Category: Using up yarn

I bought a pink skein of Cascade Sierra on clearance (a complete impulse purchase on a quick trip to buy needles – my guard was low, carrying a baby and corralling a three year old). I was thinking it would make a good tulip hat, but the gauge is obviously way too thick, and I think it’s actually not a great color next to her face. It’s been sitting near my desk, waiting for inspiration to hit. As I cast off the Downton Abbey knit along cloche, suddenly I found myself casting on a little dress. I’m using Topaz as a rough guide, although I changed the hem, am knitting in the round instead of seaming it, and had to adjust for gauge (4.5 st/in instead of 4). I also decided to write a little intarsia heart pattern instead of the southwest-inspired fairisle in the pattern.

It’s an addicting little knit. Somehow in spite of knitting for 24 years I’ve never tried intarsia before. There will have to be more of this in my future, it’s so satisfying. I experimented a lot with which way to wrap, so some edges are smoother than others and it needs a good block, but super fun. I meant to put it down and take a picture several rows ago – it looked for all the world like a jellyfish, with long, long white tendrils and shorter pink ones, but now that I’m further in, they’re less dramatic.

Such a sweet, pink, cheerful little knit. I even found a new-to-me pink knitting/house blog to enjoy while I work. What fun.

A little aqua, lacy flower hat for a newborn, being modeled by a grapefruit. (A melon would have been better sizing, but the grapefruit was what I had in the fridge.)

Such a fun, satisfying, excellent knit.

I had to go and find new projects for my ravelry queue – all of the baby sweaters I had were for boys. It is so fun to be able to go and pick out girl patterns, too. A whole new world of knitting potential. And while that blocks, here’s the start on the new Garter Stitch Baby Kimono.

It’s just a lot of knit stitch for many more centimeters, especially knit in sock yarn. But the yarn is amazing. (My first time knitting with Madelyn Tosh, and now I see what all the fuss is about – so soft, and such subtle, sophisticated color variation. It’s lovely to work with.)

Funny to post for such a teeny tiny project, but it was such a satisfying knit that I’m not sorry. The kiddo’s hands have been freezing outside recently (it IS December), and so I took myself to Ravelry to search for great toddler mitten patterns. In a bit of wild serendipity, I already had the book that contained my favorite option, so I cast on with the remnants from last year’s pumpkin hat – doesn’t match the jacket (nothing will, it’s an unusual blue) but coordinates nicely. When I started to run out of yarn just after the thumb, I went stash diving deeper and found a mini ball of Karabella Aurora 8 left over from my very first sweater – perfect.

I think they’re so pretty. 🙂 And love that I managed to use up two tiny stash bits in one project. The 16 mos. kiddo, however, wants no part of any such things. He shakes his head no vigorously, he holds his hands behind his back, and if any mittens manage to make their way onto his hands, he pulls them off immediately and casts them onto the ground. Such intense dislike of the mittens! However, leave him alone with them, and you get 20 minutes of this:

Yecch. (He thinks that sound is funny, too.) At least my maternal/knitter guilt is assuaged – I provided mittens, not my fault if he’s a toddler and prefers to eat them rather than wear them. 🙂 At least Kevin likes them, too, so I’m not completely alone in my mitten fondness.

Yesterday was my due date, and still no baby though I’ve been having lots of contractions (I’ve been having Braxton Hicks for weeks, but now there are sporadic real ones in the mix, too, even if they don’t seem to be going anywhere). However, I did manage to finish up another baby hat, this time with the remnants from the owl vest.

Once again, I used a CSA melon as the model. The was just an ad hoc knit – I cast on 80 st, went 2×2 ribbing for an inch, knit in the round until 4”, and then divided into eight sections of 10 stitches and just kept decreasing at the beginning of each section with a SSK until I had four stitches left, and then pulled the tail through those.

I’m a little bit concerned that it will be too short, but I ran out of yarn – I had about 12” of the blue left and about 18” of the brown. Relaxed, the hat is 16” around and 5½” tall.