Fast Gift Idea: Bulky Lined Slippers

For the bulky lined slippers, you'll need two skeins of worsted weight yarn in coordinating colors.  Easy, I promise.  Oh, and Bond knitters have made this, too.

December 11, Luke 11

Luke Chapter 11

Fast Gift Idea - English Rib Child's Sweater

Link to all the information (videos, patterns) for the English Rib Child's Sweater

Crazy for Christmas

There's a moment during the holidays when the pressure hits me - Bam!  Zap!  Pow! Biff!  Just another mom felled by Christmas pressure.  But I'm doing well this year, with my strategies of online shopping plus taking vacation hours to get things done.

I'm not one of those folks who plans 'way ahead.  If I do, by the time I get to the holidays, I don't think the gifts are good enough any more.  I am not a confident gift-giver; I'm downright neurotic about it. One person I know thinks everything she gave anyone is absolutely wonderful, even if it's totally lame, and nobody tells her differently.  I wish I were more like her.  Instead, I think stupid thoughts like, will he ever wear it?  Is that really a color she likes?  Doesn't she have enough fragrance?  Will he think I didn't make an effort if I send a gift card?

My father-in-law, whom I still miss terribly after 22 years, used to grin at me and say, "Buy them something they don't want and don't need." 

Some of my friends follow another strategy - keep some boxes of chocolate on hand in case old friends drop by.  In case of a serious emergency, unwrap and eat the chocolate.

We also have several birthdays and our anniversary this month, before Christmas.

Last week, I sat down one evening and ordered all the out-of-state gifts (I have a pretty good list to do), drop shipping from Amazon.  I already had Amazon Prime so I'd get the free fast shipping, and I have their blog deal where I get a little commission on items purchased through the blog.  The last couple of years, I've purchased books, gift baskets, garden goodies, small electronics (well, Kindles - I'm a Kindle lover, which is how I turned into an Amazon nut), toys, and so forth from Amazon.  Amazon even has yarn.  I got all the out-of-state packages ordered in one evening, and they even have gift wrap available for many items.  I would put some photo of the really cute items I found for my sibs, if only I were sure they didn't read the blog.

John and I also took yesterday afternoon off (vacation time) and shopped for each other, purchasing practical things that I'll wrap up.  As of now, I've got gifts purchased except for two people, and I have a plan for those.

Earlier this week, my John had a sore throat and fever, my colleague at work fought it all week, and two other co-workers were fighting a nasty sore throat earlier on.  Several Knit Natters members have begged off today's party because they aren't feeling well.  I haven't actually gotten sick, but I was feeling off and tired, so I deliberately got some extra sleep this week.

I whipped up a gift last night (not my pattern, one from Rocking Horse Farms), but I can't put the photo up until after the Knit Natters party and Christmas exchange.  I am also bringing homemade bread, homemade chocolates (super easy recipe), and store-bought tamales to the party. 

I will continue to put easy gift patterns up on the site.  I know they're patterns I've run before, but having knitted all of this myself a number of times, I know which ones are fastest to make, which is what we need this time of year.

December 10, Luke 10

Luke Chapter 10

Fast Gift: Short-Rowed Baby Hat

I thought I'd run some links to fairly quick gifts.  It's getting very late to make gifts, but you may find yourself needing something, running out of budget, with yarn all over the house. 

Or maybe you're one of the lucky souls who is off on vacation part of this month!  Anyway, here's one and I chose for this because it's my most often-viewed project video:

Short-Rowed Baby Hat

December 9, Luke 9

Chapter 9, Luke.

December 8, Luke 8

Chapter 8, Gospel of Luke

December 7, Luke 7

Luke Chapter 7

December 6, Luke 6

Luke Chapter 6

Adorable Little Christmas Stocking at Rhythm of the Needles

With a link to the pattern!

http://www.rhythmoftheneedles.com/2011/12/itty-bitty-christmas-stocking.html

December 5, Luke 5

Luke Chapter 5 for today.

Another Knitted Necklace

This is another sock yarn, black with a colored thread for one of the plies, and it's the same mylar gold thread.  These are all old leftovers - can't tell you brand names.

Knit a Necklace

Here's my knitted necklace.  I got this idea from a book cover I saw on a foreign site online; I didn't have the book, and I don't know how they made it.  I thought about it for while, thought it would be fun to figure it out, and came up with my own version.

Materials:

You will need a small amount of thin yarn.  I have quite a lot of tiny balls of leftover self-striping and solid sock yarn because there is always a little bit left after I knit a pair of socks.  It's pretty, and I keep it, thinking one of these days I'll find a use for it.  I used 15 grams, about a half ounce, of a self-striping sock yarn for my necklace.  I made my necklace 36 beads long, or 30" long, a generous length.  When I wear it, it goes to the center of my breastbone.  

You will also need some kind of pretty thread or yarn to wind between the "beads."  I was going for a spacer-bead look, and I had this mylar gold colored run-along thread.  It was rather difficult to work with, but by the time I assembled my necklace, I was used to it.  Next time I do this, I think I'll go for something thicker and stronger.

You need something to fill the beads and made a bead shape.  I used marbles from Hobby Lobby (in the flower arranging section, $2.99 for two pounds of marbles.  You need to go with a neutral color, because the marbles will show through the knitting.  I purchased clear marbles.  The marbles are a little heavy.  You could reduce the weight of the necklace by using wooden or plastic beads.  My marbles are the typical size, about 5/8" or 15 mm.  I thought about stuffing the necklace with fiber fill instead, but the weight of the marbles does make it hang nicely.  I wasn't sure how I'd get the stuffing where I needed it, either.

One thing I would love to try is more than one size of bead and even some long beads.

My necklace was knitted on a Brother standard machine with the ribber.  I selected 7 needles in the middle of the bed on the main bed and 6 needles on the ribber.  Set to half pitch and the tightest tensions and did a zigzag row.  Hung a weight with a 7-weight hanger (this is only about 1" wide, and when it comes off the machine, the little tube is about 5/8" wide).  Set the machine for T4 and circular knitting.  Each bead is 11 rounds long, 22 rows on the row counter.  I had some self-striping yarn, but if you want to change colors yourself, change colors every 22 rows.  My self-striping yarn was quite lucky spacing for the project, as I got little 1" areas of a color, then black and white.  I had played with the number of needles and decided I liked the way 13 needles made the black and white areas form a diagonal design.

I did 36 "beads," 792 rows.  I had already knitted some samples to see what it would take to get a long enough necklace, and had realized that it gets shorter when you put the marbles in and finish it.  I constantly moved the weight up, and I kept an eye on the knitting to make sure the main bed needles were knitting off okay.  I quickly learned tht with steady weight on all the stitches, it knits off smoothly. The knitting went very quickly, but it will take you longer if you chang colors manually instead of using self-striping yarn.  You'd have ends to hide then, too.

When it was long enough, I took it off by cutting the thread, threading a needle, and running the thread through first the knit stitches and then the ribber (purl) stitches.  I knew I'd be drawing it up to close the tube later.

Now for the tedious part:  You gather the bottom of the tube with a needle.  Poke a marble in, slide it to the bottom.  Take the gold thread, thread the needle, run it through the stitches where the color changes above the marble, tighten it, wrap around and around (I used 2 strands and 12 wraps), then tie the thread, hide the ends, and cut the gold thread.  I used several back stitches to hide the ends.  As I mentioned earlier, my very thin cold thread was a pain, breaking frequently and curling if stretched.  Not sure I'll use it again for this purpose.

I poked in marbles one by one, used the gold thread to gather the tube above them, then wrapped with the gold thread.  When I got to the last marble (a few hours later), I gathered the stitches and used the beginning and ending yarn ends to sew the first and last "beads" together.  Then I did my usual winding with gold thread.

And here's a closeup.  I think this would make a charming gift, especially if the wearer is a knitter!  And, it was made from things I had on hand, except for the marbles.

Bond Yarn Grabbers Demonstrated at Alex's Site

Alex has a clear video showing the operation of the Bond yarn grabbers.  I have never seen these before, and I'm on my second Bond:

http://alexsmachineknitting.blogspot.com/2011/12/bond-yarn-grabbers.html

I enjoy Alex's site.  He is quite a prolific, talented knitter, and he shares a lot of information.  You might want to add him to your followed blogs.

December 4, Luke 4

Luke Chapter 4

A Little Knitting

I am still plugging away on the shaped Entrelac project.  I'm not going very fast.  It's holiday season, and there's a lot of other activity.

While I would love to stop experimenting and chart all the sweaters already, I'll know when the technique is good enough.  I want knitters working from my patterns to feel that the sweaters are superb, and well worth the work.  I don't want them to turn into dreaded UFOs (unfinished objects).   

These are somewhat time-consuming by machine knitting standards; each trip around the yoke with a new color takes me about 30 minutes.  Of course, I still think it's addictive to work on and see how the Entrelac forms with each round.  I sit there, happily listening to my Kindle, as I make the blocks.  They don't require tedious concentration; I can listen to a cute story and knock 'em out.

This is an adult-sized yoke, and the new transition technique has enough stitches around the bottom to allow me to pick up stitches and knit the sleeves and body upside-down.

Changing the knitting sequence to rehanging stitches and making the body later is a real improvement, in my opinion.  I have been making fair isle round yoke MK sweaters for years using the Joyce Schneider method of rehanging, and I like it.  The yoke job takes the most time, and you can even have some yokes done for future use (the yoke size doesn't change much between sizes).  Secondly, if the person is a difficult fit, you could put the body on, baste, and try it on.  As long as you leave the waste yarn on, a second try is possible. 

I have also changed the yoke slightly, modifying the bottom triangles to get a shorter, more typical Entrelac angle to the top of the triangle (but keep my transition to accommodate the much narrow gauge of the stockinette in the rest of the sweater).  Here's a picture where I've held the waste yarn down and put my camera into macro mode so you can see the improved shape of those triangles.

Thisyarn (Vanna's Choice) is still an inexpensive, readily available one, but it has a lot more spring and bounce than the Caron, and it like the way it makes the Entrelac texture stand out.  These bulky gauge ones are thick and warm anyway, so why not have as much dimension as possible?  I chose this soft rose/ivory/mouse brown color scheme for a lady's sweater.  The soft rose is a gentle surprise to keep the sweater from being boring, and the rest of this sweater is going to be the dark brown. 

The neckband pulls in a tremendous amount.  Again, it's that transition from wide Entrelac to very narrow ribbing.  I tried a looser neck ribbing tension on this one, and it goes over the head okay, but I will do a slightly bigger neck for the pattern books. 

December 3, Luke 3

Luke Chapter 3

December 2, Luke 2

Today, it's Luke Chapter 2.

December 1, Luke 1

It's that Christmas challenge for me again, reading a chapter of Luke each day until Christmas.

Luke 1