The Christmas Challenge

My brother issued a challenge. He might have even said the words "you can't make that." But of course I can make that! I am a fearless knitter! The hat in question is the reindeer hat from Home Alone. I went right to the internet to refresh my memory of the hat. I haven't seen the film in quite some time. I found this image using a Google search.

I made a few assumptions based on this image.

1. there seem to be about 6 reindeer on the hat altogether
2. it's a rather loose gauge
3. there's no ribbed cuff

I cast on with size 5 needles and went for it. And it's huge. You could fit two of his heads in there. So back to the drawing board. Maybe it's tighter than I'd originally thought. The cuff looks a little smaller than I'd worked. Maybe there's only 4, or 5 repeats of the reindeer pattern. What do you think? I'm going to give it another go. Size 4 instead of 5s. And I'm going to eliminate at least one reindeer from the pattern. Think I can make it by Christmas?

Travelling Yarn Gifts

There's not much to post here. I'm still working on a Christmas gift. It's taking a while, but it's a lot of fun to knit, so there's that. I'll chat about it after it's been gifted.

To prepare for life without Christmas knitting, I feel like I'm bringing an overabundance of yarn with me to Rhode Island for the holiday. Granted, I'll be there for a good week and a half with not much else to do but knit, I still feel like I'm bringing too much. Here's the list:

• I've got yarn to knit another cowl out of (the light blue one is awesome, but it doesn't match my hat!).
• Yarn for a pair of fingerless mitts for me (my hands keep getting cold!)
• Yarn to finish the Christmas project

Once I get to Rhody, I'm going to have to pick up an aran weight yarn to knit a pair of fingerless mitts for my brother's fiancee's mother. She's cool and will actually wear them. You know, looking at that list, I'm not actually sure I did pack too much yarn. Maybe it's the christmas gifts in my backpack that are taking up all the space. I totally should have mailed them instead of bringing them. Maybe I'll mail them once I get to work.

I should send out a public huge thank you to blogless NanLam. She gave me the coolest bit of yarn:


It's Dream in Color Knitosophy in the Superhero color way. It's a really great blend of colors. Kalajoki (RavLink) popped up when I did a search and I knew that the two were meant to be together. I'm stuck now though. Because this yarn would be perfect to tout around Comic Con and use for Yarn365. While I want to cast on RIGHT NOW for those socks, I should wait. I'll have to come up with something else in the meantime.

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Today's Yarn365 shot is of a centerpiece of knitting needles. In order to get this shot, I pulled a bunch of knitting needles out of the tin I keep all of my needles in. I seem to have a ton of needles I'll never actually use ever again. I think 2010 for me is the year of getting rid of clutter for me - liquidating material things that don't need to be around etc. I'll post a list of the needle type, size etc. once I get back from Rhode Island and y'all can see if there's anything you need. I figure I should just donate them somewhere to charity after that. Anyone know of any charities that accept knitting needles?

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I want to post about my visit to La Casita Yarn Shop yesterday, but I've REALLY got to get this damn gift finished!

Christmas Gift #1 and Gotham Fine Yarn

Christmas gift #1 is finished! I've got 2 1/2 to go! The half a project is a pair of mitts I told my brother's fiancee's mother I'd make for her. I don't really think it needs to be done by Christmas, but if I can finish them before Christmas and have them count, I think that'd be nifty.


I held 3 strands of Lacey Lamb together and had a tough time with that. They kept getting tangled and the insides of the balls liked to get knotted. It wasn't really a fun project, but I think the recipient will like it.

I finished weaving the ends in while visiting Gotham Fine Yarn in the lower east side. I kinda fell in love with this store. She had some really great yarns. Quite a bit of Louisa Harding, which is interesting and different, I think, for the city. She's got Noro and Lamb's Pride and Malabrigo (for a really great price!) and Madelinetosh (which i completely fell in love with!). She has a knit and wine night every other Friday, which I think I'll have to take part in more often. The knitters there were super friendly and working on some pretty interesting projects (including a Tea Leaf cardigan that's on my queue!). I can't wait to go back to that shop! Click here to get a look at what her shelves look like from Yarn365. I took quite a few photos there, so you'll end up seeing some more of her store on the Yarn365 blog soon. But anyway, just go there, it's so much better in person!

Oh, ad I'll leave you with a photo of the pretty Madelinetosh I picked up there. The colorway is called Logwood.

Glass Needles!

OMG. I LOVE the glass needles I bought at Yarn Diva & More a couple of weeks ago. They're not only beautiful, but also they're quite pointy and slippery and, to me, the perfect needles. The Yarn Diva gets her needles from Michael & Sheila Ernst. But look what happened:


My needle broke! I was on the couch lying on my back talking to Stan on the phone and went to roll over to grab something from the coffee table and I heard it snap! :( They were my favoritest needles!

But not to worry, I emailed with Michael and Sheila Ernst. They have a warranty on their needles and will fix them for just the shipping costs! I'm so excited, I can't wait to get them in the mail on Monday!

Travels

The past couple of weeks have been somewhat of a whirlwind.


It started with a work trip to London last week. I was there for the better part of a week, but I did get a bit of time to go wandering. I walked from my company's offices on The Strand (practically on the River Thames) to Liberty. I was totally blown away by the exterior of the store:


And the interior was just as amazing. There were gorgeous scarves, beautiful wood architecture, some amazing Christmas displays, soft Rowan yarns and beautifully printed fabrics. I managed to score 2 meters of these fabrics:


I gave the one with the stars to Illanna.

After I spent too much money in Liberty, I wandered on over to I Knit London for their Thursday night Knit night. They were all so friendly there and the yarns at the store were all so beautiful! There were even a couple of people there that were good enough to tell me if a yarn I was looking at wasn't available in the states! It was the kind of knitting group that I wished I could knit with all the time actually.

As soon as I got back to the states, I headed on over to Illanna's place. We had organized a weekend of sewing together. I passed out super early on Friday, but ended up waking up rather early on Sunday. We sewed the pajama pants from Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing. After breakfast we traced the pattern pieces out and then traced them onto the fabric. We took a break and wandered over to Yarn Diva & More.

Now, if you've never been to Yarn Diva, let me describe it to you (because I'm too shy to ask to take photos of a yarn store from the inside): it's pink with floor to ceiling yarns. They've got EVERY yarn imaginable from Patons to Berocco to Malabrigo, Handmaiden and Blue Heron. Amazing colors and notions and it's kinda the bee's knees. I ended up getting a new tape measure there (my old one is starting to rip actually!), an amazing button, and a pair of amazing glass needles that I absolutely love knitting with:


The stitches just fly off the needles and I can't wait to find another excuse to knit on size 5 needles!

We came back from the yarn store, cut the fabric out, and started sewing. We even managed to finish relatively early that evening (maybe around 8?)! I'm still so shocked I haven't managed to snap a photo of the pj pants yet. I love wearing them, they're super comfortable, but next time I think I'm going to put a draw string into them as well. The elastic is great, but it's too loose around my waist. However, if it were tighter it wouldn't fit over my hips and would make getting them on rather a pain.

The next day, we wandered over to south jersey to WoodsEdge Wools Farm. They have over 300 Alpacas and Llamas. Someone from the farm was nice enough to explain the differences between the Alpacas and the Llamas to us. The Alpacas, she told us are more like cats in that they're not really that friendly to people they don't know, and they won't really come when you call them. I still think they're really cute. A Suri Llama named Firefly (I think that was the name anyway) was super friendly and adorable:


It was a great weekend filled with fun, awesome food and wonderful friends! I did end up buying more yarn, and as I take photos for Yarn 365 I'll be posting them. I might actually round them all up together. In the meantime, you can check out more photos of London, llamas and alpacas on my flickr stream.

I Know Why They Call it the Hemlock Ring Blanket

Because it makes you want to drink Hemlock like Socrates.


What is this, you ask? It's the stitch count for the 8 different sections once i got to the second to last repeat of the pattern. As you can see, it's off by a bit. Four of those sections had the same number of stitches, but not one section had the same number of stitches it was supposed to have. This occurred the Saturday before Christmas. So I started tinking back. I didn't know how far I was going to have to go, and since my markers were all in the right spot, I figured that tinking was the best option.


I put the Hemlock Ring Blanket on a bit of a timeout and while I was tinking I made myself a cowl.


It's from Knit 2 Together. I absolutely love it. It's knit out of Malabrigo Worsted and it's the warmest thing. I could live in it for life. I might have to knit a couple more of them so I can wear it with each coat (I just bought a new bright orange snow jacket for when Stan and I go snowboarding in January).

Finishing the cowl gave me enough motivation to get back to the Hemlock Ring. In total, I tinked back 36 rows I think. Here's what my diagram looked like after the fact:


So, I moved inward every time I got back to a row that was right before a decrease row. Good thing I only had to tink back that much, otherwise I'd have to re-do the chart. You'll see there are three sections in the middle that are circled. They're all off by only one stitch so I said to myself "fuckit, I'm just going to fudge that one part." Fudge it I did, and I think it turned out ok. I've been on the right stitch count now for quite a while and I'm almost back to where I was when I noticed things were awry.



In the meantime, I've gotten a little antsy. I realized that now that I have this bright orange snowboarding jacket, I need a hat that will match. Something about light blue and sparkles doesn't seem like it will go well with the orangeness. So I stopped by Knit One, Purl Too in Wakefield, RI when I was home and scored some Elsebeth Lavold Classic AL to knit up into a hat. I found a Lucky 7 hat pattern on Ravelry and cast on. I've got two repeats out of 8 done, and while I was hoping to get it done yesterday on the ride from RI to NY, dawn was way too late and I didn't get a chance to. So I'm still chugging along on it.


So that's all I've got now. I'll leave you with some photos of the Red Sox Socks I knit for Beth. I've given them to her for Christmas so it's safe to post them! I'll probably post some sort of 2008 wrap up soon. It's the best way for me to keep track of what I knit every year. Then I can re-set the status bars on the sidebar.

I'm Made of Awesome

That's my "OMG Do you know what this means" face!

What does it mean? It means:

I'M DONE WITH ALL MY CHRISTMAS KNITTING!

That's what it means!!



They're the Urban Necessity gloves (Ravelry link) from old school MagKnits (the designer is offering the pattern on her website). I used size 8 needles and Misti Alpaca Chunky. I have a whole hank and a quite a bit of a cake left (I bought three skeins) and I'll probably use that to make a cowl out of.

I hated this pattern. It had nothing to do with anything. I just don't like knitting gloves and mittens. They turned out quite well though and I don't think you can tell how much I hated knitting them. I should mention that the pattern was quite easy to follow.

So this is the status (I just like showing that things have been crossed off, I'm not trying to gloat really):

• Socks for Stan's Mom
• Dairy Queen Hat for Stan's Niece
• Jacques Cousteau hat for Stan's Nephew
• Half Socks for my brother's girlfriend
• "Almost A Mystery" project for Beth
• Flap mittens for my boss
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Sarah
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Rebecca

Jenn vs. Christmas
Jenn: 8 Christmas: 2

JENN WINS CHRISTMAS!

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So what am I going to do with myself? Well, I'm preparing myself mentally for knitting with the luscious Malabrigo I picked up back in October. I'll be turning it into a nifty little Bog Jacket from Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Around. I've been waiting so patiently to get done with all my Christmas knitting so I could get around to this project. Now I'll just make myself wait a bit longer until I can get the Hemlock Ring blanket to a nice size.

I took the Hemlonck Ring Blanket workshop at The Point. I'm way far away from being close to even halfway done with it, but I think it's coming quite nicely.







I wasn't sure if the marled colors were going to show off the design of the blanket, but I think it's turning out ok. I really couldn't decide if I wanted to knit it in grey or if i wanted to knit it in brown, so I decided to knit with a color-way that had it all.

Woohoo!

One more gift down. Looks like I've only got one more left! I'd show you photos, but I know that Beth reads this damn thing. She reads everything, man!

• Socks for Stan's Mom
• Dairy Queen Hat for Stan's Niece
• Jacques Cousteau hat for Stan's Nephew
• Half Socks for my brother's girlfriend
• "Almost A Mystery" project for Beth
• Flap mittens for my boss
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Sarah
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Rebecca

Jenn vs. Christmas
Jenn: 7 Christmas: 2

So on I go to the final gift: The mittens for my Boss. Now, funny story, my boss just got an amazing new job and as of mid next month will no longer be my boss. I'm still going to knit her mittens though. I feel like she's been a sort of mentor for me over the years. I guess it's my way of thanking her. Also, knitting mittens always feels so magical.

More Christmas Productivity

Newly finished today:
The Dairy Queen Hat for Stan's Niece:


I did a bit of finagling on this one. I had to make it much smaller than it was supposed to, but it should fit her now.

The Puff Daddy for my Cousin Sarah:



The Puff Daddy for my Cousin Rebecca:



The Puff Daddys were so much fun to make! They literally took an hour, and barely any yarn at all. They're perfect for stash busting! That being said, I took these gifts as an opportunity to buy a couple more skeins of yarn at Brooklyn General. Sarah's is knit out of Misti Alpaca Chunky in the Sushi Colorway. It was so soft to knit with. I can't wait to knit another one out of it! The one of Rebecca was knit out of Malabrigo Chunky. Also a totally decadent yarn to work with. I have a lot of both of these left over, so they're either going to become a whole series of Puff Daddys or something really creative is going to have to happen with the rest of it.

So where are we now?

• Socks for Stan's Mom
• Dairy Queen Hat for Stan's Niece
• Jacques Cousteau hat for Stan's Nephew
• Half Socks for my brother's girlfriend
• "Almost A Mystery" project for Beth
• Flap mittens for my boss
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Sarah
• Puff Daddy for Cousin Rebecca

Jenn vs. Christmas
Jenn: 6 Christmas: 2

I think it's safe to say, however, that I'm winning Christmas. :)

Christmas Photos

Time to show you all the Christmas presents thus far:

Socks for Lucille:


Jacques Cousteau hat for Georgie:


Halvsies for Kristina:


I decided that the best way to solve the Dairy Queen Hat problem was to use Ann Bud's book of patterns, figure out how many stitches to add and all that and to just work the pattern a little smaller than it should be. Time will tell if it works!

Snag in the Christmas Plan

I'm not ready to give Christmas one more point yet, but I have run into a slight issue. I realized a couple of things while looking at the pattern I wanted to use for Stan's neice's hat. Firstly, the gauge is so large, it more than likely won't work with the yarn I've picked out. I think Lamb's Pride Bulky really wasn't made to be knit at 2.5 stitches to the inch. Maybe this means I go out and get some Twinkle yarn, but that means buying more yarn and I was so excited to be using the yarn I have.

Also, the Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern for the Dairy Queen hat doesn't really do kids sizes. I thought this might be perfect, maybe I'll just knit the Lamb's Pride Bulky in the right gauge and it'll be smaller. By my calculations, however, the hat would be TOO small if I were to knit it like that.

So, fellow bloggers...anyone who reads this...Does anyone know of a pattern that would fit a three year old that I can knit out of Lamb's Pride Bulky? I want it to be kinda different. A little funky instead of just a plain ribbed hat.

I'm doing a ravelry search too, but I wanted to know if anyone maybe found something that I overlooked (I'm really good at overlooking things).

RHINEBECK Recap, Memes and Christmas Progress

Woa. That's a lot to cover in one post!

Let's start with Rhinebeck! It was really awesome wasn't it!? Saturday I went with some folks from NYC SNB. We met up with some other SNB chicks there. I met a bunch of awesome knitters (though, if I'd gone to the Ravelry noon meet-up I'll bet I would have met more). I got some amazing yarn. And met Franklin and had him sign the awesome book he wrote.

After getting all the yarn out of the way on Saturday, I went back on Sunday with Stan and friends of ours. It was nice to be able to go and just take photos of knitters or fall upstate and sheep and alpcas. It was a great introduction to Stan of the whole knitting thing. He got to experience Rhinebeck without thinking that I'm some sort of yarn crazed knitter (seriously, I kept it under control the whole day!). We watched the Pumpkin Chunkin' contest, wandered around some of the barns, got some lamb, checked out the museum of old stuff, and we found some amazing Vodka Sauce in the food barn (Uncle Pete's!). They had fun, which was awesome because I was worried that the Sheep and Wool Festival would be boring if you weren't there for yarn. Here are some photos of the weekend:

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Alright now, and on to the Meme! Bread and Badger tagged me in a meme about two weeks ago. I'm finally getting to it!
7 Weird Things You Probably Didn't Know About Me

1. I <3 synthesis. Anytime I can blend things together that I like I feel efficient. This is especially true for blending groups of friends together.



2. I'm right handed but often eat with my left hand.



3. I'm incapable of doing nothing. Just ask Stan. Last weekend we were hanging out and I kept poking and annoying him.



4. I speak french fairly well when I'm drunk, but if I start speaking french when I'm drunk, I start thinking in french until I get sober.



5. I get motion sick REAL bad. Especially on long trips.



6. I feel nauseous if I eat eggs alone first thing in the morning.



7. My iPod has over 5,000 songs on it. It also has tons of different genres from trance, polka, pop, house, drum & bass, heavy metal, bhangra, brazilian, country, lounge, french, middle eastern belly dancing music, classic rock...etc...

Oh, according to the rules I have to tag 7 people. So here are the folks I'm tagging:

1. Illanna
2. Beth
3. Kara
4. Rebecca
5. Ruth
6. Claudine
7. Heather

Enjoy it kids!

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So let's see where we stand on The Big Christmas Push 2008 ™:

• Socks for Stan's Mom
• Dairy Queen Hat for Stan's Niece
• Jacques Cousteau hat for Stan's Nephew
• Half Socks for my brother's girlfriend
• "Almost A Mystery" project for Beth
• Flap mittens for my boss
• ^NEW! Puff Daddy for Cousin Sarah
• ^NEW! Puff Daddy for Cousin Rebecca

Jenn vs. Christmas Jenn: 2 Christmas: 2 Yup, I've gotten a bit done. I'm about 3/4 done with the half socks too. I should probably finish them this weekend if I don't get too drunk tonight or too distracted with blogs and Guitar Hero World Tour (those video games are killing my knitting time!). I have, however added a couple of things. Seriously, who can resist the call of the Puff daddy. I certainly can't. Since I saw that last week, I've felt as though I have to knit like fifty of them and keep quite a few for myself! Now to just find a nice bulky pink yarn with a bit of silver going through it. I'm still thinking I can get all of this done by Christmas. Seriously, I've got about two months left, and I've already gotten through half of it. The things I chose to knit for folks this year are pretty small items and since I've been knitting on the subway (I usually read on the Subway so that I can maintain that obsession as well) I've found that I'm pretty quick at knitting stuff!

The Big Christmas Push

Ok. This year, for some reason, I decided that I'm going to knit Christmas gifts. Largely, these gifts will be given to various members of Stan's family.

• Socks for Stan's Mom
• Diary Queen Hat for Stan's niece
• Jacques Cousteau hat for Stan's nephew
• Half socks for my Brother's Girlfriend
• "Almost a Mystery" project for Beth
• Flap mittens for my boss

All of the yarn for these projects has been acquired except for the last one, which is a new addition to the list (as of this evening actually). We shouldn't mention that I still need to seam the blanket that my colleague gave me to seam up for her last year. She says she keeps forgetting I have it, so I'm hoping that as long as I get it done by the end of the year it should be ok. So I think I'm goign to add a little thing to the bottom of my posts that say where I am vs. Christmas. Just so we can all be on the same page.

HOT off the presses, however, are the socks for Stan's Mom. So hot, in fact, that I don't even have FO photos for you. I knit on them so much this weekend with Beth in DC that I managed to kitchener this evening while I was waiting for the Yarn Harlot to sign my book. Yup. I kitchenered standing up! I'm awesome. :)

Also, I should mention that I'm going to Rhinebeck. I'll be there all day on Saturday checking out the fiber and all that. Then Stan and I are heading up with friends on Sunday. I'm actually pretty excited about the second day. I can check out all the stuff that's NOT knitting related (like, anyone know what Pumpkin Chucking is?) and really take my camera out and give it a good go! It's bound to be a great weekend.

Jenn vs. Christmas
Jenn: 1 Christmas: 0