air! Well, in my knitting bags anyway - I haven't finished any of the supposed summer-projects... yet.

The newest, started just yesterday is the Market Bag by Vicki Square. I've known about this pattern for years, from Folk Bags (book from Interweave Press, 2003), but just never got around to buying the linen for it. Fortunately, my recent obsession with natural fibers and their respective qualities has allowed me to see the options I have besides too-expensive and nowhere-stocked Louet Euroflax linen. Thus, I purchase some pretty light blue Italian bamboo yarn at my LYS, Knit 1. It's almost metallic, it's so shiny, but the tight woven band is a bit more time-consuming than it would otherwise be, on a sport-weight with an astonishing 10 plies.

Oh! And I wanted to mention, since it came in so handy for me, that this pattern is also available free online at Knitting Daily. That's where the hyperlink above goes. Not many people have made this bag (only 19 on Ravelry) BUT I have faith in Vicki when she says that the mesh won't over-stretch. She seems very wily.


Since I'm out of town (and had to corner this pattern online after the "read it over the phone to me, honey" plan didn't quite work), no pictures yet. The bag should be 14"x14" - just in time for Farmer's Market season! Yay!

Ooh, and my other almost-finished secret spring knitting project was also started while I was out of town. A scarf made from a shawl pattern. More pastels. More exploring! More info later!