Passap Socks

It has been WAAY too long since I’ve blogged. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to catch up today. Just wanted to stop by real quick and show off the pair of socks I just made on my new (to me) Passap E6000.

They don’t match exactly, I didn’t take the time to start in the exact same place in the colorway, but I love them anyway!

Good night everyone, I hope to be able to post updates on all my finished projects soon.

P.S. The sock pattern is from the Passap Duo 80 manual pg 74, but I did a short row toe instead of the double decrease one.

Hat in progress.

New Finished Objects and Waiting

So, I am no longer without a knitting machine. I recently purchased a Brother KH910 on eBay. However, it needs a new spongebar. I have to wait until it arrives before I can play with my new toy.

In the meantime, I’ve been crocheting hats for my Etsy shop. I have 4 done so far and one in progress. Here they are in no particular order:

Talia was kind enough to model for me. Wow, it’s incredibly difficult to get a clear picture of a 7 month old.

Finished Hats, Booties and a Pattern

This is my progress so far on the hats and booties I plan to donate to the hospital. I want to have 10 pair of booties and 10 hats to donate by the end of the week. As you can see from the hat picture, I got tired of crochet and switched to knit.

This is a close-up picture of my knitted hat. It’s a simple 2x2 rib hat. Pattern can be downloaded here: https://www.box.com/s/b2clbmvor1k9doso77fm

My sweet baby Talia kindly modeled one of the hats for me. Isn’t she sweet?

DeeDee’s New Hat

 

 

 

 

Lately I’ve been working on crochet hats for the Labor and Delivery Ward at our local hospital. It seems like that after every had Dee would ask me if it was for her. Finally, I decided that she needed a hat of her own. This is what I came up with. It’s a simple Granny hat started with a magic loop in the middle. It actually ended up a little too big so I added elastic and tied the two ends to make a pretty bow. She LOVES it!

What do you do when you have no knitting machine?

Yes, sadly, I am currently knitting machine-less. I just sold my whole setup on eBay. Hoping to be able to buy a Passap E6000. Well, technically, I’m not completely machine-less. I do have a Brother kh863 in the bedroom, but I don’t have a carriage for it: I use it exclusively with the Garter Carriage.

So, what does a machine knitter do when they don’t have a knitting machine? Crochet, of course!

When I was in the hospital with the twins Talia was having a very difficult time regulating her body temperature. This led to one very kind nurse scouring Labor and Delivery for hats, booties, and any other warm thing she could get her hands on. Sadly, the hospital was down on donations so my pretty little Talia ended up with two hospital issue hats on her head and her feet stuck in a third. Since then, I have slowly been trying to make baby items that I can donate. This is my progress so far:

Yes, I know 5½  pairs aren’t much to show for 6 months, but I have had to fit in crochet around everything else.

This is what one of the booties looks like unflattened:

Cute, isn’t it? I used a pattern from Lion Brand for these. It works up quick and at the end you only have to work in your beginning and ending tails. You can find the pattern here: http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/70225AD.html?noImages= One note I have on the pattern is to use a smaller hook than they call for. The pattern wants you to use a size K hook with worsted weight yarn. For me, that made the bootie come out WAAY too big. I actually had to go all the way down to a size G hook to get the size I wanted.

The Importance of Washing Gauge Swatches

We have all been told that it is important to wash and block our gauge swatches in the same manner that we will use for the final garment. But, let’s be honest, how often do we actually take the time to do this? I can tell you, I usually don’t. However, I’m very glad that for this project I took the time to wash my gauge swatch.

This is the finished shirt before washing. (Dee wanted to help me take the picture) I tried it on over my t-shirt because the yarn knit up airy and see-through.

This is the same shirt after washing. Look how much it shrunk! I’m glad I washed my gauge swatch and allowed for this shrinkage when I knit. Now I have a cute raglan shirt that fits perfectly. Oh, and dear readers, please ignore my chubby belly in these pictures. I haven’t quite lost all the baby weight yet.

A very busy couple of weeks…

Well the last several weeks around here have been very hectic: I’m still teaching, doing the bookwork for the store at home, watching all 4 children, and I’ve added taking 2 online classes to the list. I know, I must be crazy, right?
Despite all the craziness, I did manage to get some knitting done.
These first two pictures are of a hat I made for my Aunt’s son. My kids call him “Baby Jacob”. He’s a little over a year old and is nearly as big as my DeeDee. So, she got to be my dressmaker’s dummy, so-to-speak.

---

These next two pictures are of a pair of mittens I knitted for “Baby Jacob”. DeeDee loves to have her picture taken; can you tell?

My new Etsy store

After months of work fitting knitting in in between babies, school and work, I have finally managed to open my Etsy store. If you have time swing by and check it out: http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheKnittedStork

More on Marilyn and How to fix a scarf gone awry

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my experiences with a certain project that I stayed up waay too late knitting. I am proud to say that I finally got it finished. Yay, me! The project, oddly enough, was a knitted top for a cushion on the top of a hope chest. (Ah, the things my husband volunteers me for!) A gentleman my husband works with wanted a custom top for a hope chest he was making for his daughter. Apparently her two favorite things are giraffes and Marilyn Monroe and her favorite color is purple; from this the following project was born:
1. I knitted the background piece. .

2. Next I knitted the “Marilyn” insert for the top. (I wanted to do this all using DAK, but as discussed in my last post my carriage is acting up)
3. I sewed around my insert using my sewing machine and turned under and hand-sewed the raw edges.

4. I hand-sewed the insert piece to the background piece.

The finished piece: Ta Da!

---

Ok, I don’t have time now to narrate these pictures, but I’ll come back later and finish this post.

1. Scarf right off the machine, with the back seam sewn

2. My totally botched embroidery job.

3. Sew a line of stitches above the embroidery.

4. Cut off the bottom of the scarf about 1/4" from the stitching

5. Repeat the sewing and cutting for the other end of the scarf.

6. Latch fringe onto both ends of scarf, being sure to insert the latch tool on the inside of the stitching.

7. On the finished scarf you can't even tell it was shortened. The fringe covers the raw edge.

DAK 8 and My Computer

Just got off the phone with Irene at Knitcraft. I'm having a problem with my carriage and DesignAKnit. I keep getting an error message when I knit Fair Isle or Jacquard that my carriage is going the wrong way when it isn't. Strangely, I don't get the error when I knit tuck or slip stitch. At any rate after much deliberation and discussion we have deduced that I must have a loose wire in my carriage. Yay! What fun! I get to take my carriage apart now and see if I can find the problem. I'm hoping it's obvious because I'd like to fix this myself and not have to send the carriage off to have it fixed.

Wish me luck!

This is why I shouldn’t knit when I’m tired:

573 Rows and I didn’t make sure my purple yarn was selected so the entire thing fell off into my lap. That’s what I get for knitting til 1:00 AM.

Machine Knitting Words of Wisdom

I'm getting ready to go to bed after arguing with my machine most of the night (my machine and DAK 8 are fighting each other at the moment) so I thought I'd quickly share some of the things I've discovered that make my knitting go more smoothly.

1. Don't knit while you're distracted. Put the kids to bed or send them to Grandma's; it's impossibe to knit when you have a 2 yr old and a 3 yr old clamoring for your attention.
2. Always check your machine settings EVERY TIME you sit down to knit. If your house is like mine, occassionally little gremlins come by and push buttons and flip switches. Just because you left your ribber on half-pitch and your machine set to tuck doesn't necessarily mean they will still be that way when you sit back down. Save yourself a lot of aggravation and check your machine before you knit.
3. Don't knit when you're tired. I find I make most of my mistakes when I'm sleepy: my brain just can't seem to focus on what I'm doing.
4. Don't get in a hurry. In my experience things are way more likely to go catastrophically wrong if you're rushing to finish a project. I've had carriage jams, incorrect patterning, bent needles, dropped stitches, and occassionally had my entire project fall off into my lap, all because I was in a hurry. Take my advice: don't rush!

Now that I've blathered on and on I think I'll go to sleep. (please excuse any misspellings and gramatical errors: I am half-asleep as I'm writing this.)