A Gift

My long time girlfriend was having a party for her birthday which I was going to miss due to being out of town.  So, instead of my presence I decided to knit her a present to celebrate her special day.  I sent it off in the post today even though she only lives about 20 minutes from me because we both LOVE getting packages in the mail.  We don't always exchange gifts, but sometimes the timing works out and I can knit something special for her.  I even shopped my stash for this one, Madelinetosh tosh dk, and COMPLETELY used up the yarn only having a few snipped off scraps leftover.  Yay!  I adore using up all my yarn on a project.  Leftover yarn seems sad and burdensome to me; it wants to "be" something, but it's never enough yardage.  

This is the pattern I chose for the hat which I followed to the "T" only adding a pompom at the end.  It turned out more beanie than slouchy as the pattern described, but I think that will fit Emily better anyway.  I used this fun free pompom maker for the pompom which you can simply download and cut out.  It works surprisingly well albeit a bit fussy.  The mitts I knit loosely based on this pattern and you can see my notes as to the changes here.  The combo is pleasing to me, but with one catch - if it's cold enough to wear the hat, you won't likely wear just fingerless mitts and if it's warm enough for the mitts you won't likely need to wear the hat.  Hmm... To solve this dilemma I purchased these stretchy gloves (which are also conductive so she can use her i phone with them on) to wear with the mitts on top of them to make them pretty.  Sorry no photo of this combo, as the gloves arrived in the mail after it was too dark for picture taking.

Now, I'm off to Washington DC for 3 nights and 3 days to spend with another longtime friend.  She is single with no children so it's an all girl, all grown up weekend and I couldn't be more excited!  I'm bringing my souffle dish in my carry-on bag along with truffles, tea and knitting - all the necessities in life ;) 

Joining in with Ginny for Yarn Along and Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On.

His and Hers Finergerless Mitts

These mitts might look a bit boring after the last pairs I knit, but they will match all my clothes and sometimes you need something that will do just that.  The yarn is my own handspun using the same merino fiber from Ashland that I used in the aforementioned mitts.  It's colored a rich navy blue, called "Midnight", and was originally part of my first plan to spin scrappy yarn.  But that idea went horribly wrong producing yarn that was too ugly to even photograph (really you have to trust me here it was UGLY.)  I'm afraid I was rather wasteful too and threw the yarn in the garbage can.  I hardly ever do that so I'm trying not to feel overly guilty about it. 

Well, after that crash and burn I decided to just ply the navy blue fiber with itself for an everyday pair of mitts for myself.  I picked out this pattern on Ravelry which was free (as I'm still trying to cut down on my hobby  spending) as well as having a nice nubby texture pattern I thought the single colored yarn would show off well.  My only modifications were to go down to a US size 4 needle (I like my mitts snug) and add a couple of pattern repeats to make them the length I wanted.  They came out just as I anticipated, which is a win in my book.

What made them even more winning was my son Sam's admiration of them and his request for a pair for himself.  A couple of years back, when he was 6, Sam put the kibosh down on my knitting anything for him much to my dismay.  I mean really what knitter doesn't want to knit for their children?  So, I was over the moon with his request and quickly whipped out a pair for him using the leftover yarn from mine.  They are a little funky as I only glanced at the pattern thus missing some key points, but of course that's what happens when you relax and get cocky.  You can see my notes on them here.  Sam still thought they were great and put them right on and began making punching jabs in the air such as a Boxer would do.  This made me laugh because I thought of the mitts as keeping his sweet hands warm and he thought super action hero costume.  My son is such a boy.  Ah, I love him.

Joining in with Linda for Creative Friday and Andrea for Fibre Arts Friday.

A Fun Experiment

 

It all started with my seeing this yarn from Folktale on Etsy; I instantly fell in love with the "scrappy" nature of the skein and the "pops" of color.  Color, if you're in a cold climate like here in MN, is hard to come by during the dark winter months and I simply crave it on a truly physical level.  Thus, I thought I'd try my hand at spinning some of my own scrappy yarn with lots of colors to fed my need.  Friends in Fiber's shop carries  Ashland Bay merino wool in a plethora of colors, which are also pretty inexpensive, but the quantities were much too big if I wanted to purchase all the colors I desired.  So, I inquired if they would sell me just 1/2 ounces of each of the 28 colors I wanted and they happily agreed much to my satisfaction.  Really they are lovely ladies and I have been so happy with all of my purchases from them, they have unparallelled  customer service skills.  You should give their shop a try.

Well, the fun began when all the colors arrived in the mail and I began sorting them out and matching them up.  In my first attempts I tried for a random look, but I wasn't really liking how my colors got muddied and diminished in brightness.  Which brought me to the colorway you see above that has more of a gradient/rainbow effect (Me liking rainbows - shocking I know.)  The colors stayed bright and flowed nicely into one another just as I wanted.  I used 16 colors total per pair of mitts and with 14 ounces of wool I got almost 7 fingerless mitts (I'm missing just 2 colors for the last pair.)  They are all listed here in my shop for you to peruse.  

I focused mainly on the colors I like blues, greens, yellows, oranges and browns, but if they sell well I'm going to try my hand at mixing in some reds, pinks, purples and greys.  You would think it would get boring to make the same mitts over and over again, but the color changes really make it so fun for me and the surprise of how it all turns out upon completion is wonderful.  

Joining in with Linda for Creative Friday and Andrea for Fibre Arts Friday.