Thrifty Knitting: Using T-shirt Yarn

I have trouble throwing anything out. I got a lot better at it during our move, since getting rid of something I hadn't used in five years made more sense than packing it up, but I have to say that keeping things "just in case" is definitely still part of my mentality. I would rather find a way to re-use or re-purpose something than just throw it away. For that reason, I still have a pile of the boyfriend's old shirts that I plan to make into a dress, and a big ziplock bag full of can tabs that I eventually plan on making into a purse. Someday… someday…

Because I participate in a whole bunch of science outreach events, I tend to end up with a lot of free t-shirts, most of which end up languishing in the bottom of my drawer. In an attempt to satisfy my aversion to waste, I decided to convert some of them into t-shirt yarn! I don't have any pictures of the process, unfortunately, but I followed the instructions posted by Fuck Yeah Craft! (Pardon my french!) I ended up with one ball of yarn from an extra-large t-shirt:

I'll admit I didn't weigh it, so I have no idea how much it is in terms of grams or yardage. The weight was approximately worsted, sometimes a little thicker, and sometimes a little thinner. However, I do know that it was just enough to make two 6-inch dishcloths and one 3-inch coaster:

The first dishcloth is just a simple square knit in seed stitch, the second one is a diagonally knit Grandmother's Favourite Dishcloth with seed stitch instead of garter stitch, and the coaster is just a little granny square.

The verdict? Knitting with t-shirt yarn is fairly easy. It has the same stretch as a wool yarn and is pretty soft. My only complaint is that it sheds a lot. My desk ended up with little fluff grains all over it. As for the finished product, so far the dishcloth I'm using to wash the dishes every day is holding up very well. The fabric is very sturdy. So if you have some old t-shirts lying around that you don't wear any more, I'd highly recommend this as a way to re-purpose them!

Catching up on 8 months worth of knitting projects: Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of this catching-up-on-my-knitting instalment! We begin with some projects I knit purely for myself, 'cause really, I'm the one who appreciates my knitted gifts the most. As before, I'm linking to my Ravelry project page for each project in case you want more details.



Clockwise from the top left, we have some stripy legwarmers knit in Knitpicks Chroma, a super-soft Koolhaas knit in Berroco Flicker, some fingerless mitts knit from various leftovers, my Morning Dew sweater knit in Lanificio di Milano Mohacril (vintage), a super-awesome dice bag in Cascade Heritage (because I'm really cool now and play Dungeons & Dragons), and a wonderfully soft and warm hooded scarf knit in Diamond Luxury Collection Baby Alpaca Glimmer.

The yarns for most of these projects were wonderfully luxurious to work with. The Berroco Flicker, for example, I was at first attracted to because of the shininess, but then when I touched it, it was so soft that I couldn't put it down and it just had to come home with me. I think a similar situation happened with the Diamond Luxury Collection Baby Alpaca Glimmer (now that's a mouthful). The Knitpicks Chroma isn't quite as soft as baby alpaca, but it was still lovely to work with and the resulting legwarmers are super soft and warm. Boy are we lucky to live at a time when so many awesome yarns are available!

And now, some baby things!



Starting in the left corner and going clockwise, we have some baby socks in Patons Kroy 3-ply (discontinued), a cute baby cardigan in various scrap sock yarns, and a baby surprise jacket, swirly hat, and baby socks in what I think is Punta Merisock Hand Paint (it was a gift yarn, so I can't be sure). The three items knit in the Merisock went to my friend Ellie, who's due to have a baby any second now, the multi-coloured cardigan went to my friends Shanna & Gordon and their lovely little girl Beatrice, and the pale blue socks will likely go to my sister-in-law's baby. I love knitting baby things! They're so cute!

Now, I did say last time that I would also talk about wedding knitting, but perhaps I'll save that for a future post because there's still one more wedding to go to this season and I have plans to knit something up for that too.

Catching up on 8 months worth of knitting projects: Part 1

I know that one post won't properly sum up all the knitting I've done since Christmas time, but I'll attempt at least to give you a rough overview in this two-part blog post. Using my rudimentary photoshop skills, I'll try to sort of group projects into themes. I've included links to my Ravelry projects pages for each of these in case you want more information.

The first theme is socks! I love knitting socks, and I love wearing hand-knit socks. They're great portable travel projects and can be as complicated or as simple as you like. And nothing is as warm and squishy as a hand-knit sock hugging your toes.



Clockwise from the top left, we have my Twisted Mockery socks knit in a mystery gifted yarn, my Nutkins knit in Austermann Step, my Johanna socks knit in Jojoland Melody Superwash, my Turtle Toes socks knit in Turtlepurl Yarns Striped Turtle Toes, and my Double Helix socks knit in Cascade Heritage and Fiber Charmer Chris Sock.

I'm always a fan of interesting heel construction, and with the Double Helix pattern, I was able to try an innovative spiral heel which turned out beautifully. On top of that, the Twisted Mockery socks provided me with the opportunity to knit my first heel flap! Can you believe I'd never knit one before? I can't say it's my favourite, but at least I've expanded my horizons. I'm always in the market for cool new sock yarns too, and the Turtle Toes socks are knit with my favourite sock yarn concept to date. You might have noticed that the stripes on the socks match up perfectly, and that wasn't an accident. The yarn came in two skeins that were dyed together so that the colours would show up at exactly the same place! What they can do with science these days, let me tell you...

The next theme is stuff I've been knitting for others!



Again clockwise from the top left, we have Evenstar gloves I knit for Ellie in madelinetosh dk, Evenstar gloves I knit for Daphne in Araucania Nature Wool left over from my Luxe Cable sweater, a toque I knit for Yeddi in various leftover yarns, a super cool dice bag I knit for Miranda in a mystery leftover sock yarn, and a catnip-filled hamburger I crocheted for Nick's kitty out of random scraps.

You probably noticed that I've knit the Evenstar pattern twice in the above picture, and let me tell you, I'd gladly knit it up again! The cables are just so addictive in that pattern, and the result is just stunning. The first pair I knit in the madelinetosh was so amazing (that yarn is worth every penny) I was immediately hooked. This was actually the third time I'd knit that toque pattern as well, and I had knit a dice bag for myself before I knit this one for Miranda. I used to hate knitting the same pattern twice, but I guess I've now found a collection of patterns that I can fall back on when I want to knit a certain type of gift.

And next up we have patterns I've test-knit for the Happy Seamstress. Joanna has been very prolific over the last few months, and I've been lucky enough to get first dibs at knitting them up!



Clockwise from top left, we have sushi I knit from a kit Joanna had given me, the Cafe Tank which I knit from Knitpicks Galileo, and my bright pink Bat Hat which I knit from Bernat Roving. The latter was part of my Halloween costume. I was a pink cat woman type thing.

By the way, Joanna is having her patterns featured as part of the Independent Designer Program on Knitpicks, so you should definitely check that out!

There's more, of course... Next time I'll talk about baby gifts, stuff I've knit for myself, and wedding presents. Hopefully that will cover almost everything!

Crafting for weddings (part 2)

I am Canadian, and therefore I talk a lot about the weather. This last week, winter has really decided to flex its muscles in Toronto with whopping lows of -20 C and lots of snow to go with it. Despite the fact that I grew up in Quebec, I've never really appreciated the cold. As I was walking down the snowy street towards the subway station, pining for the warmer weather, in the meandering way my mind works, I was reminded of all the weddings I went to this summer... and I realized I had never finished blogging about all the crafting I did for said weddings! Well then. That had to be rectified.

So here we are, in the middle of January, reminiscing about some cool stuff I made waaaaaaay back in August and September. You might recall my first post about wedding crafting, where I mentioned that I had something ready for an upcoming wedding, which, at the time, was coming up in a few days. Well, this was the wedding of a very dear friend of mine, in fact, the brother of the wife in the happy couple we saw get married last year. For him, the boyfriend purchased an epic drinking horn. He enjoyed it very much at the reception...

For his lovely wife, I decided to make something slightly more practical, and yet incredibly nerdy... A Tardis shawl! I know the both of them are huge Dr. Who fans (I remember him watching the entire series from the beginning back in undergrad), so I figured it would be appropriate. I used the Bigger on the Inside pattern by Kate Atherley, and I absolutely loved working it. The "time vortex lace" was a little boring after a while, but the Tardis pattern, even with the super long rows, was incredibly addictive.

It blocked out to about 6 feet wide, which was almost too big for my blocking mats and also 2 feet longer than it was supposed to be. Whoops! Oh well, it's a beautiful scarf anyway.

The yarn I used was Cascade Heritage Solids in a perfect Tardis blue colourway (actually, the colourway is called "Marine"). This yarn is also a joy to work with! It's great for socks (I'll get to that in a later post), it's soft, it's sturdy-feeling, and it also comes in a wide range of solid colours (pretty rare for a sock yarn). I'm a huge fan, and I'd definitely use this yarn again.

The final bit of wedding crafting I did let me return to my wedding-crafting roots... I made a pair of potholders. It was for the boyfriend's sister's wedding, and shortly after the wedding, they'd be moving to Switzerland together to start a new life there. I decided to crochet these, since it was a bit of a last-minute decision to make them, and since the boyfriend and I are a little obsessed with molluscs of late (you should check out the boyfriend's band), I decided on a snail theme.

I actually combined two patterns for this one. I used the Snails Chart by Stephanie Law for the main design and then this Bluebird Potholder pattern by Doni Speigle for the general design. It's double-sided, so super sturdy.

The yarn is a Lopi which a friend brought me back from a trip to Iceland. It's kind of scratchy, but works wonderfully for colourwork. I'm looking forward to making something neat with the rest of it.

The Annual Christmas Knitting Post (Part II)

After spending a week in sunny Long Beach, CA for a conference (you know I just said that to make you all jealous), here is instalment number two of the Christmas knitting! It was actually a lot of crochet too, you know, to be fair to the craft which inspired this blog's title.

This first project was actually finished before I left for the holidays, despite deciding to make it at the last possible minute. I created it for the new baby of a couple with whom I have played many many games of Settlers of Catan. It therefore seemed fitting to create a Catan blanket for their new little bundle of joy:

This little blanket, which is approximately 3 feet in diameter (I didn't actually measure), only took me a week to crochet. I thought I'd get super bored of the repetitive hexagon pattern, but it was actually kind of addictive. I'd be willing to entertain the idea of doing a grown-up sized version in the future, potentially as a stash-buster.

I would love to tell you that I used up a significant portion of my stash crocheting this, but I would be lying if I did. The red, light green, grey, and tan hexes were made from yarns I already owned, but I ended up buying some big balls of Mary Maxim yarn for the rest of it. Bulky acrylic is all I remember... nothing noteworthy.

I couldn't really find a hexagon pattern I liked, so I made up my own. Here it is, if you're interested:

Ch 6 and join into a loop.
Rnd 1: Ch3, dc into loop, [ch2, 2 dc into loop]x5, ch2 and sl st to join to top of first ch3.
Rnd 2: Ch 3, dc into next dc (from previous round), [dc into ch2 loop, ch2, dc into ch2 loop, 2 dc into next 2 dc, dc in next ch2 loop]x5, ch2, dc into final ch2 loop, sl st to join to ch 3.
Rnd 3: Ch 3, 2 dc into next 2 dc (from previous round), [dc into ch2 loop, ch2, dc into ch2 loop, 4 dc into next 4 dc, dc in next ch2 loop]x5, ch2, dc into final ch2 loop, dc into next dc, sl st to join to ch 3.
Weave in ends.

Next up we have a ridiculous sheep hat created for a toddler that ended up way too big.

I've been told it fits the child, though I probably could have given it a lining to make it a snugger fit. I started with this Sheep pattern by Alexandra Cohen, but soon discovered that the kiddie has way too many toys. Easy! It's a hat now! I just kept increasing the body part until it looked roughly hat-sized and kept crocheting straight until it was roughly hat-length. Then I added earflaps (which I more or less made up on the spot and can't remember now) with super cool ties and tassels. Here's my mom modelling it and pretending to be a sheep:

Finally, we have one final silly project, this time knitted. I had originally planned on making a huge Appa (from Avatar: The Last Airbender) stuffed toy for my friend Ed, but I ran out of time and motivation, so instead went for the next best thing: an Appa toque! Because it's not fair to only have silly pictures of my mom, here I am modelling it:

I used the pattern Yip-Yip by Lesley Brownlee, only instead of the intarsia arrow, I opted for a sewn-on felt one (mostly because I didn't have the right colour yarn on hand). It's a pretty cool pattern, but I think if I were to do it again, I'd change the crown decreases because they were a little abrupt. Also, the toque doesn't quite cover my friend's ears. He's nice enough to wear it anyway.

And that's it for the Christmas knitting this year! Quite a bit of it for having only planned one project...

Crafting for weddings

I've reached the age of weddings... I was invited to four weddings this summer, and at least a couple more are happening within my group of friends which I wasn't invited to (because they were in a different country or whatever). Well, I turned 26 this year, so I guess it's not totally unexpected. (Just don't ask me to get married...)

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you probably know that I've made it a tradition to knit potholders as wedding presents (see here, here, here, and here), but somehow I've managed not to knit a single one this summer. Instead, I've been focusing my crafty energy on more lacy and delicate endeavours. So far I've completed two crafty wedding gifts, with a third one on its way (but the wedding is this coming weekend, so it must remain a secret for now).

My first bit of wedding knitting was for a good friend who got married in England on July 1st (so this falls into the "weddings I didn't attend" category). She wanted to have something to cover her shoulders that wouldn't cover up her dress, and that was less likely to fall off than a shawl. The perfect garment? A lacy shrug! I sent her some pattern ideas, and she ended up going for I Do by Jody Prival.

She didn't want the bell sleeves, so I modified it to be the same width from beginning to finish, which actually made the knitting a lot easier. The colour had to match the groomsmen's ties, which were a dark purple plaid. We found the perfect colour of yarn: Cascade Yarns Ultra Pima in the Regal colourway. I didn't have much time to take pictures of the finished project, partially because I had to pull an all-nighter to finish knitting and blocking it before she had to get on a plane the next day. Fortunately, the blushing bride was able to take a few shots for me the morning before the wedding:

The next wedding craftiness came about when I was invited to the bride's bridal shower, and I hadn't bought a gift (I should have known better). As a compromise, I told her that I would make her wedding garter.

I used the Crochet Lace Wedding Garter pattern by Melisa Darnieder. I liked working it a lot, and I think it'll be my go-to pattern if I'm ever asked to make a garter again. The yarn was Patons Kroy 3-ply, which I found in my grandmother's stash, and which I'm fairly sure isn't sold any more.

I made the little crochet rose suggested in the pattern, and finished it off with a little Swarovski crystal in the centre to give it a little bling. Joanna was kind enough to let me raid her ribbon stash, and I found the perfect grippy transparent elastic and a nice wedding-y ribbon. This actually fell under the category of something old, new and blue because it was old yarn, a new thing, and a blue thing. (I could have asked her to give it back for it to be borrowed, but I figured that'd be a little much.)

As per tradition, the bride threw the garter for all the young men to catch, and the above fellow was the lucky winner. I didn't actually get any pictures of the bride wearing the garter, but here's a nice one of them during the ceremony...

The Annual X-mas crafting review (Part 1)

The Newtonmas presents have been handed out, the wrapping paper has been cleaned up, and the traditional holiday dinner (home-made pizza in our house!) has been eaten. That means that it's time to show the world what I made everyone for X-mas now that I don't have to be all secretive about it! This will likely be a very long post, so I'll start with the knitted gifts and save the rest for another post.

I'll start with the big one: this year, I knit my first man sweater. My dad expressed an interest in getting a hand-knit tennis sweater... you know, the v-neck cabled cardigans, usually white with a navy blue stripe around the collar? (Something like this.) It had to be a cardigan, because Dad gets hot easily. I couldn't seem to find a pattern I really liked that was free or in a book I already owned, so I designed my own! This is how it turned out:

I actually worked this sweater in pieces because I couldn't think of a good way to do it seamlessly at the time (though I thought of some later after I'd already started). Designing the sleeve caps and arm holes was interesting, since I decided to go with a set-in sleeve, but the sweater design section of Debbie Stoller's Superstar Knitting came in handy. There are a few elements I'm really proud of, as well. I'm a huge fan of these pockets, for example:

I'll probably post this technique as a tutorial on the Happy Seamstress at some point, but it's essentially an afterthought pocket with more forethought. Yeah... that makes sense. I'm also quite proud of the button band. I did a double-knit button band using this tutorial. The buttons I acquired whilst at the Buttons and Needlework Boutique in Victoria.

The oatmeal-coloured yarn is Diamond Yarn Galway Heather, an aran weight pure wool yarn that was very nice to work with (though it felts extremely easily). I have two balls left which might become a laptop case for the boyfriend. The red yarn is KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, which was gifted to me by Joanna. (Thanks a bunch, Joanna!) She had some left over from her cupcake kits.

Most importantly, Dad seems pretty happy with the sweater. The fit is good, and he's actually been wearing it since he got it, which is a good sign. Here he is, showing his approval:

The second hand-knit gift I made were these lovely soft cuffs for my Mom.

The pattern is Mrs Beeton by Brenda Dayne and the yarn is some stuff I got at the Knitty Yarn Round Table in September called Heaven's Hand Silke (pure silk, nom nom nom!) and the leftover Filatura Di Crosa Baby Kid Extra from the cowl I made Mom last X-mas. I used some iridescent purple beads from my bead stash. I really liked knitting this pattern... it's super cute, and pretty clever. And working with the Silke was amazing. I wish I had a bathtub of the stuff.

Here's a funny video I took while she was posing at the piano and didn't know I was filming:

The last yarny gift I made this year was this cute little teddy bear for my friends' baby:

I pretty much just made up the pattern as I went... and I'm not sure I entirely remember what I did, but it turned out awful cute, right? I used some yarn from Mom's stash and she also knit the little scarf. And of course, here's the mandatory cute baby picture, taken by her parents and not by me. She's very studious:

Next time I'll show pictures of the shinier presents I made. Stay tuned!

Wine bottle cozy pattern

It's been a little while since I've posted a free pattern, so here's something quick and easy for you. I whipped up these crocheted wine bottle cozies a few hours before some friends' wedding party to cover up a bottle of port and a bottle of homemade white wine which we were bringing as gifts. This is the label for the home-made wine, by the way:

The label says "Sam's Beard Estates WINE BITCHES!" Yeah... not totally family-appropriate, but we had a hoot making them. The reddish shape is the silhouette of the boyfriend's beard as seen from the side. If you stare at it, you might get it, but it's meant to be a little abstract.

Anyway, on to that pattern! I used two thirds of a leftover ball of Knit Picks Telemark for the purplish one, and then some mystery worsted weight for the white one. The grey yarn is Bernat Berella 4 Solids & Ragg, which is a worsted weight yarn, but I think you can probably use anything from sport weight to worsted for this pattern, since the double crochet is fairly stretchy.

Materials:

• About 50 grams of a sport to worsted weight yarn
• a 5mm crochet hook
• a darning needle to sew in the ends

Gauge: Approximately 3 sts per inch, but it doesn't matter too much

Instructions:

Make magic ring (you can find a good tutorial here). Ch 3 (counts as 1st dc).

Rnd 1: Dc 11 sts into ring, sl st into 3rd chain. Pull ring tight. (12 sts)
Rnd 2: Ch 3, dc into sl st, * 2 dc in next st, rep from *, sl st into 3rd chain. (24 sts)
Rnd 3: Ch 3, dc into sl st, * 1 dc in next st, 2 dc in next st, rep from *, sl st into 3rd chain. (36 sts)
Rnd 4-10ish: Ch 3, dc around, sl st into 3rd chain. (until it extends to the beginning of the neck of the wine bottle)
Rnd 11: Ch 3, * dec 2 sts, 1 dc in next st, rep from *, sl st into 3rd chain. (24 sts)
Rnd 12: Ch 3, dc around, sl st into 3rd chain.
Rnd 13: Ch 4, * sk 1 st, 1 dc in next st, ch 1, rep from *, sl st into 3rd chain. This creates eyelets to pass the drawstring through.
Rnd 14: Ch 3, * dc into ch, dc into next dc, rep from *, sl st into 3rd chain.

Fasten off.

With a 12” piece of yarn, twist and fold in half so it twists up on itself, and tie knots at each end. Then draw through the eyelets. You can also use a crochet chain or an i-cord if you want.

You can do this in red, green, and white stripes for a very festive wine cozy, and it adds a nice personal touch to that bottle of wine you bring to a Christmas party. Enjoy!

Edit (April 24, 2012) - Changed row 3 from 32 sts to 36 sts.

Chainmail and wire crochet earrings

I've recently become enamored with chain-mail jewelry (especially after making that jewelry for my mom), and recently, after being inspired by some earrings from this etsy shop that are no longer for sale, I decided to give it a another go.

With the exception of the ear wires, I just used material from my beading stash, and the whole thing took me less than an hour, so they weren't much of an investment all things considered. The ear wires are pure silver, the bead is glass, I think, and the wire and jump rings are silver plated. The hardest part was making the loop for the bead wire.

This next set of earrings was a little more difficult, but only because crocheting wire is an act of pure masochism. Well, it's not that bad, but also not for the faint of heart.

I used the thinnest wire I had with a 2.5mm crochet hook and made my own jump rings with slightly thicker wire. The join in the jump rings isn't as tight as I'd like, so I'm thinking it might be worth investing in a soldering iron. I'm not sure what the construction of the wire is, but the thinnest wire certainly isn't gold because it's already oxidizing a bit. I guess I'll have to invest in higher quality materials too.

I'm toying with the idea of maybe opening my own etsy shop, but we'll have to see. I certainly plan on making more of this jewelry!

More finished objects

Gosh, it's been a while! Please forgive me for my sporadic posting... All I can say is that I've been busy with school.

Pay-It-Forward update: Thanks to everyone who commented on my Pay-It-Forward post. I will be giving awesome hand-made gifts to Tas (who has an awesomely named blog), Eleanor (my mom), Ellie (a fellow grad student in Toronto), and The Happy Seamstress (my partner in crafty crime). If you still want to participate, there's still room for one more comment, so feel free to leave one.

Now on to the interesting stuff! I've actually been quite crafty of late, though you'd never know it from my lack of posting. I'll go over my latest finished objects in more or less chronological order. Warning: some of these date back to January... Eep!

First on the list is another Baby Surprise Jacket, the legendary pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I knit this one out of S.R. Kertzer On Your Toes, which is quite a lovely yarn to work with. This one took me a little longer than the last one (a full week instead of 4 days), but I certainly enjoyed it just as much. This pattern is strangely addictive. I knit this for little Eleanora, the beautiful daughter of my friends who got married a couple of Halloweens ago.

Next up is a pair of mittens for me! This is the Chevalier pattern by Mari Muinonen. I used a couple of skeins of Misti Alpaca Merino Worsted, which is a wonderfully soft yarn, though there were several cuts in the plies of the yarn in the balls I got. That was annoying, but I managed to hide most of the errant strands. Even though I did fewer repeats than were called for in the pattern (because I have very small hands) I still ended up running out of yarn when I got to the tip of the thumbs. You can see from the photo that I've got a different colour yarn there. I was pretty pissed at first, but now I kind of like how it looks. The boyfriend calls my "thumbs" when I wear them. I knit these using the magic loop method, which was ok, but I think I still like my double-pointed needles better.

I haven't given up on crochet either. I have a lot of dresses that leave very little to the imagination when it comes to cleavage, so I figured I should make myself a modesty panel. It's quite an ingenious design, the Lacy Cleavage Cover by Linda Z. O'Halloran. I used some good ol' Royale Crochet Thread which was probably a little thinner than the pattern called for, but I managed to make it wide enough with a little improvisational edging.

I'm a pretty big fan of the fastening mechanism for this thing. It attaches to my bra with those little elastics.

Next on this lengthy list of finished objects is an awesome pair of socks for my friend Daphne. She requested a pair of thick, comfy socks, and when I asked her what colour she'd like me to make them, she simply said, "Oh, I don't know. Make them wild!" And so I did. I used a skein of Bernat Satin and some random scrap yarn for the stripes, and I knit them using a generic short-row toe-up pattern. I made my first attempt at knitting one sock inside the other on double-pointed needles by first creating two short-row toes and then putting one inside the other and continuing with the double-knitting outlined in that awesome Knitty tutorial. I'm pretty happy with the result (and so is Daphne), though my gauge was a little looser than I usually like for socks.

Last but not least is this wonderful little tote bag, which I made using Elisa's Nest Tote by Purl Soho. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the seaming in this pattern last time I made it, and I was looking for a slightly sturdier bottom, so I decided to make it a crochet/knitting hybrid. The bottom was crocheted in the round in double-crochet and increased to 80 stitches, which I then picked up with my circular needle and knit in the round in pattern. I therefore didn't have to bind off before doing the applied i-cord edging. The latter caused the opening of the bag to be a little tight, but I can live with that.

Well, that's about it for now, folks! Let's hope my next entry appears a little sooner than a month from now.

The long overdue X-mas knitting post, part 1

Yes, I know. It's February. I should have posted about what I knitted for everyone's Christmas/Brumalia/Newtonmas presents at least a month ago... Well, better late than never, right? Right?

I'd like to start off with socks. I like socks. A lot. They're pretty much the perfect project. Simple enough to work on while watching TV or sitting through a lecture, yet small enough to be portable, and with that heel-turning in the middle they have just enough of a challenge to keep me interested. And after inheriting a drawer-full of hand-knit socks from my grandmother, I know the awesome squishy comfortableness of wearing them.

This X-mas, I tried my first toe-up socks and ohmygod I'm so not turning back. I love the short-row toe because I always manage to do my Kitchener stitch too tight. And of course, you can try it on as you go, and knit until you run out of yarn. I also tackled my life-long (ok, maybe a few months-long) fear of doing serious stranded colourwork. I'm still not a fan, but at least I can say I tried it.

Sing it with me! Spidey Socks! Spidey Socks! Friendly neighbourhood Spidey Socks! These are totally the coolest thing ever, by the way. The pattern is Even Big Guys Love Spidey Socks by Terri Frid (Ravelry link) and I made it for my brother. It was quite a challenge for me because I wanted to make sure the floats wouldn't catch on bro's toes, so I ended up twisting the yarns together every two or three stitches. It's a work of art, I tell ya... I wish I'd taken a picture of the insides.

Also, then ended up being a little long in the foot for the bro, mostly because I took his shoe size and based the sock size on that without actually measuring his foot. Well, I'll know for next time and he said he'd wear them anyway. And hey, they might shrink a bit in the wash! Then again, the yarn I used is mostly Knit Picks Stroll, which is superwash merino, and likely won't shrink... sigh...

So you're probably wondering what that thing between bro's Spidey Sock-clad feet is. Well, I'll diverge a little from the sock topic to tell you that it's just the most awesome beer cozy ever! It's the Booby Coozy by Keesha Arthur. I made mine an ebony-skinned Amazonian, not only because that was the only yarn colour I happened to have on hand, but because I thought it would look cool against the yellow bikini.

Warning! The following image is not work-appropriate! Teeheehee!

Ok, back to socks.

For my friend Stevie, I also made a pair of toe-up socks and didn't ask for his proper foot measurements and made socks that were way too big. Ah well, he promised to wear them as well. I made them from a lot of left-over yarns I had lying around. I used the left-over Stroll from the Spidey Socks for the blue, and an unknown gift yarn for the brown, and then some leftover red from my Monkey Socks and green from a new ball of S.R. Kertzer On Your Toes.

And that's a long enough post for now... next time, the parentals!