Category — Wearables

This year marked our second Halloween in the new neighbourhood, but first attempt at trick or treating. Now, our allergy situation makes the “treating” part tricky – there really aren’t any egg/milk/nut-free treats being sold at the grocery store.  So,  I went ahead and made some allergy friendly treats – packaged them up in individual baggies and dropped them off in advance to our neighbours.  The baggies contained things like raisins, stickers, apples, Mum mums and play dough.

My neighbours were happy to play along and we stopped at about 10 houses.  The perfect amount for a fledgeling trick-or-treater.  Although we had practiced saying “Trick or Treat” and “thank you” at home, he clammed up when it came to speaking. Rather, he stuck his little bag out and waited for the treats to fall.  He caught onto that pretty quickly.  No, make that very quickly.

I was pretty proud that we wore his sheep costume that I knit. He pouted and scowled for weeks at the thought of wearing the hat… let alone the matching vesty/sweater. I was determined that he would wear the costume… determined. In the end, the weather was so cold that he didn’t complain at all – not one peep! – about wearing a hat. The vesty part fit right over his winter coat, so he didn’t feel like an itchy sheep. Win! No – super win!

If you’re interested in knitting up a sheep costume yourself, there is a great free pattern up on Ravelry from a fellow Ontarian knitter. It was a super quick knit on 15mm needles! using double stranded super bulky yarn. It was pretty much the craziest knitting I’ve ever done. I had it knitted up in less than a week, so it wasn’t too time consuming. (yay!) It was the perfect costume for a cold Canadian Halloween. And it got lots of compliments from the neighbours which made me pretty happy.

Mostly, I’m pretty proud of my little sheep for being such a good sport. Baaa!

One of my New Year resolutions was to make/knit more wearables. I found this very cool looking skirt pattern in a Lopi book and knew it would be a great first attempt at a garment. Heck, it’s knit all in the round – how hard is that? Answer:  not so hard.

While Lett Lopi may not be the softest yarn ever, it is very cheap. And warm. (I hear that it softens up with a wash.) And the Lopi pattern books are cheeeeeeeeep. Cheap yarn + cheap patterns + knitting in the round = yay!

Being prudent, I only bought two balls of the yarn required for the skirt (instead of 10!). I thought that I would cast on, see how I liked the pattern and then decide if I wanted to continue making the skirt or rip it out. Well, I am loving it. I’m a little nervous about the sizing – I even did a gauge swatch! (Ok, part of a gauge swatch… ok… it was a couple of rows.)

From the Lopi No. 25 book, I also bookmarked a couple of other projects that I can’t wait to cast on. The Lappi kid’s sweater (knit in the round with a steek!) and the Nu bulky sweater for me. I am very smitten with the Lopi sweater construction: knit the body in the round, knit sleeves in the round, knit the pieces together and knit the yoke in the round. End sweater. NO SEAMS!

I think once I get these techniques mastered with the Lopi, I’d consider moving up to soft softer yarns, but for now cheap is good. And heck, the Lopi comes in such lovely colours.  I read online that you can soften up scratchy wool by using some hair conditioner or even vinegar dissolved in warm water.  I will definitely give that a try before giving up on the Lopi.

Of course, these projects mean that I have already broken my “knit from the stash” mini-resolution.  Whatever.  Rules were meant to be broken.

With my holiday knitting oh.so.almost. done (one project is still on the needles), I decided to finally dedicate some knitting time to a project for me.  Since this project marks the first adult garment I’ve ever knit, I went with the easy Shalom sweater.  It’s knit top top and only needs one buttom.  What could be easier?  I chose the squishy Diamond Luxury Baby Alpaca Sport in a nice winter white and cast on.  (The photos on the Diamond Luxury site don’t do this yarn much justice.  I’m really enjoying the smoothness and bounce of this yarn – it feels great on the hands. I’m living on the edge by not knitting a gauge swatch… I probably should have.  I’m nervous.  The next sweater that I make, I promise I will take time to swatch.

I couldn’t walk out of the yarn store on Saturday without a quick troll through the odd-ball bin (after all, they WERE 50% off… ).  I found a couple of balls of my favourite Naturally Merino et Soie yarn in a perfect baby boy blue colour.  I’ll tuck this away for Alden’s 2010 hat.

While I was there, I also picked up a couple of balls of light and medium brown DK weight merino to start on this awesomely super cute meerkat beanie.

As for the Advent calendar that I was knitting.  Well, I only managed to get 7 hats and mitts made, so they’ve been repurposed as general tree ornaments for this year.  It was way too ambitious to try and get it done for 2009.  If I knit one a month from now on, I’ll have time to do the embroidery and assembly for Christmas 2010!  Yeah!

Here is the finished vest.  I absolutely LOVE the colours.  The little guy is going to be the cutest little holiday kid… next year.  That’s right.  It’s too big.    Turns how kids don’t grow as quickly once they reach a year old…  oops.  So it’s a next year sweater.  In the mean time, it hangs proudly over my desk.  Go me!

If you want all the knitty details, they can be found on my Ravelry project page.

For my first garment, I’m extremely pleased.  I learned the three needle bind-off and totally rocked picking up stitches for the neck and armholes.  I love how the variegated yarn has just the right oranges and blues in the snowman scarf.  It’s so satisfying to have just the right yarn to use hiding in your stash.

After a week of hat knitting, I decided to return to Alden’s snowman vest. The sudden change in the weather from “melty” to “brrrr” has me hot to trot to get these little warmers done – mittens you are next! Because, I’m not sure if I’m going to need mittens for back to work or not in a couple of weeks. Brrrr!

I was able to pick up the winter issue of the Debbie Bliss magazine too.  Finally!  I missed out on the first issue and was super keen to see what all of the fuss was about.  There are some super cute animal scarves in this issue and tons of sweaters… if you’re a sweater knitter you’ll probably love it.  I am not a sweater knitter, but the photos were still nice to look at.  Call me crazy, but I like Knit Simple just as well.