so i’ve got a question: do you want to have a slumber party in my basement?

I’ve had a pretty calm first week at school, so the knitting has been going pretty quickly. I managed to turn my skein of pretty, pretty Mini Maiden (50/50 wool/silk! omg!) from this:

Into this.

And in a little less than a week. The pattern I’m using is the Shetland Triangle Shawl () which, according to Ravelry, everyone and their dog has already knit. On the one hand, this makes me feel very unspecial and boring, but on the other it lets me exploit the power of Ravelry to my advantage, which is awesome.

For instance: the pattern calls for ten repeats of the main lace motif, and then to begin the edging. But other people have already used this pattern with this yarn, and discovered that if you want to use up the entire skein, you can get away with twelve repeats. I realize this is not new news to anybody, but the fact that a website exists where I can figure this out is still, like, the coolest thing ever.

Does anyone know if there’s some sort of Ravelry for sewing? I fear I’ve been spoiled.

Song of the Entry: Ke$ha – Your Love Is My Drug (Listen)

fo: holding hands, feeding ducks cowl

My entire Halloween weekend was, unfortunately, pretty unremarkable. I had other things that needed to get prioritized over dressing up and acting like an idiot (which is a shame, because that is my favourite). I did, however, cast on and cast off for something new.

IT’S AN UGLY TUBE!

Just kidding. Okay, well – it is a tube. But it’s not anywhere near as boring as it looks in that picture. If you arrange it right, it can look like this:

Or like this.

Which I think is much, much nicer. This cowl is based on the stitch pattern from the Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks scarf, one of those patterns that I’ve always loved but never found time to knit. It’s also dead easy to turn into a cowl, and leaves a fabric that’s really springy and dense, but doesn’t curl (even though it looks very stockinette-y).

Pattern: Cowl modified from Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks
Yarn: Nearly a skein of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Worsted, in Pewter.
Needles: 5.5mm

Directions: The pattern calls for a multiple of 4 sts plus one, so I cast on 41 stitches using the long-tail cast-on and leaving a VERY long tail, on purpose. This made my scarf about 8″ wide, unblocked.

Then I worked in the star stitch pattern established in HH,FD for 25 inches, give or take. I was going for a big, floppy cowl, not a nice, tight neckwarmer. If you wanted to make one of those, though, you could just knit for fewer inches.

Then, I stopped (ending on a knit row), but did not bind off – I left my work on a holder. Using the tail from my cast on, I picked up 41 sitches at the cast-on edge of my work, and then I believe I had to knit a row so that the working yarn was on the same side of the work when I held them both together. Finally, using the tail from my cast-on (but you could also break the working yarn if your tail wasn’t long enough) I grafted the two ends together.

This left me with a big, floppy tube. I blocked it out a little, so that the finished dimensions ended up being closer to 9 inches wide and 23 inches long (11.5 inches with the ends grafted together). It’s so, so squishy, and perfect for throwing on when it’s chilly out, but I don’t want to carry a scarf around indoors all day.

fo: thrummed mittens

It is so, so satisfying to have these mittens done. They were a positive project experience from start to finish, which was such a delight. I’m so glad to have made them, too – playing with roving to make the thrums was a really satisfying, educational experience (that does not make me want to learn to spin, I swear), and I managed to split the colour changes just right to have two mittens that matched, exactly the way I was hoping they would.

They’re also going to be almost inhumanly warm, which you perhaps can’t tell from the photo above, but you can definitely tell in this picture.

Pattern: the Fleece Artist “thrum mitten” pattern from my LYS, sort of.
Yarn: Fleece Artist Merino Sliver roving, 50g, and one skein of Cascade 220 in black
Needles: 4mm dpns

Modifications: I did a lot of googling before I started this project, and came to a few decisions about things I wanted in my mittens that weren’t in the pattern I had. I wanted a bit of a ribbed cuff – so I knit that, instead of the cuff in the pattern. And then I wanted to have staggered rows of thrums, so I went ahead and did that, too. By the time I got to the top of the mitten and the thumb, I’d sort of given up on reading the pattern, so I went ahead and made them up – but I feel like they’re pretty close to what was written, so whatever.

I also added an idiot string – partly on the advice of Julie, who pointed out that these mittens are not going to fit in my pockets, which, if you’re me, means that there’s a good chance I’ll lose one. I also added it in part because I’ve always wanted to make myself mittens on a string. Just because.

I knit the string by picking up 3 stitches from the cuff, on the side opposite the thumb. I then worked roughly 342098 meters of i-cord, and when I felt that it was about as long as my armspan (plus a bit extra) I picked up three stitches from the cuff of the other mitten, in the same place, and grafted it to the i-cord.

It was wonderful. I wish that I could make these mittens not-black for just a minute, so that I could do a better job of showing you how well it worked out.