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My First Real Project (tm)

I recently completed my first project. From the Stitch n' Bitch book, the chapter on increasing and decreasing had a hair kerchief as the poster child project for demonstrating its lessons. I don't wear hair kerchiefs. I never was a part of that whole bandanna craze a few years back. Ok, I was enough a part of it to purchase one or two, and some illicit photos exist out there (you know who you are!) that even show me wearing them, but for the most part, I didn't go near em. If my hair needed to be kept out of my face, I turned to the trusty aubergine (what?! that doesn't make sense...)....I mean hair elastic thingie. What in the 80s morphed into the scrunchie (sadly, there are too many pics out there of me in those), by the bandanna 90s they had slimmed back down to rubber band size elastic thingie's. So, since I don't wear 'em, and since I had some random colors from my Mr. Roboto and Heart Coaster tester-projects, I decided to (once again, complicating things) use two yarns at the same time and knit up a hair kerchief. Here it is, beautifully modeled by Mark:

You can see his sense of style is very...strong. He's obviously about to go use a torque wrench on his motorcycle.

Here is a closeup of the stitch (garter, with the pink/white variegated yarn and the lime green yarn). Not too shabby, eh? Who's the crappy knitter now?

Oh wait, I am. At least I will be on projects tougher than a triangle that doesn't need to really be sized. And for the sake of this blog, I better not improve too much.

Mr. Roboto

So I bought the first issue of Craft Magazine because of the knit robots on the cover:

The robot pattern promised inside, however, was not the one on the cover! How rude! So I went online, and discovered that the creator, Jess Hutch, does not sell the pattern anymore. *Grumble* That's ok, because I am now an accomplished knitter and can figure out how to do it myself. I mean, after my last two projects, I can do anything, right? Who cares if I've only read one pattern to date, and all I can do are knits and purls with basic yarn (hooray stockinette!).

Here is my first attempt, which I abandoned early:

I decided to make the head and the body two separate pieces and then sew them together (leaving live ends on both). You can see how well that turned out:

And of course, I also decided to take this time to try out ribbing. The ribbing turned out ok, but it didn't work for making even sides (I didn't count properly). Note the pointy right shoulder:

Attempt number two will try knitting it as all one piece.

I Heart Coasters

After my extremely successful first project, I decided to try a pattern with knits and purls. This pattern came from the Stitch 'N Bitch book, and it would have looked good if i hadn't chosen a variegated color yarn.

You can see the pattern in the picture, but in real life it's really hard to see. I swear. Note, however, that my stitches are pretty damn good (for me, that is, especially compared to the green snarf).

Here is a closeup of the heart.


Any suggestions for what to do with it? I'm currently using it as a coaster, but a pink heart coaster doesn't really go with my modern sensibilities. Watch out, next I will be embroidering a "home sweet *retch* home" sampler.

Green Snarf

My very first attempt at knitting - a green scarf. I used Lions Brand Homespun, which I don't recommend for newbie yarners, as the bumpy look does not lend itself to figuring out which is a knit and which is a purl, and other newbie things one needs to pay attention to. Here it is, all rolled up.

Doesn't look that bad, does it? Almost like a candy sweet.

Here it is rolled out.

You will notice it is not long enough to be a scarf. Thats because towards the end there I was getting sick of the yarn, sick of the green, sick of the holes and the unraveling, and I decided I would resurrect an old crocheting project of mine (same story as knitting, tho hark back a few years and place me in a snowstorm, a michaels, and voila!), that didn't work out. I was getting sick of the green so I decided to try a stripe with the charcoal ex-crochet yarn. The scarf is a hodgepodge of garter, stockinette, purl-garter (why do i find purling much easier than knitting?), unraveling yarn, and then stripeage.

Note the yellow blob in the center. Stupid marginally-multi-color yarn.

See my holes. See the unraveling yarn. Really what happened is that the yarn raveled too much, and then much down the line it unraveled.

Why this blog?

I like crafts. I fold paper into pretty sculptures, I glue pictures to magnets, I turn clay into eating vessels. Yet somehow I have escaped turning yarn into clothing. That's right, while a lot of my friends, we of the ballyhooed (and hooey-booed) Generation Y (yarn?) were getting their sticks on, I ignored the trend and puttered happily at the potters wheel. But witness my friend Diva, not too long after she joined a knitting circle, waltzing around in a coulda-sworn-it-came-from-gap-but-what?-she-made-that?! hoodie, and other friends were casually displaying their garment making genius with apparently little effort, then I too yearned to put sheeps fur to better use. But now I live across the country, and I'm intimidated by the advanced clacking of my friends' group, so I walked into a jo-ann fabrics (no, its not a drool-worthy lys, but i got the urge while shopping at trader joes and jo-ann was across the street) and picked up a skein and some 10.5s, took a book out of the library, and tried to knit. Well, it aint look like the pictures. So if you have some crappy knitting, and I don't mean the kind where you are trying to do some super advanced robot toy with 3 types of cables and 10 different colors and oops you missed a stitch, i mean heads up awful knitting, god please dont let her touch needles again knitting, then post it here.