tortoiseshelly

I have few projects that have been languishing, and though I’m not formally participating in Ravellinics, my goal is to wrap them up by the end of the closing ceremonies.

Heather is a good friend of mine - bright, beautiful, funny and generous to a fault. So when Heather recently expressed the desire to have me knit her some mittens or socks? Well, let's just say the door didn't stand a chance of hitting me in the patookus, I ran out the house in such a frenzy to get to the yarn store.

I cast on the Grove Mittens from Made in Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, the mittens were small. Small, small. The mittens might fit my mother (who has such delicate hands that they could be mistaken for a 10 year olds), but they won't fit many others. When I tried them on, I nearly cut off blood flow to my fingertips.

Nonetheless, despite the extremely narrow size, I knit on. I read a few knitting blogs, I read the Grove pattern discussion on Ravelry. People complained about the tightness of the mittens, but for some, blocking was the answer! Yay for blocking!

I finished the left mitten hand and picked up stitches for the thumb. I tried on the mitten again. I looked at how stretched out the mitten was. I knit some more on the thumb and tried on the mitten again. I attempted to tighten up the stitches. I threw the mitten across the room. I picked up the one-row scarf for Jeff's dad and knit on that while the mitten mocked me from afar. I came close to giving it to my cat to play with, but I have the one cat in the universe who cares not a flip about wool.

Part of me wants to finish it, block it and hope for something magical. (Delusional, I know.) I'm just delaying the inevitable frogging. For the the mitten to work as I want, I need a thicker yarn and larger needle. I may be sick to my stomach.

I've fallen hard for the one row (handspun) scarf pattern by the Yarn Harlot. So hard, in fact, that I barely finished one scarf before casting on two more. Witness:

The pattern is more interesting than generic ribbing or stockinette, yet easy enough to knit in semi-darkness while watching one of your favorite t.v. shows (e.g. Modern Family).

The yarns, from top to bottom photo, are Noro Silk Garden Chunky, Elsebeth Lavold Chunky AL, and Patons Classic Wool. On a side note, this is the first time I'm using Patons, and I'm surprised that it's knitting up rather nicely, since I bought it for a song.

Because my cousin, Casey, begged and pleaded and cast herself onto the floor in front of me, I am knitting her a pair of Mock Cable Socks. The pattern is in the book Socks from the Toe Up: Essential Techniques and Patterns from Wendy Knits, which I bought back in the summer during a trip to Oklahoma. I believe I bought it at a cute yarn store in Guthrie, called Sealed with a Kiss, in case you're interested.

In any event, since I'm not one to deny a person the pleasure of knitted socks, I immediately cast on for the socks. I wish I could recall the yarn info (and if anyone recognizes it, please drop me a note), but somewhere along the way I lost the band. It's beautiful stuff, though.

Here's where I admit that I haven't exactly had the greatest luck with toe-up socks in the past. Ahem. I don't know what my malfunction was, but I appear to have conquered it with Judy's Magic cast on (described in the book, as well as on Knitty.com, in a youtube video, and apparently at Sock Summit 2009). Needless to say, it's a method that works well for toe ups.

Judy Becker, I love you.

Based on the beautiful Embossed Leaves Socks pattern by Mona Schmidt (published in Interweave Knits, Winter 2005 and again in Favorite Socks: 25 Timeless Designs from Interweave), I knit the socks for my sister. Liking the design so much, I recently decided to use some stash yarn (Cherry Tree Hill supersock DK in Wild Cherry - 1 skein) to create some fingerless mitts.

I indulged in a little selfish knitting with this project, as the Druid Mittens (pattern by Jared Flood of brooklyntweed) are for my own personal use.